Whatever it is that you write, putting words on the page is a form of therapy that doesn’t cost a dime.
—DIANA RAAB
Ideas can come from anywhere and at any time. The problem with making mental notes is that the ink fades very rapidly.
—ROLF SMITH
Scribing is the final practice in the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. and is really just another word for writing, but please allow me to keep it real—I needed an ‘S’ for the end of Life S.A.V.E.R.S. because a ‘W’ wouldn’t fit anywhere. Thanks Thesaurus?, I owe you one.
My favorite form of Scribing is journaling, which I do for 5-10 minutes during my Miracle Morning. By getting your thoughts out of your head and putting them in writing, you gain valuable insights you’d otherwise never see. The Scribing element of your Miracle Morning enables you to document your insights, ideas, breakthroughs, realizations, successes, and lessons learned, as well as any areas of opportunity, personal growth, or improvement.
While I had known about the profound benefits of journaling for years—and I had even tried it a few times—I never stuck with it consistently, because it was never part of my daily routine. Usually, I kept a journal by my bed, and when I’d get home late at night, nine times out of ten I would find myself making the excuse that I was too tired to write in it. My journals stayed mostly blank. Even though I already had many mostly blank journals sitting on my bookshelf, every so often I would buy myself a brand new journal—a more expensive one—convincing myself that if I spent a lot of money on it, I would surely write in it. Seems like a decent theory, right? Unfortunately, my little strategy never worked, and for years I just accumulated more and more increasingly expensive, yet equally empty journals.
That was before The Miracle Morning. From day one, The Miracle Morning gave me the time and structure to write in my journal every day, and it quickly became one of my favorite habits. I can tell you now that journaling has become one of the most gratifying and fulfilling practices of my life. Not only do I derive the daily benefits of consciously directing my thoughts and putting them in writing, but even more powerful are those I have gained from reviewing my journals, from cover to cover, afterwards—especially, at the end of the year. It is hard to put into words how overwhelmingly constructive the experience of going back and reviewing your journals can be, but I’ll do my best.
On December 31st, after my first year doing The Miracle Morning and writing in my journal, I began reading the first page I had written that year. Day by day, I started to review and relive my entire year. I was able to revisit my mindset from each day, and gain a new perspective as to how much I had grown throughout the year. I reexamined my actions, activities, and progress, giving me a new appreciation for how much I had accomplished during the past 12 months. Most importantly, I recaptured the lessons I had learned, many of which I had forgotten over the course of the year.
Gratitude 2.0 - I also experienced a much deeper quality of gratitude—in a way that I had never experienced before—on two different levels, simultaneously. It was what I now refer to as my first Back to the Future moment. Try to follow me here (and feel free to picture me as Marty McFly stepping out of a 1985 DeLorean). As I read through my journal, my current self (which was also the future self of who I was at the time I wrote those journal entries) was now looking back at all of the people, experiences, lessons, and accomplishments that I took note of being grateful for throughout the year. As I was in that moment reliving the gratitude that I felt in the past, I was simultaneously feeling grateful in the present moment for how far I had come since that time in my life. It was a remarkable experience, and a bit surreal.
Accelerated Growth - Then, I began to tap into the highest point of value I would gain from reviewing my journals. I pulled out a sheet of blank paper, drew a line down the middle, and wrote two headings at the top: Lessons Learned and New Commitments. As I read through my hundreds of my journal entries, I found myself recapturing dozens of valuable lessons.
This process of recapturing Lessons Learned and making New Commitments to implement those lessons aided my personal growth and development more than almost anything else.
While there are many worthwhile benefits of keeping a daily journal, a few of which I’ve just described, here are a few more of my favorites:
• Gain Clarity - The process of writing something down forces us to think through it enough to understand it. Journaling will give you more clarity, allow you to brainstorm, and help you work through problems.
• Capture Ideas - Journaling helps you not only expand your ideas, but also prevents you from losing the important ideas that you may want to act on in the future.
• Review Lessons - It enables you to review all of the lessons you’ve learned.
