While everyone else is doing a ‘New Year New You’ program (there are thousands of them), we offer you a different path. One often less taken. We present to you the 12 Week Self Remodel. Each Monday for 12 weeks we’ll post one thing you can change in your life, easily, to help create the life you really want. Each one is a small adjustment to your existing life, small stepping stones to a better you. As such, they take little effort or time to accomplish. Each one will be posted later in the day, intentionally. Your work week may start on Monday, but the Reclaimed week starts on Tuesday. Less competition for your time, and less stress (also something to look forward to on your Monday commute). So, let’s begin.

Week 6 – Get Your Words Out

The human brain is a fantastic organ. But there’s a lot it can’t do. Mine has yet to figure out a way to get me a date with Scarlett Johansson. Sometimes it needs an aid to help it along (like a good wing man). Historically, men kept journals. In recent years this has fallen out of favor, and even considered girly. I would agree if you wrote in one like a 12 year old girl (today was the best day ever. Ryan smiled at me in the hall after math class!). But consider a moment – a great many of the most successful and manly men of the last 200 years kept journals. Some of them are even published and on sale even today. The list of great men who kept journals is extensive, and includes Benjamin Franklin, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, C. S. Lewis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gen. George Patton, Mark Twain, Sir Edmond Hilary, Bruce Lee, Ernest Hemingway, Andrew Carnegie, Gen. George Marshall, and a considerable number of US Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama.

A good journal is your mind’s own wingman. As you write, new ideas begin to flow and new insights present themselves. Not to mention, it lets you take things off your mind, freeing up space for other thoughts and information.

Grab a notebook and pen, or if you must start a Word or Google Doc, and start your journey into journaling today. It takes as little as 5 minutes a day. Use whatever format you like, or make your own (I use a structure similar to Bullet Journal myself). Write in the morning when your mind is fresh, or in the evening when you’re preparing to call it a day. Or anytime in between. Just sit down and start, the rest will come in its own time.

Let us know how you’re doing on the Self Remodel in the comments below.

< Week 5 – Week 7 >