The Journal That Changed My Life
With just a few words per day
Towards the end of 2024, I was on a call with one of my clients and she mentioned in passing that she was going to write one of the things we talked about in her win journal. She explained that every single day she writes down one big win. Brilliant! Consider me inspired.
I then traveled to New York and stayed with a good friend. He and his boyfriend are very thoughtful and into self-reflection and growth, so I thought I'd propose an impromptu trip to McNally Jackson to buy win journals of our own. I figured if we all bought them together, we'd hold each other accountable to actually using them. Over brunch at the newly reopened Gjelina, I pitched the idea to them. "A wind journal???" one asked. I laughed, imagining either a journal solely dedicated to the strength and direction of daily wind gusts, or a flatulence journal. "No, a win journal. A small little journal where we write down one win every single day!" They seemed skeptical but they indulged me, and off we went to McNally.
We each selected our own cute little notebooks suitable for short-form win writing and checked out. I literally only purchased a pen and a journal so you can imagine my surprise when the cashier told me I owed almost $60. Too stupefied to react, I handed her my card and then looked at the receipt after. I had managed to find the most expensive notebook ever made (go figure). Before you ask, it was this one. Worth the money? Probably not, but I have to admit I do really like it!
Anyway, I started counting down the days until I could start using it on January 1. I'm really bad at sticking to habits like these, but I was mentally committed. And without fail, every single day for the last 73 days I have written the following things in my journal:
One thing I did to contribute to my 2025 physical strength and health goal
One thing I did to contribute to my 2025 community building goal
Books that I finished that day
My big win for the day
The wins were not always monumental. They ranged from "going on my four mile walk even though I felt awful when I woke up" to "made a delicious recipe from my new cookbook" to "finally got my pants hemmed!". However, the vast majority of the wins were about a certain type of client work that I do.
This part is important, because I think it's what changed my life. Without consciously realizing it, I was teaching my brain and my emotional awareness that this *one specific thing* was what kept feeling like a win to me. And over time, those wins built up and pushed a shift in me that I thought would take much longer. I'm very gut-driven when it comes to decisions, so this win journal was like a strength training workout for my intuition. It sharpened it, without me knowing it was happening, so the right things started clicking into place for me much sooner. By training myself to think about my wins and my goals, I was becoming the happy version of myself, and a lot faster than I thought.
Buy a win journal. Or use a notepad you already have. Whatever, but just start writing down one win every single day. It doesn't matter if you're retired, if you're already filled with gratitude for what you do, or if you are in between jobs and in a low place. I promise, with 100% certainty, that a win journal will change your life. It might be subtle at first, it may take a little time for you to understand what it's doing for your mind and body, but you'll see the difference. And it's just ONE win. You can do this. Bonus points if you share your wins with your friends, partner, kids, parents, whoever.
Our brains look for patterns because they want to make decisions faster. They're machines trained for efficiency, and it's up to us to train them. We can train them to focus on the negative by thinking about what's going wrong for us, or we can train them to focus on the wins. Let's get that workout going ;)
PS: if you're a notebook freak like me, I highly recommend The Moon Lists Workbook 02. I snagged a copy at First Light Books in Austin and I'm loving it. Feel free to comment with your own favorites!