When my coach first said we were going to work on setting and achieving goals each month, I shuddered. When I thought of goals, I thought of those videos you see on Facebook with a man shouting at you that his method is the only way to achieve your goals. As an introvert, this definitely didn’t appeal to me.
But when she introduced me to journaling on my goals I was sold. I had been journaling for over twenty years and loved it. Here was a method of boosting my mindset that was naturally suited to my personality and was introvert-friendly.
Since then I’ve achieved many goals using the techniques I describe in this article. From income targets to a one-month working holiday to Canada.
Here are 7 ways journaling can help introverts achieve their goals:
1. Uses Your Natural Tendency
As introverts, talking through our goals with someone else doesn’t always help. Often, we can’t find the words to express how we feel about our goals, but writing slows us down and allows our words to catch up with our brains.
Most introverts are better at writing than talking. Writing allows us to explore our mindset and access our subconscious minds (more about that later) to find ways to achieve our goals.
2. Stops You Overthinking
I don’t know about you but for me overthinking is one of my biggest vices. It starts when it comes to setting a goal. I can easily talk myself into aiming low and I feel dissatisfied before I’ve even begun.
But when you write about your goals, it helps you get into action and stop talking yourself out of it. You might not even be aware that you are overthinking. Journaling helps you learn the thought patterns that may be holding you back and replace them with more positive patterns.
3. Allows You to Course Correct
As introverts we often learn by watching, journaling allows you to monitor what is happening in terms of your goal and to course correct.
In ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Susan Jeffers cites that a plane going to Hawaii is only on the exact course 10% of the time, but it constantly course corrects to get there. Journaling allows us to apply that vast knowledge that we learn by observing to our goals, to course correct and thereby get closer to our end destination.
4. Reinforces Your Goal
I’ve noticed a trend on social media – people stopped talking about six-figure businesses and started talking about seven and eight-figure businesses. It occurred to me that most of these people must be extroverts!
As introverts, we often don’t like to tell the world about our goals. Journaling offers a place to record and reinforce your goal outside of a public arena.
5. Achieve the How
Often when we set goals, we worry about how we can achieve them. By journaling about your goals, you allow your subconscious brain and the Universe to get to work on the how without you consciously having to figure out a way to achieve it.
An example of this was when I wanted to move house. I knew before I was consciously ready to move, that my time in my current home was coming to an end but didn’t have the money to move.
I kept journaling about the feeling and eventually a few months later I inherited the money to move. It came easily and effortlessly. Yet at the time when I knew I wanted to move, I had no idea how I would get the money. I put the desire out there through my journaling and the money found its way to me.
6. Connects With Your Imagination
As introverts, we tend to live a lot in our imaginations and have a rich inner life. Journaling and in particular exercises that I call future visioning or scripting, where you write out your ideal life, as well as dialogues with your future self, can help us use that active imagination for good.
7. Accesses Your Self-Awareness
As introverts, the time we tend to spend alone means that we are naturally self-aware. Journaling taps into this self-awareness and strengthens it.
When it comes to goals, journaling allows you to apply that self-awareness to your mindset wobbles that stand between you and your goals and clear an energetic path to your desires.
5 Journaling Techniques to Help You Achieve Your Goals
So now you’re convinced that as introvert journaling can help you achieve your goals. Here are 5 techniques I’ve used to help me achieve my goals:
- Write out your goal and how you feel about it. You might not even be aware that you are thinking negatively about your goal. You can follow that up with some Emotional Freedom Technique or tapping to get rid of the negative thoughts.
- Write out all the negative consequences of achieving your goal and then apply the logical brain, writing why they aren’t true. Often, we aren’t fully aware of all the reasons that we are holding on to that may be holding us back from achieving our goals, this exercise uncovers and challenges those reasons.
- Write a visualization of how you’ll feel when you’ve accomplished the goal in the present tense i.e. ‘It’s the 30th of April and I have got two new clients and I feel…’ You may want to revisit this exercise daily or reread the paragraph before you begin working on your goals.
- Have a conversation with the you who has achieved these goals and ask her how you get from where you are to where she is. This is a powerful technique and I often find that there are two voices on the page.
- To capture the energy you want to feel, write about a time when you achieved a goal and how you can apply those lessons to the goal you currently want to achieve. Energy is everything and getting into the right energy will prepare you to take action.
Journaling is a great tool for introverts as it naturally fits our style and personality. By using the techniques outlined in this post, you can set your mindset up to achieve your goals. No shouty man required!
About the author
Carol Brennan is a journaling coach for women in business who want to achieve their goals. Grab Carol’s free business review and consistency upgrade guided journaling video to help you prioritize your goals for the next 90 days, get clear on the actions you need to take, and create a beautiful vision of consistency to keep you on track.
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