TPM#32 Ready for a LIGHTT approach to journaling?

The Playful Mompreneur Episode 32 LIGHTT Journaling [00:00:00] Shelley: Welcome to the Playful Mompreneur. I'm your host, Shelley Tonkin Smith, your friend on this adventure of balancing and harmonizing. What I'm now calling our ABCs, Adulting, Business, and Children. So today, we're diving into a topic that's close to my heart, and that is journaling. So as busy parents who are running businesses, It's easy to feel overwhelmed, scattered, and, let's face it, a little lost in the chaos of our lives. But I've stumbled upon a journaling method that's It's honestly been a bit of a miracle, for my mental health particularly. [00:00:47] The problem with journaling [00:00:47] Shelley: So just a bit of background, for a long time I really enjoyed the simple practice of daily bullet journaling, I got it down to quite a simple daily log kind of idea, but for the last year or so, I've just fallen out of the habit. And the reality is that I've really been missing it, but I just couldn't seem to get back into the rhythm. There have been a few months where, like, one of the days I've written something in it, and often it'll be a free writing, journaling prompt. And I think that's maybe part of the problem, is that journaling has felt like too much of a commitment for me. I don't know about you, but I really love my long form journaling sessions. They make me feel all warm and fuzzy, and the act of putting pen to paper often gives me a lot of clarity. So I love my long form journaling. But the problem is that long form journaling often means long time spent on journaling. And so then it all feels too big, and I think, oh, I don't have time for that now. Especially at night, when I'm kind of ready to go to bed, I go, no, that's, that feels like too much work. But I want you to picture this. Long form journaling sessions replaced by just five minutes a day. And what I've done is I've crafted the simple, but very powerful acronym that guides my nightly reflections. And I found that this has kept me calm and grounded for the last month that I've kept it up every day. And I've really stayed consistent with keeping up that habit. Something that regular listeners will know is a big challenge for me. Is it a challenge for you? Oh my goodness, I'm with you. So if like me you've been feeling a little bit overwhelmed with life or you just want to do something nice for yourself and you're intrigued by the idea of journaling, then grab your favorite pen and get ready to dive into the world of playful journaling, light journaling. And remember my friend, there's no should here. This is just a friendly invitation to explore a practice that might just change the game for you. So whether you're ready to grab your journal and dive in, or you simply want to just listen and soak up some new ideas, then I'm thrilled to have you here. [00:03:17] The LIGHTT Journaling Method [00:03:17] Shelley: Okay, so let's talk about this journaling method that I have, I feel like I've kind of invented. So as I said in the intro, about a month ago, I decided, today's the day, tonight's the night actually, I'm going to restart this journaling habit, but I'm going to do it super simply. So that first night, I thought, everyone talks about gratitude journaling, gratitude is a good start, So I thought, well, let me just write down one thing that I'm grateful for. So I just wrote down one thing and then I thought, all right, let me add one highlight of the day and one low light of the day. So I wrote one sentence for each of those things. So gratitude, highlights, and low lights. And. Honestly, if that's all you feel the capacity to take forward after listening to this episode, go and do that. Just write down one thing you're grateful for, a high light of the day and a low light of the day, and that's where you can even stop. But after that first day for me, I had enough momentum to add two more items to the agenda, but still just with one thought for each one, you know, I often would come and do free journaling and write pages and pages of information, but I really wanted to keep this small. But I added these two things, and those two things were an insight from the day, and then something that I wanted to do tomorrow, just to give me a little bit of a guidance on where I was going tomorrow. So I had, now I was up to sort of five items. And then the day after that, I thought about my word of the year, which is traction. And I thought, wouldn't it be nice to add in what I did that day that brought me traction, or that was somehow linked to traction, this guiding word of mine. So, I now had six items on the agenda, and I didn't want to add to those. And I also felt I needed a way of remembering them. And I thought, okay, well, how can I do an acronym with this? I've got gratitude, highlight, low light, insight, traction, and tomorrow. So I was like, okay, GHLITT. And I'm like, that's not going to work. Uh, so anyway, I went to bed. But then the next night I came back to my journaling and I realized Wait a minute, if I just change the order of those prompts a little bit, I'll have the acronym L I G H T, LIGHTT, with an extra T for TRACTION. or tomorrow. I generally keep tomorrow at the end. So L for low light, I for insight, G for gratitude, H for highlight, T for traction, and then T for tomorrow. So a double T at the end of light. And I was just so thrilled because the word light is just such a lovely word and it encapsulates how easy