A 2500-year-old Cognitive Behavioral Exercise for Journaling

How do other people become successful?

There are people whose lives you look at, and you think, “just look at everything they have accomplished”. “They always look so positive and full of confidence”. “No matter what goal they set their minds to, they always manage to achieve it. How great is that?”.

And then there’s you. You’ve probably watched hundreds of self-development youtube videos, heard a thousand podcasts and read books on how to bring out the best version of yourself. Maybe you’ve joined the 5 am club, jumped in ice baths, and heard a positive affirmation guided meditation this morning.

But still. You’re not reaching your goals as fast as you want to, or you don’t even start that thing you always wanted to start. You feel stuck, not knowing where to begin.

How do they do it? You might ask. How do they stay positive and focused and keep achieving their goals? It baffles you. It makes you angry, and maybe sometimes it makes you blame yourself for not achieving enough. Maybe you need to read another self-help book to get it right this time.

Or not.

Because today, I’ll show you how you already have what you need to get the most in life. I’ll take you through the only thing you’ll ever need to Design a Well-Lived life. It’s so easy and simple, and it’s right in front of you. But as they say, the simple things are the hardest to grasp.

Before we begin, let me tell you about an experiment I did. I wanted to see what makes some people progress in their self-development journey while others don’t.

Why do some people progress in their self-development journey?

I ran an experiment with my friends on social media some months ago. I posted on my Instagram account asking for help. I wanted people to test 2 behavioural exercises and give me their honest feedback. However, they didn't know I manipulated how I gave them the exercises to run my little experiment.

I divided them into two groups. I sent the exercises to Group A without explaining anything. Then I sent the same exercises to Group B but with something extra. They also received an "Introduction" and a "How To Use the Exercises" section.

After completing the exercises, I sent both groups a questionnaire to see how they felt. Group A reported low engagement with the exercises. Most of them replied to the exercises in bullet points and said they didn't feel any particular difference after completing them.

However, and this is where things get interesting, Group B, those who received the exercises along with the "Introduction" and the "How To Use the Exercises" sections, showed a very different pattern. They all expressed gratitude for being part of the test. Their replies to the exercises were very detailed, and they all said they felt a significant difference after completing the exercises and said they were more committed to their self-development journey.

Let me pause here and say that those two exercises are part of my new book. It’s called Design Yourself, and has 12 science-based exercises to boost your mood, reduce stress and improve your well-being. Don’t worry. This is not to entice you to buy my book, even though I’d be grateful if you did (link in the description). Because as I told you, in this video, I’ll share with you that one very simple thing that can change your self-development journey, and it’s the same thing that I wrote in the first two sections of my book.

So what is in these two sections of my book that made Group B feel so different?

See, our thoughts and emotions live in our heads. This means that the boundaries of space and time don’t apply to our thoughts as they do to our regular everyday tasks. For example, making a cup of coffee will only take you a couple of minutes, and then the task is complete, but our thoughts and emotions can spin around in our heads all day. The fact that there is no start and no end to them means that we can find ourselves experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions, and we can easily get caught up in a tornado of thoughts. Imagine it as a black hole that sucks in all your emotions and thoughts, and you keep feeding it more and more.

How do you control your thoughts?

So then the question becomes, how can we define our thoughts and emotions by space and time? And you might ask, why would I want to do that? And the answer is simple. Because if you define your thoughts in space and time, then you can observe them, understand them and compartmentalize them. Which in turn allows you to move on from them. And that is why you want to put space and time boundaries to your thoughts and emotions. To move away from them and not let them consume you. So how do you do that? Well, you translate them into language.

James W. Pennebaker, is a well known social-psychologist and a great researcher at the University of Texas. He puts it like this, he says: “when we translate an experience into language by writing it down, we essentially make the experience graspable”.

So if you take the time to write down your thoughts and feelings, you are putting them into a state where they become bound and defined by time and space. This means that expressive writing helps you gain control over your emotions and put boundaries around your thoughts. Which means, that it can benefit your mental health and help you stay focused on your self-development journey.

