In a previous post, The Magic of Journaling I briefly touched upon Future Self Journaling mentioning that I would eventually make a post specifically about my experience with it and why I would recommend it to others. Well, this is that post!

I first learned of The Holistic Psychologist aka Nicole LePera a few months ago on Instagram. I found her page and her Future Self Journaling (FSJ) work to be very interesting. To me, it resembled a way of using the law of attraction to reach your goals, similar to the idea of the book/movie The Secret — however, FSJ takes the concept of using the law of attraction, and turns it into a tangible activity that you can do every day thereby allowing you to actually reach your goal.

Basically, FSJ has you answer the same few prompts every day. Beginning with an affirmation, what you are grateful for and so on. You can see the prompts in detail and download them on The Holistic Psychologist’s website.

I was inspired by how many people were using FSJ and describing it as a powerful tool on their personal growth and self-healing journeys (look up #selfhealers on Instagram to see for yourself!) and I knew I wanted to try it.

With 2019’s main focus for me being contentment and growth, FSJ appeared in my life a few months late but turned out to be the tool that has helped me stay the course of my personal growth/self-awareness through the past few months.

What I found was that, if you stick to it, FSJ really works. And it is simple enough that sticking to it is not terribly difficult.

My future self journaling gave me an almost instant feeling of self-accountability. If I wrote that I was going to work on my responding vs reacting goal in my journal that morning, I became much more aware of when I was slipping up throughout the day and was able to correct myself as necessary.

It takes about 5 minutes each day to write your FSJ prompts but it sets an intention for your day. Eventually the actions you need to take to reach your goal, begin feeling like second nature or routine.

Part of why Future Self Journaling works is because of neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity, neuroelasticity, or neural plasticity, is the ability of the brain to change continuously throughout an individual’s life

As an HIE mom, neuroplasticity is not a new term for me. Since Julia was born I was often reminded that babies’ brains can form new connections in response to injuries like the one Julia had.

What I never thought about though, was neuroplasticity beyond infancy and childhood.

As we age, the rate of change in the brain, or neuroplasticity, declines but does not come to a halt. In addition, we now know that new neurons can appear in certain parts of the brain up until the day we die.  –Sharp Brains

Future Self Journaling can help rewire your brain because it requires consistent repetition (a daily practice). Your daily thoughts have immense power. FSJ encourages and teaches you to be intentional with your conscious thoughts in order to heal a pattern or behavior, and/ or grow towards your goals.

The whole reason I wanted to focus on contentment and growth this year was because of motherhood. Being a parent started to make me see things differently.

For me, in the past it has been easy to ignore things I’ve wanted to change about myself like inherited behaviors, pessimism, negative self-talk, etc because the work is hard.

Personal growth/self-improvement is not easy. But having a child, who looks to me as her first example in human behavior, in how to respond, in how to speak to herself and others, in how to love – etc. I realized that I wanted to be the best version of myself possible, for her as much as me, so she could have a good role model from the start.

So if you’re on a self-growth/self-improvement, healing, learning about yourself and your power kind of journey like me…

Remember this:
There’s always a new path you can take.
You can heal.
You can change.
You can grow.

and if you ever feel like you have slipped up one day, remember that you can always start again. Each day is a new opportunity for growth.

Thank you for reading and I hope you are encouraged to try out Future Self Journaling for yourself, and if you do, please let me know 🙂

Sending you love and light,