Mental WOD #5: Journal...What To and Why To

A picture says a 1000 words... Even from a IPhone

Life is a series of moments and memories one after another. We pick up so many great thoughts and ideas along the way. We can't trust our memory (no matter how good it is) alone.

Most of us know the importance of journaling our food or workout journals and tracking our progress with our health and fitness.

But what about the rest of your life?

Your thoughts, goals, dreams, family, experiences, photos... Capturing the very essence of how our life goes. Life moves so fast and a lot of us get caught in the day to day routines and miss a lot of the great things that happen to us along the way.

This week's Mental WOD is to journal your day everyday. It could be a paragraph, a page to a couple of pages. Whatever you feel you want to write on and about is up to you. Just build the habit. Hopefully you will take this habit and run with it for years.

How cool would it be to give something like this to your kids to 20, 30, 50 years down the road?

Below is some tips and tricks from the master motivator, Jim Rohn.

Jim Rohn was the master of the journal. "If you're serious about becoming a wealthy, powerful, sophisticated, healthy, influential, cultured and unique individual—keep a journal. Don't trust your memory. When you listen to something valuable, write it down," Rohn said. As such, a journal can be many things to many people. Here are a few ideas for how to use a journal:

1. Keep a tally of your daily 'wins' or accomplishments.
2. Keep notes on an ongoing problem you're facing.
3. Write down ideas. The Magic of Thinking Big author David J. Schwartz writes, "Every day, lots of good ideas are born only to die quickly because they aren't nailed to paper."
4. Maintain your lifelong goal file. Writing down your aspirations in a journal helps build a file so that you can review your ideas over and over.
5. Keep a to-do list for big projects. Day-to-day tasks can be scheduled in Outlook, but larger-scale projects are perfect for recording in a journal.
6. Jot down inspirational quotes and why they impact you.
7. Keep a dream journal bedside.
8. Handwrite important facts, statistics or phone numbers to help cement them in your mind.
9. Tear out a page and write a note to someone important in your life.