How to use Journalling as your Own Inner Coach
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” Joan Didion
Journalling can be a supportive and therapeutic way to engage in personal development and self-therapy - acting like your very own coach, guiding you to explore your thoughts, emotions and experiences in a safe and private space.
How to use journalling as your own inner coach
You can use the process of putting your thoughts, emotions, struggles and goals onto a journal page as a way to access your inner guidance, motivation and care.
Just as a coach offers support, encouragement and insight to help you work on a particular life, career or wellbeing goal, journalling offers you a way to tune in to your inner wisdom, to gain clarity, and ideas for taking inspired action that aligns with your values, dreams and goals.
You can use journalling to coach yourself through difficult times, by using your writing to unpack challenges and offer yourself validation, and encouragements.
11 steps for journalling as your own inner coach
1. Set Intentions: Before you start, set an intention for your journaling time. Decide on the aspect of your life that you want to focus on. This could be (i) a specific relationship, (ii) a career fork in the road, (iii) a common theme repeating in your life or relationships, (iv) a habit you’d like to stop or start, (v) a value or quality you’d like to embody.
Your intention may look like:
(i) My intention for this writing is to get clear on what’s most bothering me about my relationship with ‘x’ and if there is something in me that has a need which isn’t met. What is that need?
(ii) This time is for me to explore my current thoughts on my work role and what’s stopping me from looking at other options (ie keeping me stuck).
(iii) My intention for this writing is to explore my comfort eating and understand it more. Ie when it is happening most, any times where it isn’t happening, what helps and what makes it worse.
(iv) I am journaling to get curious about why I constantly stay up longer than is best for me.
(v) I’m wanting to cultivate more kindness and writing about things I can do to demonstrate kindness – with other people, and with myself.
Alternatively, these prompts may be helpful in setting intentions for your day:
(i) What energy do I want to bring into my interaction with ‘my friend/colleague/client today?
(ii) How do I want to show up? For example, fully present, open minded, on time, with strong posture.
(iii)What do I anticipate to be the most enjoyable moment today and why? When doing this, savour the anticipation of how this experience will feel. This is a form of applied gratitude, where you consider what you’re appreciating ahead of time, and/or while it is happening, rather than retrospectively remembering or acknowledging what you’re grateful for.
2. Address Yourself Positively: Imagine you’re working with a coach. How do you imagine they would speak to you, and behave towards you? With this empathic person in mind (who treats you with positive regard and respect for your needs and boundaries), practise writing in a kind, supportive and encouraging tone. Treat yourself as you expect a coach would, using affirming language to support and motivate yourself.
3. Ask Yourself Questions: In addition to the intentional questions above you can use your journal as a space to ask yourself questions in relation to the area you want coaching in.
For example:
(i) What do I want?
(ii) What is in the way of me achieving or gaining this?
(iii) What steps can I take to overcome this challenge?
(iv) What is stopping me from taking these steps? What are the obstacles?
(v) What strengths do I have that I can foster and leverage to mitigate this obstacle?
(vi) What resources (inner, and outer) are available to support me in achieving this goal?
4. Explore Solutions: You can use your writing to brainstorm different ideas and approaches that may help you navigate your situation to achieve your goals. This process can lead to exploring possible solutions and strategies that support this endeavour.
5. Challenge Limiting Beliefs: We all have beliefs that have developed across our lifetime, in response to our experiences. Sometimes these beliefs made sense at the time (maybe when you were 8 years old, for example) however are not helpful as your 42 year old current self. You can discover these limiting beliefs by writing down your thoughts – your thoughts reveal what you belief. Once you have identified any beliefs that are not helping you in being the person you want to, sprinkle some compassion, just as a coach, or counsellor would. After acknowledging this belief you can notice how it shows up in your life – the situations or the times of day, or with certain people. This exploration has the quality of curiosity which brings openness to new possibilities. From this place you may find you are in a better position to consider different beliefs and try them out. Ie what would happen if I believed this (new belief) rather than that (old belief). This practice can help you to reframe unhelpful thoughts (often described as negative thoughts) into more helpful, and empowering statements. This can help to create movement out of limiting beliefs and into taking values-led action towards your goals. Read more about determining your values here.
