Ten Journaling Practices for Connecting with Your Inner Guidance: An Excerpt from Empowered, Sexy, and Free

March 25th, 2022

Have you ever done any journaling? Most people have tried it at least once. And many of those people find it boring, repetitive, and a waste of time. I can totally relate to that. Based on what I initially thought I was supposed to be writing in my journal — recounting my daily experiences, for example — I felt the same way.

But journaling is so much more than a glorified teenager’s diary, as I’m about to show you.

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The type of journaling I’m talking about connects you deeply to your inner guidance and your inner voice. It silences the noise around you and gives you a way to channel your unique essence and brilliance, shuttling what lives in your subconscious into your conscious mind. If you give this type of journaling a chance, you’ll be very surprised at the innate beauty and strength you find within yourself.

In all my coaching programs, taking up a journaling practice is a requisite. There is nothing quite like it to help you start uncovering the real you. It takes a minimum of three weeks to develop a habit, so I invite you to buy yourself a special journal that you love and take up the practice for the next twenty-one days.

Top Ten Journaling Practices

Need more convincing? Here are the top ten ways to journal that I recommend you try. Sometimes I do one of these a day, sometimes more than one. Sometimes I do one type of entry several days running, and other times I switch them up. You can use them in any way and in any order that feels right to you.

I’m also including examples of each entry type. Since my purpose here is to share my heart with you, these examples are lifted straight from my own journal. You are the first to ever read them. I hope they inspire you!

1 – Express Gratitude

When you express what you’re grateful for and what you appreciate, your entire vibration expands and heightens, allowing you to attract more things worth your gratitude. It is so easy to forget the magic all around us. Your journal gives you a space to pause and look at your life in awe, with appreciation and acceptance. It gives you a chance to thank your body and your heart. It gives you an opportunity to celebrate what you have accomplished and recognize all that you have (as opposed to focusing on everything you don’t have and still want).

I challenge you to write down ten things that you’re grateful for every single day, then let these things live in your mind after you’ve closed your journal. Tell your friends what you’re grateful for and ask them what they are grateful for. Start conversations about gratitude. Ironically, appreciating what you already have is part of the process of attracting more of what you want. This is especially useful in times when you feel like you’ve lost something or don’t have enough of something, like money or other resources.

2 – Process Your Emotions

No one can ever know exactly how you feel except you, and even you might not know exactly how you feel until you start writing about it. Journaling can help you to process and understand what you are feeling. Honor this sacred understanding of yourself. If you feel like crap today, then say it! If you’re angry, upset, scared, or confused, then this is your space to let it all out. Write more deeply into it if you aren’t sure where those feelings are coming from. Acknowledge what’s real for you right now. Maybe you’re happy and you want to celebrate. Maybe you want to rant. This is your sacred space, and you may be surprised what you learn about your feelings when you begin writing freely.

3 – Write a Love Letter from Your Higher Self

Your higher Self is the pristine version of you — no ego, no judgments, only divine love. Take a moment to visualize this version of you. Fall in love with her. Know that you already are her. What guidance would she give you? How would she encourage you? What would she say in a love letter to you? You have all the answers within. Trust yourself enough to connect with them.

4 – Send a Message to a Specific Part of Yourself or Your Experience

Cultivate relationships with all things in your life. Talk to inanimate objects as if they have their own consciousness. In my journal, I talk to money, the earth, my business, my body. Seduce money, praise your body, and reclaim your essence. If it feels silly talking to something that isn’t a person, good! No one said journals had to be serious all the time. If you want, you can even have the object you’re writing to write back to you!

5 – Take a Journey through the Present Moment

Drop deeply into the moment and write about what you experience. Witness what is all around you. What do you see? What do you feel? What do your other senses take in? What would you have missed if you hadn’t stopped to take in the moment? What thoughts and feelings come up in this state of presence?

6 – Write a Wish List for the Universe

This is your space to place your orders to the universe, just as you would at a restaurant. Would you like something that is currently not in your space? Ask for it, then watch it show up! Remove any guilt that may be attached to you and open yourself up to receiving. Living guilt free is a choice. Receiving is a choice. (We’ll talk a lot more about this in chapter 12, “I Am a Manifesting Queen,” so stay tuned if you’re not sure about this one yet.)

7 – Reflect on Life Lessons

As you go through life, cultivate an awareness of what’s unfolding. What makes you sad? What are you not okay with being a witness to? What have you learned in the past that you find applicable now?

8 – Recount Your Dreams

Your journal is a great place to recount your dreams and note how they made you feel. How you felt in a dream is actually more important than what happened in it. You will often find the dream emotions connect to something you are currently feeling in waking life. This can be a great tool for emotional processing, problem solving, facing fears, and gaining a better understanding of current dilemmas or situations.

9 – Make Personal Declarations

As humans, we love to make things real with declarations. Knowing that you can recreate who you are at any given time, whom do you want to be today? Declare it. Claim it. Own it.

10 – Discover Your Own Truth

Add any other fun and unique content that you like. It’s your journal, your expression, and you can fill it up with anything that is meaningful to you. I’ve seen clients write poems, compose love notes, make food diaries, and use other creative journaling practices.

Feel free to make anything up! Have fun with your journaling and make it your own. This is your space to be creative. Just allow it to flow.

Even if you’ve never written before or have tried journaling in the past and gave up on the process, I invite you to start here with a clean slate. The promise of this book is that you will have access to discovering the real you and tools to create a life that you love. Accepting my invitations will only speed up the process and leave you with a deeper sense of joy, pleasure, and peace.

Chances are that you experience resistance right now in some area of your life. You may not be able to identify exactly the root cause of it. In the next chapter, we will uncover the areas where potentially you feel stuck, disempowered, and heavy. This will likely open up lots of writing material.

Sister, you possess the power to be a great self-healer. You are more capable than you give yourself credit for, and your higher Self is ready to shower you with wisdom whenever you tap into the source. You are the greatest source of your own healing superpowers. You are the deepest source of love for yourself. You have it all now, you’ve always had it all, and you will always have it all. Give yourself the gift of going within.

About the author:

Jolie Dawn is the author of Empowered, Sexy, and Free and creator of the Dare to Prosper Challenge, the largest women’s prosperity meditation gathering online, attended by women in more than fifty countries. She specializes in helping women awaken their prosperity consciousness, embody their deepest truth, and reclaim personal freedom and creativity. Visit her online at http://www.joliedawn.com.