5. Record the Thoughts

Do you ever wonder why you think the thoughts you do? Do you have negative thoughts that occur again and again that you just can’t silence? Keeping a journal for an extended period of time lets you learn the truth about yourself and your thoughts: how your motivation triggers change, based on what’s happening. How many opportunities have you lost because your thoughts or perceived outcomes had no merit? It’s important to document your thoughts until you become familiar with them and know how to manage and control them.

Journaling is a powerful process. People have been placing their thoughts, memories, fears, hopes, frustrations, joys, challenges, plans, sorrows, and victories in writing for many years. You can use this process to determine how your past experiences or current desires affect your thought processes and your life. By writing down your thoughts, you can reflect on them at a later time and see them in a clear, objective light, which can be therapeutic. Also, you can determine the areas where improvement can occur from this process.

You can use your journal to reference and track the important events in your life. Journaling allows you to reflect on the decisions that you’ve made and to examine where the deficiencies might be, but also to record your successes to inspire and uplift you. Your notes might serve as your blueprint or guide to where you need to go. Journaling has been proven to offer increased cognitive skills and serve as one of the most cost-effective forms of therapy—you can use your journal to write down positive thoughts or affirmations, as well as to help counter-attack specific situations that conjure negative thoughts. Making a record of your experiences and thoughts is an act of transforming your thoughts into legible words to provide a potential sense of relief and joy. Journaling provides significant benefits to your psychological well-being and thought process. Several researchers have shown that people who journal report having significantly less stress and have an overall better thought process. In addition, individuals also report that journaling can increase your emotional well-being and a better day-to-day mood.

When you write in your journal, don’t focus on just following the trail to find the cause of your negative thoughts. Also document your positive wealth thoughts. It might take a while for you to notice the effect, but you’ll soon see faster change in your financial life because you will tend to move toward what you focus on. This is a powerful way to focus on growth.

I recommend keeping two separate journals: one to record your daily thoughts and activities and the other to track figures and expenses. By tracking and documenting your thoughts, you can study and reflect at will. This also helps you to monitor your progress or lack thereof and to determine if you are improving. Ultimately, your journal can be a huge component to achieve the discipline, control, and change you seek. Seeing your progress in black and white helps you to carry on when your motivation is at rock-bottom, and sometimes the knowledge that you’ll have to record your failures is enough to keep you on the straight-and-narrow.

Create tabs to your blank book or create different files to organize your thoughts to different types of situations, occurrences, comments, images, or words spoken.

Start with a basic reaction to the thought. What was it about? How did it make you feel? What did it make you want to do? Were you inspired or discouraged?

Add concrete facts of what the situation is rather than how your mind perceives all aspects of it.

Add personal details. What is going on in your life while you are having the thought? Have you had a negative experience that served as a trigger to open the gate to negative/poor thoughts?

Track all your expenses, even if they are just a nickel. John D. Rockefeller kept a journal with every purchase he ever made since he was a kid. By doing the same, you can look back at your purchases for a week, month, or year and know exactly where your money went to eliminate stress and stay on top of your situation before it gets on top of you. Having such information can also help teach the FundaMENTAL Principles.

Record a daily record of poor thoughts. If you use it every day for a couple months, you will find yourself automatically countering your negative thoughts with positive self-talk. You will feel much better and more able to handle the stress in your life. Make copies of it and use it every day.

Write in your journal whenever you feel like it, and never get discouraged because you’ve let some days pass between entries. Only you can set the rules for your financial journal, and anything you choose to do in it is valid:

Pour your thoughts onto the page for a head, heart, and hand experience about when you feel lost.

Look for thought patterns and reoccurring or similar lost thoughts.

Purge your mind of old thoughts and any thoughts that clog your mind and make you feel lost.

Pick a poor thought you want to eliminate: Perhaps you can’t stop thinking what might happen if you don’t earn enough money to pay your power bill. For the next week, write down what you are doing each day to ensure that you do have that amount, but also how much you earned that day to move closer to achieving your goal. It’ll take only a minute or two, and you’ll see if you progress as the week goes on.