6. Visualise Success: If you find visualising easy, and/or enjoy visualisation practices, you can use your journal to write down what you visualise. You can visualise yourself successful in becoming this new version of yourself, or achieving the outcome you’re desiring, or longing for. This is a way of rehearsing success and can help you feel into the energy this ‘new you’ is embodying, and/or see clearly any steps that need to be made to move toward this goal. It also offers the benefit of wiring new neural pathways in your brain, supporting you in achieving goals or creating meaning in your life. Describe in detail what success looks like and how it feels to reach your goals, from what you see in your visual image. It can help to bring it to life by asking, or seeing:
(i) Where am I (the location); am I inside or outside
(ii) Who am I with, or am I on my own
(iii) What am I doing, or not doing
(iv) Are there any smells, or tastes associated with this image
(v) Are there any sounds happening here
(vi) What else is happening? Eg what time do I wake up, and go to bed. What do I do between waking up and lunchtime; between lunch time and going to bed?
(vii)What am I feeling – how is my energy throughout the day?
7. Celebrate Progress: In our modern day, fast paced life, it’s easy to miss milestones and pause to acknowledge achievements. There’s also a pressure to move on to the next thing. Your journal offers a place to pause to recognise and celebrate the progress you've made; ideally little, sublte moments of change along the way as well as the more obvious ones. Your journal is your opportunity to write about these, celebrating your growth and change, healing and transformation.
8. Practise Gratitude: I always say gratitude cultivates contentment, and contentment is a much more sustainable emotion than happiness which is so often fleeting, and associated with something outside of ourselves rather than something we already have within us, and in our lives already.
Gratitude research has found that gratitude boosts mood, motivation and positive mindset. What better reason can we have to regularly remember what we are grateful for. Writing these things down is a powerful practice. This can be anything from gratitude for the ability to be mobile, to travel from where you live to some park land, to have choices about what you eat, where you work, to the awe and wonder of a sunset or the changing phases of the moon. And gratitude to you for taking time for writing, as a way to support, or coach yourself, to grow and flourish.
9. Create Action Plans: Getting back to some practicalities journalling offers.If you’ve been working hard and not feeling like you’re getting anywhere, you can use your journal to create action plans and set Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals. By breaking your goals down into chunks, or actionable steps you reduce the risks of overwhelm and you have a clear guide on what it is you are going to do.
Specific: What exactly do you want to achieve? What will you do?
Measurable: What data is available for you to use to decide when, or whether, you’ve met your goal?
Achievable: Is this goal achievable? Do you have the right skills, energy and other resources right now? Have you set yourself a realistic timeframe?
Relevant: Does your goal align with your broader values and goals? How will achieving this goal matter to you?
Time-bound: What is the timeframe to complete this goal? Give yourself a deadline to work to.
10. Reflect and Revisit: One benefit of journalling is that it creates a record of your experiences over time. You can use your past journal entries to track progress and see how your inner coaching has positively influenced your thoughts and actions. You can also revisit previous solutions and strategies mentioned in your journal to use them in new situations. Of course this is completely optional – some people find it helpful and others never look back on previous entries. This is your journalling and you do what works for you..
11. Be Patient and Compassionate: As you explore using your journal as your own inner coach, remember that growth and change take time. Be patient with yourself and practise self-compassion during this process. This practice of journalling is an opportunity to learn more about yourself with compassion and curiosity.
By writing down your thoughts and emotional experiences in these ways, you can ‘externalise’ them (get them out of your head and ‘onto the paper’ or ‘out into the world’).
In counselling, this technique of externalising thoughts and emotions is a way of expressing what is often intangible, in a tangible or visible form. This physical representation of your internal experience can allow for greater self-reflection, understanding and emotion regulation.
In this way, you can use your journalling practice as your own personal coach - to connect with your inner wisdom, gain clarity, and take positive steps towards achieving your goals, or living more aligned with your values.
If you enjoyed this blog post you may like to read the other posts in my journalling series: