Claudia Chan
Professional Certified Life Coach
I am a big fan of journaling, and at the same time, I don’t do it consistently.
Here is something I learned, it’s ok, I still love myself! For so long I beat myself up for not being consistent.
I believe some people get scared of starting journaling because
1) they think that they have to write in it everyday, and they don’t know if they can do it, so they don’t start.
And 2) they don’t know what to write, so they don’t start.
If you can’t write in it everyday, it’s not a big deal! Just try to enjoy it when you do! The more you get to enjoy it and not put too much pressure on yourself, the more you'll find yourself journaling.
Nothing to stress about!
As to what to write, I’ll share with you how I do it, so you can pick and choose what works best for you!
Before I share that, why journal?
Let’s talk about what is the main reason why it’s good to journal.
For some people, they believe that journalling means to record the things that have happened in their lives. That was how I saw it before I started coaching.
Now, I use it to get to understand myself more. To see what exactly is in my head. It’s also a way for me to visualize my future self.
So I now use it more as a conversation with myself, to verbalize what's inside my brain so I can get to know myself more, and to build my future character.
How to start
When I sit down to do a “formal” journaling session, I break it down into 5 sections.
1. 5 min gratitude
2. 10 min thought download
3. 5 min unintentional thought model
4. 5 min intentional thought model
5. 5 min love letter from my future self to my present self
1. 5 min gratitude
I start off writing 5 min of things I’m grateful for in my life.
It doesn’t matter what it is, it can be as simple as having clean water to drink and take a bath with. I start listing out everything I am thankful for in my life.
2. 10 min thought download
I would either focus on a topic, like what do I think about how I’m doing in regards to my business, or how my relationship is like with a certain person.
Sometimes I just do a brain dump on why I’m feeling anxious, or whatever is on my mind.
It doesn’t matter what it is, I just write down whatever is in my head.
3. 5 min unintentional thought model
I would pick one sentence from the previous section, and I would see how this thought is creating my current feeling, actions and result in my life.
4. 5 min intentional thought model
I would then choose what result I want to create, or how I want to feel, and work backwards to figure out what thought I need to have.
5. 5 min Love letter from my future self to my present self.
This is the part where I drop into my future self, and ask what loving things she would like to say to the present self.
So that would be how I would write in my journal if I have about 30 min.
Crunch on time?
When I don't have a lot of time, I just ask myself what thoughts am I thinking about right now, and quickly dump it out of my head, and I’d ask myself, how would I like to show up? And what thoughts do I need to think right now
Which will be a very short 5 min journal entry.
If you’re planning to start journaling, and you find yourself stuck because you don’t know what to write about, or you’re concerned about not being able to follow through, I want to share this with you.
I beat myself up over this too, and it made me not want to write in it anymore, because it became a chore in itself! And who wants THAT?
Journalling is just a tool.
And if you think this is the most useful tool for you at the moment, or if you really want to write it at the moment, then go for it.
Otherwise, don’t beat yourself up for it .
Do it because it’s fun!
This happens to me almost every weekend:
My son being on the iPad for 3 hours
Me: “You’d been on it for too long, have to stop now.”
My son: *screaming and crying* “You don’t allow me to do anything!”
Me: “I’d let you watch for the last 3 hours!”
I’d try my best to calmly explain to him and help him deal with his emotions. But really, deep inside I just want to take the iPad away and tell him No More Watching!
And I wonder if I spoil my son too much, or if I’m too strict with him.
Have you ever had this happen before? Have you ever wonder why this is so triggering?
Here’s why; because you have this thought:
“I was never allowed to do that when I was young!”
Maybe your parents were strict, and never allowed you to do anything you wanted.
Maybe they hit you when you cross the line.
When they laid down the rules, that was the law and you had to follow.
There was no talking back at them, or questioning their authority.
So when you kid starts rebelling and testing their boundaries, it can be very triggering!
Because you weren’t allowed to do these things.
Tapping into what I want
Having my son really taught me what it means to tap into one’s desire.
Never did I once rebelled against my mom. Whatever my mom said was the “law”
And as much as it is frustrating to deal with my son when he has his tantrums, I’m actually very proud of him.
Because I want him to tap into what he wants and be able to use his voice to advocate for himself.
So many times, our desires were suppressed. When we want something, we get told No over and over.