and light this journaling method is designed to be. And incidentally, the legal name of my company is Action Light. So there was like a great personal connection to it. And a shout out to my biz bestie, Rowena Mabbott, who co hosts my other podcast with me, Two Booked Up. She chose the phrase "love and light" for this year. And actually, if you are interested in guiding words, then you might enjoy episode 38 of Two Booked Up, where we chat about our guiding words. I'll leave a link to that in the show notes, just to shout out for my other podcast. But let me now walk you through that acronym that I just gave you, the LIGHTT acronym, with two T's, LIGHTT. And I'm going to tell you what I write for those six prompts so that if you like it, you can take it and run with it yourself. [00:07:10] Lowlight [00:07:10] Shelley: So, kind of weirdly, the first thing is low light to start with the low light of the day. Now, I had to do this because I had to jiggle around the order of the letters. But in a way, it helps to actually start with your low light. And if you find it a little bit too difficult to start with, like, let's call it the more negative side of your day. Leave it out and you can then just, I, I would leave a line open or two lines open and come back to it at the end. Yeah, what we're just looking for is like a bit of a challenge. I've noted down some of my health niggles just to kind of keep track of like, oh, okay, having a little bit of trouble with, this shoulder or something that's, I just want to keep a track of and keep notes of and go, okay, yeah, how's this health niggle been progressing? Um, also something that caused a negative emotion. So maybe there was something that I read on the internet and, in one case I saw two people having a bit of a fight on the internet and it caused a bit of a negative emotion for me. I felt sad about it. And so I noted that down. So it doesn't necessarily have to be a total negative thing, but it's something that's a low light for you in your day, but that you do want to just keep track of and notice. [00:08:30] Insight [00:08:30] Shelley: Then the next part of the acronym is your I for insight. So here I note down something that I've learned about myself. So it's something that I could have learned about my character or my personality. Or about my people. So my kids, my husband, my family, my colleagues. Or it could be actual knowledge or a new skill that I've learned in my work. This is where I like to note down my aha moments. Just to keep track of these aha moments that I've been having. [00:09:02] Gratitude [00:09:02] Shelley: The next part of LIGHTT is your G for gratitude. So gratitude is really simple. It's just. What are you thankful for? What are you grateful for? And funnily enough, sometimes I was like, oh, I can't think of anything. And in those moments I go, well, just think quick, whatever comes first to your brain, write it down. So the other night, I wrote, I'm grateful for my cats. You could be grateful for particular people, like something that they've maybe done for you that day, or just the way they've been that day. I've also written down, my husband's had a problem with, uh, he tore two ligaments in his ankle. And so I've been Grateful for the connections that we've made with professionals who've really helped him and accelerated his healing with the medical professionals that we have connected with. So it's, it's those kinds of moments of, of luck or provision that you come across in your life. Putting a spotlight on those, maybe pun not intended. Spotlighting those moments that you're grateful for, where you have received luck or provision or something good in your life, and you're saying thank you for it. [00:10:11] Highlight [00:10:11] Shelley: Okay, so L I G, next one is H, and that is our highlight. So, t is for me just something that stands out in that day. It's something that made my soul sing that day, that brought a smile to my face. Often it's something that I really don't want to forget. It's something that I want to note down because so often I think, and this is a benefit of journaling in general. So often we just go through the motions of our day, and we don't pause to remember those highlights that we don't want to forget. And so this gives me that oppportunity to write down some of the fun things that we did, a chance to take my boys to see their first movie at the cinema and things like that I write down as my highlight of my day, or some really fun work that I got to do that day. You know, insights are often discoveries I've made, but sometimes those things come into highlights as well. Discoveries I've made, things that I've learned in my work could also fall into highlights. So, also don't worry too much about the categories. Sometimes I've gone and put an arrow and swapped around, like, The Highlights and the Insights, or um, something like the Traction and the Highlights. [00:11:24] Traction [00:11:24] Shelley: So that's the next one for me. So that's the T. So if you're using this for yourself, your T could be tomorrow. I'm the double T. So my first T I have is Traction, so that I can leave tomorrow as the last one. So, depending on your word for the year, you might have to incorporate it in a different place in the acronym. And often traction is work related. So traction is all about staying on track towards your goals and not getting distracted or sidetracked. So it's those moments where I have stayed the course and done something whether