But there’s a secret I didn’t mention. And it’s what will make all the difference in the world. And that is that you need to write by hand. Forget typing on a keyboard and forget tapping on your phone.

Many studies show that writing by hand forces you to slow down, consider what you want to express, and focus on your thoughts. It allows you to put your thoughts into a hierarchy and requires more thought and effort from your hands than simply typing. Writing by hand increases the activity in the brain’s motor cortex. It also allows writing to have an effect on your brain that is very similar to meditation - this explains why it can feel so therapeutic and it also explains why writing can help people who struggle with meditation.

Below, I put several studies showing how expressive writing helps reduce stress, enhance your mood, keep your memory sharp and even improve your immune system! When I read that part about improving the immune system, I was very sceptical but if you’re interested to read the studies, you'll see how writing can help even your physical wounds heal faster!

So, now let’s go to the one exercise you’ll ever need. Grab a pen and a piece of paper and let’s go.

The ONE Behavioral Exercise You’ll Ever Need

Draw 3 lines on a piece of paper like the image above. This is 90% of all the things you’ll ever need for your self-development journey. At the bottom, write Body, and this represents the relationship you have with your body. In the middle, write Others, and this represents your relationship with other people in your life. And at the top, write Me. And this top bit represents the relationship you have with yourself.

If you think about it, everything that upsets you, gives you joy, motivates you or holds you back, has to do with these 3 categories. First time I came across this framework was in the ancient book Golden Verses. This book outlines Pythagoras approach on how to live a well-lived life. And recently, I came across the same framework in the Netflix documentary Stutz. The film is about Jonah Hill’s therapist, Phil Stutz and also about Jonah’s therapy and the tools that Stutz has taught him during their work together over the years. It’s very different from any documentary I’ve ever seen and I highly highly recommend it!

In other words this writing tool is 2500 years old and it’s still used by psychologists.

So when it comes to your expressive writing, each day, draw this triangle on a new page. I usually do it in the morning when I wake up. Start by writing down things about your relationship with your body. How does your body feel today? What will you do to nourish it? What will you do to release its tension, if you feel any? Then come back at the end of the day and write about the type of food you ate and how it made you feel. What type of exercise did you do, and how did it make you feel? If you didn’t, then again, write down how not doing anything about your body made you feel?

Moving on to your relationships with other people. Think and write about how are you planning to nourish your relationships today? Which relationship needs more attention today and which needs some boundaries? Then again, come back at the end of the day and write down what did you do today to nourish your relationships. Be it your friendships, the relationship with your parents, your spouse, or even work relationships. Be clear, and write down what did you do that shouldn’t have done and what didn’t you do that you should have done.

Finally, move to the last bit and write some things about your relationship with yourself. In the morning, write down how are you planning to take care of your self today. What are you planning to do about You even if it’s a 15-minute walk? Write about your feelings and be curious to explore them. Try not to be dragged by them, but be inquisitive and compassionate towards yourself. Come back later at night and write down how did you talk to yourself today? Did you put yourself down or were you kind with yourself? How did you feel through the day, and what made you feel like that? The relationship with yourself is something we often neglect or de-prioritize as a result of the importance we give to others. So make sure to make space to write down about your feelings.

After some time practising this, you’ll see how things around you have changed. And that’s because you gave space and time to your thoughts and emotions. You defined them and made them graspable, so now, you can move away from them.

So that’s why I wanted to write this workbook. The exercises in the book are based on expressive writing. In here you’ll find 12 science-based exercises that will help you reduce your stress and enhance your emotional well-being. Each exercise will guide you through a different expressive writing experience and will help you overcome the writer's block. My hope is that once you have completed all twelve exercises, you will be at a place where not only have you learnt about yourself things you were not aware of, but you can also carry the practice on.

As I said, you already have what you need to start. A pen and a piece of paper.