We get told that what we want are not reasonable, that they aren’t going to make money, that they’re just a hobby, that they are just a waste of time.
I want my son to be able to admit to himself and be able to say, “this is what I want to do, this is how I’m going to make it work.” Without limits being placed around him.
I want him to be able to explore his own interests, so that his creativity can open up.
I want him to be able to trust what it is he wants, without second guessing himself, and not be persuaded by what other people say.
Which also means, I have to do that for me.
I have to tap into what I want, go after what I want, no matter what other people say about me.
So when I feel triggered now, I know it’s because there was a limit placed around me, and I have to break that.
Which means I have to keep asking myself where I am willing to draw the line, so that I can be comfortable with my son’s exploration and my own acceptance.
If this is something you’d like to explore, try a 30min free coaching session with me.
We can go through that and figure out how far you’re willing to push the limits, both for yourself (so you can learn to be more you), and for your kids.
Since November is National Gratitude Month, I want to dedicate this post to that.
I’m grateful for my husband, for doing so much for our family. Thank you for being the strong support that you are.
I’m grateful for my son, for showing me what it means to fight for the things you want, and for learning to understand other perspectives too.
I’m grateful for all the opportunities that come my way, this includes all the teachers in my life, all the wisdom I’m able to gain, and doors that open for me.
I’m grateful for all the toys, books, clothes and objects that were once in our lives. You have served us well, gave us the joy, protection, entertainment. Now I hope that you find a new home and bring the same to other kids.
I’m grateful for the job that I have, which supports our family, and gives me the means to expand my horizon.
I’m grateful for my parents, who had sacrificed themselves to offer me the security that I needed while growing up.
I’m grateful for my clients, who hold so much power within themselves, and are going after the impossible, to be the best version of themselves.
Last but not least, I’m grateful for myself. For my willingness to expand into a better version of myself everyday. For loving all the parts that I wasn’t fond of, or deemed unacceptable. For unlearning all the things I’d learned before, so I can shed the armour and skin to be more true to myself.
What about you? What are you grateful for?
Sometimes I ask people what do they want, and they say, I want to be happy.
But what does this really mean?
Does this mean you want to be happy all the time?
I mean, if you’re happy all the time, then how do you actually know that you’re happy?
And do you actually want to be happy all the time?
Like do you want to be happy when someone you love passes away?
Or do you want to be happy when someone insults you?
If your answer is no, and if your goal is still to be happy, what is the amount of happiness are you striving for?
So many times, we want to strive for happiness but we don’t actually define what that really means for us.
And when something happens and we’re not happy, we think that something has gone wrong.
Because if your goal is to feel good and be happy, what you’re innately believing is that anything else is a problem.
When someone pisses you off it’s a problem.
When you are in pain, it’s a problem.
When you want to pursue your goal, and you’re freaking out, it’s a problem.
When it happens, you want to try to fix it, but you don’t know how…
so this is what ends up happening:
You end up overeating.
You end up scrolling through social media.
You end up binge watching Netflix.
You end up online shopping.
You end up blaming others and taking it out on other people.
There is nothing wrong with these actions unless after you do them, you feel very guilty.
You feel guilty you ate half a tub of ice cream.
You feel guilty wasting time on social media or watching videos.
You feel guilty spending money on something meaningless.
You feel guilty taking your anger out on someone.
If you feel guilty after doing any of these, that means somehow you’re using these activities as a mask to make yourself feel better temporarily.
Here’s the truth, we aren’t taught how to deal with these negative emotions, that’s why we don’t want to face them, because we don’t know how. We feel we have no control over them.
When someone does something, or when something happens, we feel trapped, we feel powerless.
But what if we do have control over our emotions?
And what if our goal is not to be happy.
What if our goal is to be human and feel all the human emotions.
Because 50% of things in life sucks ass, 50% are wonderful.
And we’re meant to feel 50% negative emotions and 50% positive emotions.
And when we learn how to deal with the negative emotions, then we’ll be more willing to face them, and stop ourselves from doing all those things that make us feel guilty.
We feel guilty for procrastinating, and not taking care of our bodies. We feel guilty for not going after our dreams.
We keep rejecting, blaming, procrastinating, so we don’t get to be who we really want to be.
Let’s learn how to face these negative emotions, so we are prepared for them.
Because if you want more in life, if you believe you’re meant for more, it’s required that you do the things that feel uncomfortable.
