What Is Journaling and How Do I Use it to Create Reality, Manifest Desires, and Achieve Goals?

What Are the Various Methods For Journaling to Manifest Desires, Create Reality, and Achieve Goals?

The movie, "The Secret," and its supporters, in addition to many other self-help gurus and modern psychologists encourage writing in a journal to help create the life you desire and guide you in setting and achieving your goals. Journaling is a general process that can involve several different, specific techniques. Your journaling can be as flexible or structured as you like. One of the most important parts about journaling is that you enjoy the process and you experience the positive feelings about what you write, so that it feels as though you're actually experiencing what you're writing about. You can use any or all of the journaling techniques; you may find one or two techniques that specifically work best for you.

Success Journal / Goal Journal

You can use a Success Journal to write down any desires or goals you have of any kind and a time frame in which you want and intend to achieve them. Pick your favorite, most immediate, goals to focus your attention on first. You can use any of the other tools of journaling, visualization, vision boards, affirmations, meditation, and more, to work toward achieving this goal, or manifesting this desire. Write down in your journal your reasons why you want and must achieve these first few most important goals. If you don't feel very motivated after writing your reasons, then you don't have strong enough reasons and you must either come up with better reasons for achieving that goal or choose a more motivating goal. You can also use this journal for writing affirmations regarding your goal, the key being that you feel the good emotions of presently having the thing you desire. For example, if your goal is to have a BMW 330 Ci by Thanksgiving of 2007, you would write something like, "I am so happy and grateful now that I am driving my beautiful new blue BMW!"

Gratitude Journal

Alternatively, you can journal about everything you are already grateful for, making sure to feel the feelings of gratitude as you write each thing in your journal. When you are grateful, you attract more things into your life that you can be grateful for - by focusing on what makes you happy already, you get new things that also make you happy. Write down all the little things that happened during the day, that you are grateful for, even if you didn't recognize something as good at the time, maybe it led you to something you are grateful for, so you can now be grateful for both. Try to write as much as possible that you're grateful for and try to come up with a little more each time! This process will also affect your regular attitude and perspective so that you start living in a present feeling of gratitude and happiness throughout the day and it will simply become your natural state of being - you won't have to try to come up with things to be grateful for at the end of the day.

Ideal Scene Journal

Journaling can also be used to write down your "ideal scene," which includes the whole picture of the life you want - the cute little house with the white picket fence, the dog, you (in your gorgeous healthy body) and the two children with your spouse eating dinner together, the cars in the garage, the time and money for the vacations, and so on! Describe your life exactly as you envision it, as you would want it to be in a perfect world, and feel the feelings of joy as you write it. Do this as often as you enjoy, making sure to feel real feelings of already having achieved this, again writing in the present tense and starting out with something like, "I am so happy and grateful now that..."

Affirmation Journal

You can also have a journal simply for writing your positive affirmations in, feeling those real positive feelings as you write. While you're writing your affirmation again and again, write down any negative thoughts that pop into your head on the back of the page, then go back to writing the positive affirmations. Once you've repeated your affirmation 10-20 times, re-read your negative thought(s) and write a positive affirmation to defeat that negative thought. For example, if your negative thought was, "I'm not smart enough to achieve my big goals," write something like, "I am intelligent - no goal is too big - I will find a way to achieve my goal!" or whatever feels right to you.

Synchrodestiny Journal / Coincidence Journal

If you like spirituality and synchrodestiny, Deepak Chopra recommends writing in your journal daily, describing any coincidences or miracles that occurred during your day. Those coincidences, or miracles, are the universe's (God's) way of telling you that you're going in the right direction, that you're moving harmoniously with the universe toward the achievement of your desires. By journaling these coincidences you recognize whether you're heading in the right direction in life, you reaffirm them as coincidences (signals to you) to yourself when you write them down, and you create a record to look back on if you ever stop recognizing the coincidences in your life, to help get you back on the right path.

All-Purpose Journal / Classic Journal

Or, you can use a journal in the classic way of the great artists and thinkers in history - use it for everything! Bring it with you everywhere so you can write or draw or doodle in it whenever you have the urge. Use it to create mind-maps for brainstorming, paste images you like, draw something you see that you like, write down your thoughts or a quote from someone or a poem you like, or just doodle and daydream. By putting all your thoughts on paper in one place, in one journal, you can connect thoughts together in new ways, coming up with new ideas, solutions, desires, or ways to achieve your goals. Plus, when you're successful you can show your children your journal and how you wrote about the things you wanted before you had them or even knew how you would get them, and someday your journal might even be a valuable piece of history!

No matter how you decide to use your journal, or if you decide to use a journal, remember to feel happy and joyful. When you feel good, you're on the right path, and when you feel bad, you're on the wrong path. Listen to your emotions, decide what you want, focus on that, and take action toward achieving it while already being happy, wanting your goals without needing them, and believing that you will achieve them!