Me and My Mojo

So, step 1 towards my future life, once I got my head back into a space where I was able to think rationally about what that was to me, meant for me some kind of journal. I love lists. I write lists every day and tick things I complete off one by one. It soothes my soul. So I knew that journaling would be a good way to progress for me. And I had taken some advice around Cognitive Therapy from a friend and so I knew that working in this way would be good for me. I also decided to write everything by hand. Previously I had been using my phone and iPad for note taking and list management apps. I bought myself some beautiful pens, and notepads and decided to go back to basics.

In looking at how to organise myself, I came across BuJo or Bullet Journaling. I loved the creativity of the different journals being created by people on social media, so I looked into how to do this effectively by watching You Tube videos and learned very quickly that BuJo in its truest sense isn’t for me, and isn’t really what most people creating these beautiful masterpieces are necessarily doing. Bullet Journaling is actually a very structured paper based algorithm designed by a digitally minded brain that helps you decide what your priorities are. It didn’t really fit with where I’m at, at the moment as I already know my priorities and don’t feel that these will shift any time soon, I thought about how to structure my journals to help me best.

So I decided to create a new way of working and Called it my MoJo or my Motivational Journal. This is how its structured. I have two places I write. A plain notepad, and a standard weekly diary. In the plain notepad, I really use for a number of things. Writing task lists, brain dumps for house projects, dally journals if I want to write and so on. In my diary, I only track personal activities, so no work commitments. I track my appointments, my exercise, my mood (smiley face, complacent face, sad face, completely wired mental face), my daily food and my period. It sounds quite laborious but when you get used to it, it really isn’t at all. At the beginning of each book I have a list of my life priorities. It reads like this:

1. Continue Baby Discovery
2. Get house interior done
3. Write my book
4. Blog weekly
5. Read more
6. Make healthier choices
7. Exercise – Swim, Yoga
8. Only socialise when it makes you happy
9. Holiday
10. Carry on with Acupuncture

It reminds me of what I am focusing on in the short and longer term into the coming year. It’s all I need to keep me focused on the things that matter to me.

As I move forward it’s amazing how each part of my journal has helped me at times and taken a back seat at others. For example, mood tracking helped me in the earlier days of my grief. I could see when I had bad week after bad week even during those times I had days where I didn’t feel that bad. I may not have felt happy but I wasn’t completely lost to my sadness. As time went on I got more and more complacent and then smiley faces. Now I write them into my journal but they don’t have the significance that they used to have. I guess I am getting stronger then, who knew? It’s a good indicator to where you have come from. And good to see the strength you have mapped out, in emojis of all things, in getting yourself back. At the moment I am finding to my shock, that my food diary is the thing I am enjoying most and finding its helping me enormously. I say shock because initially I didn’t want to do this. I felt a bit of a failure I suppose in having to look at eating at this level. And my sister said I should… lol… she is normally right but don’t tell her I said so. I feel it is helping me focus on what I am eating and actually I don’t want to eat badly and ruin my great run of healthy logged days. Will see how it goes but at the moment it’s my favourite daily entry to log.

So over time, it maybe that my MoJo changes and I start to track new things and not focus on others but now I have started I am not going to stop.

Thinking of starting your own Mojo? Drop me a note and let me know the things you want to track or things I should add to mine.