Want to Manifest More? It All Begins with This One Practice

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 241. Today. I thought I would try something pretty different for the podcast. I have been using a new practice in my own life lately and it's been really a positive experience. And of course I wanted to run straight to the podcast and record an episode for you so you can learn about this new technique that I've discovered. It's actually a very old, time honored technique and it is journaling. But even if you are a longtime journaler, I would say there's probably something new that you're going to learn inside this episode about how to use this interesting practice and skill and behavior for your own life benefit.

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:53]:
So let's go listen to this episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:01]:
Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:44]:
So a few weeks ago I picked up a book, a book that I had purchased before the beginning of the year to be my year planner. And it turned out this particular book, which was new to me, did not really work so well as my planner because it's not that it's not a beautiful book, it's a beautiful planner. But I thought the spaces weren't big enough for what I needed. And so then this book kind of got put back on the shelf. And a few weeks ago I picked up this book again and I started to just decide that I was going to use this book as a tool for myself, essentially a journal. But I didn't know what that really meant because I had never been a journaler before and I had never really succeeded at using a book to track my thoughts, to write my thoughts, to explore my thoughts before. So this was a whole new experience for me, a whole new practice that I was going to experiment with. And I, if you know me, love to experiment.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:58]:
So I did not hold myself to any rigid ideas for what this journaling practice for me was going to look like. So one day I would write a to do list, the next day I would kind of Reflect on the day, the next day. I made a little habit tracking thing for the week. And then I would just layer and build into this journaling practice different things, things that I thought would be helpful for me. And my idea was that I would someday look back on all of this unplanned journaling and make some sense out of it and maybe make a system out of it. But actually, a couple weeks into this practice, I've kind of decided that I like this messy framework for myself. It might not work for you, but I'm gonna give you the opportunity to make your own practice within your own journal. And in this episode, I'm going to describe a lot of reasons why I think you should pick up a journaling practice for your self.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:10]:
The first reason why I think journaling is great for helping you get what you want from your life is because it really helps you to get clear on what is going on. All the thoughts that are running through your head, they're all wonderful, but where are they going? We are not really sure because they are oftentimes passing thoughts, because we're oftentimes really busy, because we're oftentimes not really connecting these floating thoughts to actual plans. And when you have a physical journal to write in, to write these thoughts down in, you end up really anchoring these thoughts and making something of them. When you have your thoughts written down, your energy can then flow and help you make sense out of these dreams. You can make your dreams more clear. You can devise plans for your dreams. You could write your feelings down about these plans and dreams, and then you can get yourself really ready to go launch into these action plans in your real life. So it becomes this kind of action framework.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:28]:
It becomes your co worker, it becomes your best coach, it becomes your secret angel on your shoulder. If you believe in kind of spirits and things like that. It's just this extra energy that you give to yourself because you invest the time and the thoughtfulness into what you're writing. And then what I found is that your efforts kind of get returned to you because you flip the pages and you see, oh my God, I actually accomplished what I was dreaming about and hoping to accomplish last week. And it's just this, you know, kind of a few minutes. It doesn't take the whole day. It just takes maybe five, ten minutes a day. And then you get this record of what's going on.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:17]:
You get this dream planner, you get this habit tracker. You get to reflect on what is going on in your life. So it's a little Bit of a diary, but it's as interesting as you make it, so it can be super interesting, too. It can help to make each day feel a little bit more meaningful. So I'll go on to another thought of mine about why journaling works for getting you what you want. It helps you to shift your identity, too, because when you start writing about your dreams, you start to step into a role of the author of your life. You start to realize I'm really the person who's making all of this happen. You start to want the story to go really well.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:06]:
And so you start to become more and more consistent and persevering with the actions that you're putting into your journal. And as I'm saying all this, I want to note that we're all so different. We all have different dreams, we're all wired differently. We all have different circumstances going on in our lives. And you know what? This. This practice of journaling kind of brings us back to our core. What are our hopes? What are our dreams? What are our feelings about these hopes and dreams and what's going on day to day? So let's give ourselves this gift of clarity through this simple practice. My planner happened to cost a little bit of money, but you can journal on three scraps of paper if that's what you're into, if that's all that you have.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:05]:
Or you could just go to the local stationery store or the supermarket and pick up a blank notebook. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it does have to be yours. Over the weekend, I was coaching my clients in my program, the Success Lab, and I did do a whole session on this journaling practice of mine. And what I told my clients is that this is not about being rigid or doing something every single day or forcing yourself to put your thoughts down. My suggestion was that you make the journaling practice something that enables you to flow in a better way, where you feel that it's not about consistency, but it's about your connectedness to the energy of your life, that you are saying to yourself that you are paying attention to your life, that you are paying attention to what is going on day to day, that you care for yourself, you care enough to track your habits, to write your wishes down, to remember. I currently have a list of my favorite songs that I'm compiling in this journal, too, because why not? This is my life. I get to decide what I want to remember and what I want to maybe eventually compile into an actual song list on Spotify or something like that. So, so again, it's not about the consistency and being perfect.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:42]:
It's about how connected you are to yourself and your energy and what's going on in your life. Your journal just becomes a new place where your insights come to you, where your energy gets restored and reflected upon, and where you get to write about your future. So remember, it's not about the actual journal, it's about the journaler. It's not about the journal, it's about the journaler. So don't worry about what the journal looks like, but put a little thought and effort into what you're writing because it's going to pay you back. All right, the next segment of this podcast is going to be a description, just because I'm me, of the things that I've been doing inside my actual journal. So like I mentioned before, I've been doing a running to do list. So my to do list kind of crosses different pages of the journal.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:45]:
