A journal is not just for writing your feelings and working through personal situations that you want to get your head around.  It can also be an incredibly supportive and powerful tool for achieving your goals and dreams too!

According to a study by Dr Gail Matthews (a psychology professor at the Dominican University of California) you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down.

How does it help?  By writing about your goals and dreams, you gain more clarity on exactly what it is that you want.  Knowing what you’re going for is vital information!  How can you take action if you don’t know what you’re acting on?

When used effectively, you can use your journal to self-coach yourself to success – asking yourself questions, making yourself accountable, digging deeper into your mindset to discover what is holding you back and keeping yourself motivated on a daily basis.

Here are just a few ways using a journal can help you to achieve success with your goals for 2022 –

Improves commitment – Writing about your goals makes you accountable to yourself and creates a commitment to achieve them.  It brings them to life and makes them real!  You can create a plan and take action.  You won’t want to write about what you haven’t done, so you are more likely to ensure you do something about it.

Improves self-discipline – By setting aside and spending a few minutes a day to write about your goals you will naturally improve your self-discipline.  This will overflow into being more disciplined in other areas of your life, including taking action on your goals.

Keeps your focus on what’s important – Having your goals written somewhere you will regularly see them, helps to keep them at the forefront of your mind.  Read over your plans every morning to remind yourself of what you want, then spend a few minutes writing with the prompt “What can I do today that will help me to achieve this?”

Monitor your progress – Writing regularly in your journal about what you have (or haven’t) done towards your goal helps to monitor your progress.  You may feel you haven’t got very far but by reviewing your journal regularly, it may show you have moved forward much more than you thought.  It will also highlight any areas you are stuck with, helping you to spot any obstacles that may come up so you can head them off before they become a problem.

Boost your motivation – Seeing your progress, or lack of, will really boost your motivation to keep going.  Or it’ll give you a kick up the bum to take action when you see you’ve stalled!

Create ideas – Stuck about how to move forward or what action to take?  Use your journal to brainstorm ideas!  You can keep all your ideas in one place and come back to them when you need some inspiration on your next step on how to achieve your goals.

Dump the doubt – We all get those moments of self-doubt, especially when we’re making changes or going for something we really want.  Are you aware of when these come up though?  Writing will give you the opportunity to monitor your self-talk and the language you are using.  Spotting the negative nelly within you, means you can work through these moments of self-doubt.  You will be able to determine where these thoughts and feelings are coming from so you can release them and boost your self-belief.

Saves time and streamlines your progress – Regularly writing about your goals, what you are doing well and what’s not going so well, will help to raise your self-awareness on what needs your attention first.  This will save you time in the long run and ensure you are focused on what is going to be most beneficial to you, stopping you wasting time on something that is not helping you!

Journal prompts are a great way to get your thoughts flowing when you are writing about your goals, especially if you’re not sure where to start.  Your brain can’t resist answering a question so keep asking it questions!

Here are 10 journal prompts that may help you with journaling for achieving goals in 2022 –

How do you want to look back over 2022?  What do you want to be most proud of?

What do you want to achieve in 2022?  Write about it in detail, bring it to life and really make it real!

What difference will achieving this make to you and those around you?  Make a list of the benefits

List everything you want to change this year.  Review your list, which is most important to you?

What scares you most about going for this goal?

Where does this fear come from?

Who can help you reach your goals and dreams this year? 

What support will you need to achieve everything you want in 2022?

How important is achieving these goals and dreams to you? 

What are you willing to change in your day-to-day life in order to achieve them?

Enjoy your writing this month and wishing you a very happy and fulfilling 2022