Kat Thorne: Welcome to the Positive Habits podcast. I'm Kat Thorn and today is a solo episode. I wanted to record an episode about something that is coming up more and more often in talks, working with teams, both in the UK and overseas. So this is clearly a global challenge. And I think this is linked to the amount of information that we are consuming. And this is the cause of one of these topics that keeps coming up time and time again and that is overthinking. Now I've got one positive habit that can really help a lot with overthinking and I wanted to talk about that today and it's known as journaling but I have some challenges with the word journaling and I think it's because journaling has a lot of negative connotations to it, just like some other words that we're familiar with, like well-being, like meditation and so on. So I just wanted to spend a few minutes today in today's Soda episode, breaking down why journaling, aka the art of brain dumping, is one of the most powerful habits and why it could really be such an important tool to combat overthinking, but also anxiety, also breaking through beliefs. just generally increasing your energy, your mood and your performance at work and at home. So if we just take a step back for a second, so we get thousands of thoughts every single day. Those thoughts are shaping your beliefs, your behaviors, your actions, ultimately your habits. So I was talking to an amazing podcast guest that I had on recently, Izzy, and she's a very young, talented, bright woman. And she said that we were talking about journaling and she said, I've been journaling since I was a kid. And it got me thinking when many of us were children, we would keep a diary. And I remember keeping a diary. I remember writing in a diary. And if you knew a, let's say an eight year old girl now who kept a diary, you wouldn't think that was woo woo or strange. You would think that was normal. That's normal. That's been normalized for us. that children can keep diaries. And then we were laughing about some of the things we used to write in our diaries. And we don't need to go there on today's episode. But actually, the art of writing down, in this case, writing down your thoughts at the end of the day, is so powerful because you are doing a few things. You are putting all of those thoughts that are swirling around and right now the world can feel quite overwhelming for people. There's so much noise, there's a lot of negativity. So when you start to write those thoughts down on paper, you can start to get control of them and you can start to ask yourself how true those thoughts actually are. So when you don't write your thoughts down, you allow them to run wild, run rent free in your mind. And they can literally conjure up the most crazy, untrue, sabotaging thoughts. Those thoughts, if they are not under control, they can stop you from doing things. They can make you believe things that are not true. And Izzy and I were talking about how we wouldn't talk to our friends the way we talk to ourselves sometimes. So also think about that. when you start to notice some of those thoughts that are coming up. By the way, I recommend this book all the time, so apologies if you've already heard me recommend this, but The Chin Paradox is a life-changing read. I would highly recommend it. It really helps you to understand this other voice that we have in our brains and how to get control of it. People often ask me about journals, like what journal I recommend, and actually I have notebooks. So I would recommend not using a journal, a structured journal. I think it becomes, it feels a bit forced, like you feel like you have to write things in each of the sections and I actually think what has worked for me and lots of people I work with is much easier just to have the tool, so literally have a plain notebook ⁓ next to your bed with a pen and Whenever you get the feeling like overwhelm or anxiety or you can't sleep or any of that, you can just pick up this notebook and just write and you'll be surprised at what goes on to that piece of paper. But don't worry about, there's no right or wrong way of doing this. Don't worry about what you write, how it's written. Sometimes you might not be able to think of anything. Other times you might end up writing pages. And it's a great way of like calming your nervous system, helping you overcome difficult challenges in your life. But yet I feel like the word journaling is doing the actual positive habit that's extremely powerful a disservice. So Izzy was asking me what I would call it. And I just call it brain dumping, like literally taking everything that's in your brain and putting it on a piece of paper so then you can get control of it. So then you can start to ask yourself how true is this? And I'm going to give you an example of this. So before I started talking about positive habits and being a speaker and teaching teams, I was working as a CEO and I really enjoyed that job. came with a lot of challenges, but I really enjoyed it. And I guess halfway through that period of four years when I was doing that, I started to feel like something was missing. And I started to think that maybe that was a child, because I hadn't had children at this point. And I started to write because I couldn't figure out, didn't matter how many times I went around in my head or I spoke to other people and everyone else has got a different opinion. I actually started to write because I couldn't make sense of my thoughts. I couldn't understand why I had this feeling, because I felt like I had everything I wanted in my life. And yet I had this feeling of something was missing. So I started to write and I realized through regular writing in this notebook, which I used to do for 10 minutes every single morning, I started to realize that it was actually the career and my lifestyle that was the thing that wasn't right, the thing that wasn't missing. And through that, I also realized that there were some huge challenges in my relationship that I was in at the time that was affecting me. And what happened by just writing things down is I started to get so much clarity and started to realize where things were not as I wanted them to be in my life. And then I could actually take action. But until you get to that point, you are just second guessing yourself. You are sabotaging yourself. And so that was like an incredibly powerful moment. Whilst I don't journal every day, I journal regularly and I always feel better for it. It always helps me get clarity. And I think our brains are often searching for evidence. They're looking for reassurance when we're trying to make different moves to keep us safe. And that's the brain's job. But when you write things down, you start to realise that actually ⁓ everything is safe. You know, this is, this is how it's, you know, actually is in reality rather than the, the made up version that your brain's trying to tell you. And also I think in a world where we're constantly distracted, we're constantly notified by different technologies, this also gives your brain like a break. You can actually have a bit of space to think and to process information and I just wanted to make an episode about this because I think this is one of the under most underutilized positive habits out there that costs next to nothing and is extremely transformative. So if you want to try it, let me know. And if you get on, you know, if you're somebody who's doing it already, like drop a link in the comments, tell me about what you've been up to, how it's helped you. I'd love to share more stories of people who are using journaling or brain dumping, as I like to call it, as a tool. And also, if you've got any more ideas for episodes that you'd like me to record, I love making these little short 10 minute episodes. think they're great for consuming on the go and focusing on just one small positive habit change is at the heart of everything I do. So if you found this episode useful and you want to give it a try, get a notebook and a pen and just start writing down everything that's going on in your mind. And I look forward seeing you in the next episode. Thank you for listening and thank you for always supporting.