Journal Power: Planning

Are you a planner? I suppose there are two kinds of people: those who like to plan ahead and those who would rather be spontaneous. Nonetheless, there are many situations that go a lot more smoothly with a little forethought. If you are bored with planning but know that you need it occasionally, your journal can make the task more fun and rewarding. 

Some people like to plan what clothes they will wear tomorrow before they go to bed each night. Others wouldn’t dream of it: how on earth can they know what they’ll feel like wearing in the morning? I don’t think there’s much benefit in forcing yourself on such an issue. 

But consider the benefits of planning ahead your to-do list for tomorrow. If you take a few minutes before you stop work for the day to create a list for tomorrow, you increase your chances of waking up motivated, confident, and ready. By making that list last night, you prepared yourself for today’s challenges and are that much more likely to achieve whatever goals you’ve set. 

That’s an obvious situation that is better with planning. And things like taking a trip, building a career, getting married, completing an important project, or providing for a dependent’s welfare all clearly are better undertaken with some kind of prior strategizing. 

So if creating a plan is not your favorite thing, what can you do to make the process more attractive? Use your journal! Here are a couple ways: 

1. You can, of course, just do regular planning in the pages of your journal, writing down lists and making mind maps. This is a good way to include the Before and After of your experiences, which will help you remember when you re-read later on.  
2. If you’re impatient with lists, make a separate section of your journal and title it Coming Up. You can visit this section just now and then or every day, selecting whatever routine works for you. Write here your dreams, expectations, mental images, fears, desires and whatever else is connected with tomorrow, or with the event that is coming up. Be sure you stretch your imagination a bit, so you’ll include both the surface and the more down-deep impressions that come when you think about the future. 
   

The second method is unconventional, and might even seem to fall short of true planning. But conventional plans are often over-ridden by real life, so it’s really no big deal that this offbeat way to plan seems undisciplined. Neither method is foolproof!

When we plan, we pause to imagine the future before it happens; as opposed to barreling thoughtlessly into the future with eyes shut and mind confused. It’s simply that pause, the moments you devote to being open to your intuition, that journaling allows. By consciously and respectfully opening to what might come, we can move into tomorrow with greater optimism and strength.

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