You will face things that are hard.
You’ll come across embarrassing situations, humiliating situations.
You will be put into situations that are scary as heck!
And yet, once you’re willing to go through them, you’ll see how worthy they are. Because you can see the expanded version of yourself.
Let’s learn to face the negative 50% of life.
So you can be the best version of yourself!
If you’re interested to find out what this means for you, I’m offering a free 60-min Jump Start Conversation.
We can go through what is happening right now and how we can proceed to bring you toward where you want!
The truth is, posting about myself has been very triggering for me.
I’d been taught not to air out dirty laundry, whatever happens behind closed doors stay behind closed doors.
I’d been told to put myself together well before leaving the house, to show that I am capable.
I’d been told however good my result is, it’s nothing to brag about, because there are other people who’re better than me.
I’d been told whatever struggle I’m going through is nothing compare to other people’s.
Other people always have it better than me, or worse than me.
Which translates to, other people’s lives are worthier than mine.
Have you ever experienced that? Like you’re trying to share your win, the other person said, “Oh I know another person who’s doing the same thing! And let me tell you how much better the other person is at it!”
You tried to share your struggle, and the other person try to one-up you, “You think it’s bad? Let me tell you how bad mine is.”
Or you try to share something caused you have a darker deeper emotion, and because they don’t know how to handle it, they try to do things to make you feel better immediately.
I’d experienced all of it, AND I’d done all those things to other people too.
Now that I’ve learned so much about myself (and still learning), and understanding this whole idea of being seen. I see how detrimental all those things can be to our growth.
When we keep getting shot down, we stop sharing our stories.
I always thought that I was a very private person, or that there’s really nothing interesting about myself, so I never shared much about myself.
But the truth is, it’s because I was scared to share, because when other people dismiss my story, my identity gets dismissed. That’s too painful! So I don’t end up sharing.
And when I don’t share, no one really knows anything about me, and I end up believing that no one understands, no one is going to listen to me anyways.
So it’s like being in a cyclical toxic chain of thoughts working against ME!
I don’t share because no one would listen, but it’s all because I was too scared to get hurt, which leads my my brain to believe that no one really understands, and it goes around and around.
But it all comes down to this: Do I believe that I’m worthy? Do I believe my story is worth sharing?
How I see myself, is what I believe about myself.
If I don’t see myself as worthy, I’ll always put myself down, not using my voice, not sharing my story.
If I don’t see myself as worthy, I’ll always depend on other people’s reactions to gauge whether or not I speak up.
AND If I don’t see myself as worthy, I’ll always hold myself back from doing bigger things, I settle!! Because I believe I am not worth expanding, and becoming bigger!
That’s why many people hold themselves back from going after their dreams!
They are scared of what other people will say about them, laugh at them, make fun of them.
But really, they’re scared of disappointing themselves, they’d been using their own results to determine their worth.
This is where self-love comes in.
Learn to love yourself so much, that you don’t give two sh*ts about what other people say about you!
Learn to love yourself so much that you can share your stories with others!
Learn to love yourself so much that, even when you think your story is boring, it’s extraordinary to you!
Because when you see yourself as extraordinary, and you see the experiences you have are extraordinary, THEN you’ll be more willing go after more extraordinary things!
My stories, I had believed for the longest time, were too plain and not worthy to be shared!
But it’s not true! My stories are worthy of being told!
I’m worthy to use my voice.
I am worthy to have an extraordinary life, and so do you! (And I’m still learning all these as I go!)
And what does extraordinary mean?
It means how you want it to mean. It just means, you take control over your own life, YOU define it for yourself.
You are worthy to tell your stories.
You are worthy.
I remember the first time I felt really alone, was when I was about 6 years old.
I just switched school, it was the first day.
My dad went to school with me. The entrance of this school was at the bottom of a set of steep stone stairs.
I remembered we walked down these stairs, and right when we were about to reach the entrance, my dad let go of my hand, urged me to go ahead, and then he turned around to walk away.
At that moment, I got so scared! My dad was leaving me!
I started crying.
I remembered looking at my dad, he turned halfway back to look at me, with a helpless smile on his face.
At the same time, another girl was going to school with her dad. He started talking to me and whisked me into the school.
Since then, I felt like I had to keep doing things on my own. I came to believe that I have to face every change on my own.
I grew to become very independent, yet I felt very isolated.