Because of course, the to do list is always growing for all of us, right? We are planning for being a wedding guest. We are planning to take our supplements on time. We are planning to maybe our next trip to New York City. We are planning our relatives birthday gifts. All of this stuff needs to go somewhere. So I've put that in my journal. The other thing that I've done is I've started titling each day. So because I mentioned that this particular planner book does not have a lot of space for each day, I've decided that at the end of each day I'm gonna write a title for how the day went.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:30]:
So it's basically gonna be like a one sentence description of how the day went. So a little bit like a diary, but without all the detail. And then what else have I put in here? I track different numbers in my life, like followers on TikTok. That has been something that I've been trying to invest some time and energy in. Su so I've just decided I'm gonna track when I get an extra 100 followers over on TikTok. And then what else? I've got that habit tracker that I talked about. So what I did was very simple. It's not fancy, it didn't even use a ruler.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:14]:
I just wrote Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday across the top, just the initial of the day. So smtw, you get the gist. And then on the left side going down, I wrote my top five habits that I wanted to track. I didn't think anything about it. I just went 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and wrote down the first five things that came to mind. And by the way, you know, I always talk about decluttering. Decluttering was one of the things that I put in that habit slot. And what I did was I tracked these five habits for a week.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:55]:
It's now been more than a week, but I tracked it for a week. And I found that it was a really useful practice to have this little grid in my planner because I could see just at a glance what I had been doing with my time and my energy. And my goal was not to be perfect with all the habits. My goal was to observe how often I was getting to each of these habits. So kind of passively tracking what I was actually doing with my day and my energy and my actions. And I'll give you my practice again here. When I was successful at doing the habit, I would write an X in the box corresponding to that habit and the day. And then when I skipped that day for that particular habit, I would put an O or a zero in that little box.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:51]:
So you have X's and O's. Looks totally simple, but it gives you a lot of information in no time. So that's something that you can try. Another thing that you can try, but it's not something that I have done yet in this planner. It's future journaling. And so it's basically journaling what you want your future to look like. But there's a particular technique that is involved in future self journaling. It is this technique of writing in the present tense as if you're living in your desired future already.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:30]:
So for instance, you would say, say, I am really enjoying this beautiful new second home that I own. The porch is lovely. The flowers are all in bloom. I can't wait to buy a couch for the living room because I'm brand new in this house. And you get to write your own story, basically. But you want to write it in the present tense like you've already got your wish. And this gives your brain your roadmap for getting what you want, for telling your brain what you want to aim for. And you get to enjoy the feelings of having already arrived in your vacation home if that happens to be your thing.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:24]:
And I think it's really important to, to do this kind of future envisioning, this manifestation practice, because otherwise we get stuck in the day to day. I think we get stuck in not believing that things are going to magically change because guess what, they're going to magically change anyway. We might as well put our designs on what we want to see happen in our lives. So when you're writing these dreams and these plans and these future self stories for yourself, really write with belief, right? With belief in yourself. Write with belief in your future. Write with belief in your power to manifest what you want in your life. Because why wouldn't you? All things are possible. I do believe, and I think this journaling practice has helped me to see that even more, that I could become a journaler in just a couple of weeks and I can help other people to decide, you know what, I'm going to take greater control over what's happening and I'm going to just creatively craft what I'm seeing in the future.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:39]:
By the way, this whole journaling practice that I've again been very new to has been a real stress reliever. I think it's become a source of peace, it's become a source of joy. It's become a way for me to avoid being on my phone that much more. So if you happen to be a doom scroller or someone who's addicted to your phone, this may be just the best thing that you've done in a long time. It's a practice of just putting pen to paper like we used to. Just spending some private moments with yourself without any interference, without any distraction and without any negativity. Although of course you could journal about negative feelings so that you can discharge them and work through them. But it is a practice where you are hoping for the very best for yourself.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:37]:
So make it a practice. Don't make it a chore. Make it pretty if you want to. You can use stickers, you can use washi tape, you can. You can use different color markers and highlighters. Do what you want to do. This is your life. What dreams do you want to have come true? What dreams do you want to have happen to you? What do you want to be doing today? If you truly believed in yourself, what is your future self asking from you for you today? This is all something that you can reflect on using your one little planner journal, which will become very precious to you in a short amount of time.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:23]:
So I think that you can expect that should you pick up this journaling habit for yourself, you can invite more calm, more stability, more clarity and more hopefulness into your life too. And I certainly wish that for you. And if you do begin this habit and it does take really well in your life and it does bring really positive things to you, I would love to hear about your experience. So remember, you can always direct message me on Instagram or comment on one of my TikTok posts. That would also work. I am Procrastination Coach on both Instagram and TikTok, and if you'd like a journaling worksheet for yourself, you could also go to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/journal again, maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/journal because I've created a list of 10 journaling prompts that will help you to manifest with confidence. Again, it's 10 journal prompts for you to manifest with confidence. I hope you enjoy the worksheet, I hope you enjoy the rest of your week, and I look forward to connecting with you again next Thursday when the next episode of the Make Time for Success Podcast drops.

Dr. Christine Li [00:19:48]:
Thanks for being here. Bye.

Dr. Christine Li [00:19:51]:
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success Podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also Visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mention on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name Procrastination Coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are are about the episodes you've been listening to and let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making Time for Success. Talk to you soon.