Ep109 Transcript: Journal Prompts for Entrepreneurs – Quick Fix Friday

Journaling can be a powerful tool for an entrepreneur or anyone making a big shift in life. Listen in as I cover four different categories for journaling prompts for the entrepreneur.

Hello Dreamers. Welcome to the Late Starters Club, giving you the inspiration mindset and tools you need to start something midlife and beyond. Remember, it’s never too late to follow your dreams.

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And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

In episode 107 and 108, I dove a little bit deeper into journaling. We talked to Tina Brandau, who talked about the way she started her morning routine was something out of gratitude.

She was journaling with gratitude, and I got into thinking about my own journaling habits and different techniques I’ve used over the years to really get to the root issue that I’m facing right now and to help me move forward. And what I was realizing is that there are four different kind of categories that I approach my journaling with.

And one of them, the first one that I really like is mindset and energy because when you have the right mindset, it really affects your energy. If you’re realizing that you don’t have the right energy, you want to dive a little bit deeper into that. And I’ve used some different prompts and different tactics for this mindset approach. One is to use this rip and write tactic that my friend Julie Watson has introduced me to, and it’s basically getting to the bottom of maybe why you’re feeling afraid or maybe something that is stopping you with your mindset and writing down everything related to that for two minutes, ripping the paper up and doing that three more times. I love that because it makes us realize that we’re just free to express ourselves. And as we dive deeper into the issues, we come up with more and more layers that allow us to see what’s really underneath some of those mindset issues that are causing us a block in our energy.

So some of the things you might use as a actual prompt for what’s happening with your mindset are things like, what’s holding me back right now? What are my limiting beliefs around this issue? And what possible actions can help.

Maybe it’s something like getting outside or getting some exercise or, doing something that is really comforting to you. Maybe it’s having a little more downtime and stepping away from the computer. Or maybe it’s getting connected with a therapist or energy healer to help you dive a little bit deeper into your mindset.

Category Number two is the big picture possibilities brainstorming. So this might be when you’re making a big shift, talking about what is possible, what do you want your life to look like, what do you want your business to look like? What can you see for the future? Who might be doing something that is where you want to go?

And really kind of looking out into the future in a bigger picture way on how you want things to change.

Some questions you might ask during this phase are, who do I know who can help me or what information do I need to take the next step?

Category Number three is goal setting, and this is different than the big picture possibility journal prompt, because this is where you’re really setting some specific goals and mapping out how you want things to go and what are the steps to get there. This might be a shorter term goal that you’re setting maybe something in the next six months or a year versus a bigger picture five year plan. So this is where you’re breaking everything down into steps. And one of the things I like to ask during this phase when I’m journaling is how can I break this into smaller steps, listing everything that I need to do to achieve those intermediate steps, and then even breaking that down further so that I can feel like I’m making really good progress in a bigger goal.

Category number four is solving a specific problem. Now, this maybe something that’s come up in your business, a roadblock that you’ve hit, maybe something that is stopping you in your tracks and you don’t know how to get around it.

So an example of this is, I earlier in the year was having some cash flow issues and so I sat down and said, okay, what are all the possibilities that I can take to get cash flow going quickly in a short amount of time? And what does that look like? So I just listed everything from Uber driving to launching a new course to renting out a room in my house. So I was just thinking of crazy things that could be possibilities. And then I was able to really assess which ones were the low hanging fruit and how could I get things moving in that quicker way to get the cash flow where it needed to be.

Another question I like to ask in solving specific problems are some of the questions that’s come up before. Who can help? Why did this happen? How can I prevent this from happening in the future? And again, what is the next right step here?

So those are some of the categories I like to use for journal prompts, and hopefully that’s inspired you to write some things down, get deeper into what’s been happening in your head and move you forward.

Hope that was helpful, and make sure you grab the free guide Top Tools for Late Starters on the website@latestartersclub.com and let’s turn dreaming into doing.