• Acknowledge Your Progress - It’s wonderful to go back and re-read your journal entries from a year ago and see how much progress you’ve made. It’s one of the most empowering, confidence-inspiring and enjoyable experiences. It can’t really be duplicated any other way.
In the opening pages of this chapter, we talked about using the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. to close your “Potential Gap.” Human beings are conditioned to have what I call Gap-focus. We tend to focus on the gaps between where we are in life and where we want to be, between what we’ve accomplished and what we could have or want to accomplish, and the gap between who we are and our idealistic vision of the person we believe we should be.
The problem with this is that constant Gap-focus can be detrimental to our confidence and self-image, causing us to feel like we don’t have enough, haven’t accomplished enough, and that we’re simply not good enough, or at least, not as good as we should be.
High achievers are typically the worst at this, constantly overlooking or minimizing their accomplishments, beating themselves up over every mistake and imperfection, and never feeling like anything they do is quite good enough.
The irony is that gap-focus is a big part of the reason that high achievers are high achievers. Their insatiable desire to close the gap is what fuels their pursuit of excellence and constantly drives them to achieve. Gap-focus can be healthy and productive if it comes from a positive, proactive, “I’m committed to and excited about fulfilling my potential” perspective, without any feelings of lack. Unfortunately, it rarely does. The average person, even the average high achiever, tends to focus negatively on their gaps.
The highest achievers—those who are balanced and focused on achieving Level 10 success in nearly every area of their lives—are exceedingly grateful for what they have, regularly acknowledge themselves for what they’ve accomplished, and are always at peace with where they are in their lives. It’s the dueling idea that I am doing the best that I can in this moment, and at the same time, I can and will do better. This balanced self-assessment prevents that feeling of lack—of not being, having, doing enough—while still allowing them to constantly strive to close their potential gap in each area.
Typically, when a day, week, month, or year ends, and we’re in Gap-focus mode, it’s almost impossible to maintain an accurate assessment of ourselves and our progress. For example, if you had 10 things on your to-do list for the day—even if you completed six of them—your Gap-focus causes you to feel you didn’t get everything done that you wanted to do.
The majority of people do dozens, even hundreds, of things right during the day, and a few things wrong. Guess which things people remember and replay in their minds over and over again? Doesn’t it make more sense to focus on the 100 things you did right? It sure is more enjoyable.
What does this have to do with writing in a journal? Writing in a journal each day, with a structured, strategic process (more on that in a minute) allows you to direct your focus to what you did accomplish, what you’re grateful for, and what you’re committed to doing better tomorrow. Thus, you more deeply enjoy your journey each day, feel good about any forward progress you made, and use a heightened level of clarity to accelerate your results.
Here are 3 simple steps to get started with journaling, or improve your current journaling process.
1. Choose a Format — Digital or Traditional. You’ll want to decide up front if you want to go with a traditional, physical lined journal, or go with a digital journal (such as on your computer, or an app for your phone or tablet). Having used both traditional and digital, there are advantages and disadvantages to both formats (which I’ll address in a minute), but it really comes down to your personal preference. Do you prefer to write by hand, or would you rather type your daily journal entries. That should make it a relatively simple decision as to which format to use.
2. Get a Journal. When it comes to a traditional journal, while just about anything can work (you can even use a 99 cent spiral notebook), since you’re probably going to have it for the rest of your life there is something to be said about getting a nice, durable journal that you enjoy looking at. Get a journal that is not only lined, but also dated, with room to write for all 365 days of the year. I’ve found that having a pre-designated (dated) space to write keeps me accountable to follow through each day, since I can’t help but notice when I miss a day or two, because they’re blank. This usually motivates me to go back and mentally review those missed days and catch up my journal entries. It’s also nice to have dated journals for every year, so you can easily go back and review any time in your life, and experience those benefits I previously described in My First Journal Re-view. One of my favorite lined, dated journals is The Winners Journal (www.TheWinnersJournal.com), which I used from 2007-2009, and was very pleased with the results. In fact, it’s what inspired me to design and create The Miracle Morning Journal (which is now available on Amazon.com). You can even download a free sample of The Miracle Morning Journal at the website listed after these three steps.