it's big or small, in pursuit of getting towards my goals, and often those are work related, but there are also, as often I would say, homeschool and family life related. So making a decision about our homeschool that ultimately brings us closer to our goal or our intention of what it means to have a successful homeschool. So This could be getting towards a goal or getting towards an intention and how you want to be. And I love traction and it's something that I might even keep when I change my word of the year in a new year Because it helps me stay focused on my bigger goals. So this is a very much a daily practice It's very simple. It's very light But, the word traction just keeps like a side eye on my big goals. And so like today, for example, I will probably note down recording this podcast as my point of traction, because it's one of my goals to re energize and reinvigorate the Playful Mompreneur Podcast. So this is my point of traction for the day. [00:13:09] Tomorrow [00:13:09] Shelley: And then the last T of LIGHTT is tomorrow. Now, what I don't do here, this is not a whole calendar of events or even your top three, like, in Essentialism, Greg McKeown suggests, like the day before, noting down the top three things you want to achieve in the next day. You could, if you wanted to, you could do that at this point. I don't. I just note down, because I want to keep it really simple, just note down something I'm excited to do tomorrow. Or it could be like an appointment or something that you have to do tomorrow that you've got on the agenda that you just want to like highlight. To me, the purpose of this Part of the journaling prompt is to just give you a bit of direction and a bit of focus for the next day so that you're not like waking up and feeling untethered and Yeah, just out to sea. And I think also Sometimes it's going to be a to- do Also, just an encouragement to, it could be something that you wanted to notice, not a to do, but rather a to notice, or a to be, of like, or, you know, to maybe look out for something that I'm grateful for. You know, maybe when you were journaling, you were struggling to find something to be grateful for. And so, something tomorrow you're going to do is to look out for things that you're grateful for. Or if you struggle to find a highlight of today, maybe tomorrow you are going to actually set, like, I want a highlight of my day tomorrow. So set that highlight there and then of what you would like your highlight to be. So it's just giving direction for that next day. [00:14:50] The Benefits of LIGHTT Journaling [00:14:50] Shelley: So yes, that gives you the summary of the six points of the light journaling method. I am now one month into this habit, and I've got to tell you. You know, if you're a regular listener, that I'm generally a bit resistant to habits, but this one is just so freaking fun now that it just keeps itself going and it actually ties in so well with my word of the year traction. Because I feel like this LIGHTT journaling method is helping me to stay on track with my goal of reflecting more on my of marking time and remembering moments all in a very light and fun way, not in a heavy way or in a should kind of way. This is a very light way of doing journaling. It teaches me that we can't control life, we can't control what's happening, but we can name and acknowledge what's happening and I find that the structure of this LIGHTT journaling method gives a bit of a decluttering vibe to my brain that happens as I'm writing all these things down at the end of the day. And I also find that the structure helps with a bit of analysis and evaluation. So in bullet journaling, there is this idea when you're doing your daily logs that you shouldn't analyze too much. But look, I'm not analyzing here. But what I'm doing is by categorizing into a highlight, a low light, and that kind of thing, I'm getting a little bit of extra benefits out of it all. I'm writing it down and I'm starting to go, Oh, yes, this is what I am calling out as my highlights. So, that's interesting and I can analyze that and I can evaluate that. So I feel like you getting a lot of benefits in one little process by putting those events and things that you experienced during your day into the categories that are in the structure. So there we go. I hope I've convinced you to give the LIGHTT journaling method a try. What I'm going to do is put together a free little cheat sheet. And I'm going to put that up on my new website that I'm in the process of, rejigging and just making more exciting and a lot more me. So what I will do is put together A summary of those light LIGHTT prompts. And you can go and pick that up at learn. shelleysmithcreative. com for free. And, just by the way, if you want to learn more about my services as a copywriter or check out the resources I've got to help you DIY your copywriting and your marketing with tools and templates and little workshops that I've got there, you can also go and check out learn. shelleysmithcreative.com and everything else is on shelleysmithcreative.com. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn at Shelley Tonkin Smith. Alright, so I hope you give that LIGHTT journaling method a try, but whether you do or don't, here's your permission to keep it light in general, in life, in business, and with your people. Keep it light and keep it playful. Until next time, I'm Shelley Tonkin Smith, the Playful Mompreneur. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.