I believed I had to figure things out on my own.
I didn’t know how to ask for help.
I didn’t know how to trust people.
I would turn other people down first before they turn me down.
I built a very high wall that not many people could reach through.
I didn’t believe that anyone cared, so I stopped caring.
I remember while I was doing my leadership program, we had to do a project at the end.
And I chose to do a 8 hour virtual live event.
My buddy, the lovely Silky Zhou, my phenomenal friend Anna Ouroumian, and my group stood beside me. Supported me throughout.
At that moment, I realized what it meant to have someone to walk with me.
And then looking back, I saw that many many people were actually walking with me.
Like the dad who whisked me into the school.
Like my wonderful friends who stood by me when I was fighting with my mom.
Like my husband who devoted his time and energy into the family so I could attend to what I needed.
But because I was so focused on the belief that “I was alone”, I didn’t see.
This is not to invalidate my experience of being alone.
I believe that, it IS because I acknowledged that I had to do everything on my own, and that I felt hopeless, helpless.. only after that, then I could expand my vision further.
Now, I’m slowly building up my community.
I search for the support I need, being ok to ask for help.
Still many times, I have the thoughts, “I don’t belong”, or “People don’t care.”
And being ok with those thoughts.
Because for someone who’s always been independent, it has been programmed as a default mode.
Now, I’m learning that, asking for help doesn’t mean I’m weak. And other people do care about me.
It’s great to have someone there to talk to you, and support you.
I know how hard it can be to find people in your life who can give you the time you desire.
I want you to know you matter. So if you’d like to have someone to talk to and hear what you have to say, I’m offering free 30-min coaching sessions.
There are no strings attached to them, it’s time I’m giving back to support you on your journey.
Reaching out takes a lot of courage, and I was you to know that, just by you thinking about it, is the first step.
You’re not alone, and there are people who care about you. Let’s talk!
That was a sentence that had been subconsciously running in my brain since I was young, and I only got to speak it out loud during yesterday’s coaching session.
I could feel it in my body. But I never allowed it out of my mouth.
Since I was young, I had always been told what to do and how to do things.
And “fun” was always something that only came at the end, very sparse, or never at all.
So whenever I was told to do something, or that I had do it a certain way, my rebel brain would take over!
It would usually say "F-off!" Or, "If you want it done this way, then why don’t you do it?"
And then, I would drop the task (if I could).
This was really important for me to realize, because I learned two things from it.
First, I now see why it is that whenever I go on an extended challenge (like a 10-day or 30-day challenge), I would stop around day 5 or 6, and I’d drop it altogether.
Because, even though it was something I want to do to begin with, when it’s time for me to do the thing, my brain still sees it as “being told what to do”.
Then it’ll say, “I don’t get to do what I want!”, which triggers my rebel brain to tell my logical voice to "F-off" and I’ll drop the task.
What? Mic drop!
So my coach and I explored, what does “I don’t get to do what I want“ means.
I realize that, because my days are split between full time work, care for our son, tend to my business, give my husband love and attention, etc, my brain tells me, I don’t have enough time!
And when I don’t have enough time, I believe I need to devote whatever time I have to my business.
So I schedule a lot of work, and no time for fun things.
ALSO, whenever I decide to have fun, I’d play Final Fantasy XIV, and once I start, I can’t stop!
So my brain is constantly rebelling! “I don’t get to do what I want.” Yet, I don’t trust myself to stop.
Which is a constant battle between procrastinate doing what I really want (work on my business), and feeling guilty for not doing it.
Now that I’m aware, my coach asked me one more question:
What if you have all the time to do what you want?
What a question!
If I have all the time to do what I want, then I stop being resentful that I don’t get to do what I want.
It makes me want to work when it’s time for me to work, and it makes me want to play when it’s time for me to play.
I’ll have less mind drama, I’ll trust myself more, and I’ll be more focused, and excited about life.
According to my coach, implementing this means I start to build the trust between my Present Self and my Future Self, meaning that, my Present Self will plan for my goals, and my Future Self will respect and follow through. So there is a mutual trust between the two.
This conversation came about because for the month of November, I want to post 1 blog post a day for 30 days. Today is Day 2, and I want to complete this 30-day challenge.
I want to practice sharing what’s on my mind, and I want to build this trust in myself, so I know whatever I say I’ll do, I’ll do it.