If you prefer to use a digital journal, there are also many choices available. My favorite journaling app is Five-Minute Journal (available at www.FiveMinuteJournal.com) and is becoming very popular. It makes it easy by giving you prompts, such as “I am grateful for...” and “What would make today great?” It literally takes five minutes or less, and includes an “Evening” option, which allows you to review your day and even upload photos to create visual memories.
Again, it really comes down to your preference and which features you want. Just type “online journal” into Google or “journal” into the app store, and you’ll get a variety of choices.
3. Decide What To Write. There are infinite aspects of your life that you can journal about, and countless types of journals. Gratitude journals, dream journals, food journals, workout journals, etc. You can write about your goals, dreams, plans, family, commitments, lessons learned, and anything else that you feel you need to focus on in your life. My journaling method ranges from being a very specific, structured process—listing what I’m grateful for, acknowledging my accomplishments, clarifying what areas I want to improve on, and planning which specific actions I’m committed to taking to improve—to being pretty traditional, just a dated entry with a synopsis of my day. I find both to be very valuable, and it’s nice to mix it up.
To get a free sample of The Miracle Morning Journal, go to www.TMMBook.com.
According to a survey done by USA today, 82% of Americans want to write a book, but the #1 obstacle preventing them? You guessed it—they can’t find the time. If you have ever wanted to write a book, you can use your Miracle Morning time to do just that. In fact, right now I am writing this to you at 6:03 a.m., during my Miracle Morning.
I believe that everyone has a book inside of them containing their own unique value to offer to the world. In fact, I’ve recently started coaching many of my private clients on how to start (or finish) their first (or next) book, and how to write a book that not only becomes a bestseller (that’s the easy part), but a book that create a movement.
I’m always excited to hear people’s stories and what they’re passionate to write—I mean, scribe—about.
In Chapter 8: Customizing The Miracle Morning To Fit Your Lifestyle, you’ll learn how you can personalize and customize nearly every aspect of your Miracle Morning to fit your lifestyle. For now, I want to share a few ideas specifically towards customizing the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. based on your schedule and preferences. Your current morning routine might only allow you to fit in a 20 or 30-minute Miracle Morning, or you might choose to do a longer version on the weekends.
Here is an example of a fairly common, 60-minute Miracle Morning schedule, using the Life S.A.V.E.R.S.
The sequence in which you do the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. can also be customized to your preferences. Some people prefer to do their Exercise first, as a way to increase their blood flow and wake themselves up. However, you might prefer to do Exercise as your last activity in the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. so you’re not sweaty during your Miracle Morning. Personally, I prefer to start with a period of peaceful, purposeful Silence—so that I can wake up slowly, clear my mind, and focus my energy and intentions. I save Exercise for my last activity, that way I can jump directly into the shower and proceed with the rest of my day. However, this is your Miracle Morning—not mine—so feel free to experiment with different sequences and see which you like best.
Everything is difficult before it’s easy. Every new experience is uncomfortable before it’s comfortable. The more you practice the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. the more natural and normal each of them will feel. Remember that my first time meditating was almost my last, as my mind raced like a Ferrari and my thoughts bounced around uncontrollably like the silver sphere in a pinball machine. Now, I love meditation, and while I’m no master, I’d say I’m decent at it. Similarly, my first time doing yoga, I felt like a fish out of water. I wasn’t flexible, couldn’t do the poses correctly, and felt awkward and uncomfortable. Now, yoga is my favorite form of exercise, and I am so grateful that I stuck with it.
I invite you to begin practicing the Life S.A.V.E.R.S. now, so you can become familiar and comfortable with each of them, and get a jump-start before you begin The Miracle Morning 30-Day Life Transformation Challenge in Chapter 10. If your biggest concern is still finding time, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. In the next chapter, you’re going to learn how to do the entire Miracle Morning— receiving the full benefits from all six of the Life S.A.V.E.R.S.—in only 6 minutes a day.