3 simple questions to live a more joyful life
today we’re talking about my joy & gratitude practice and how i track it all inside Notion.
i’ve turned it into a free template for you if you wanna join in on a joyful life journey.
and i also talk about how i integrate it into my weekly reviews that are set up inside my Holy Grail HQ Notion system. Which is a digital workspace for neurodivergent business owners & creators to help you feel more organized, motivated, and on top of your shit!
In this video I go over:
why i want to live a joyful life
the experiment
integrating a joyful life with my adhd
inspiration for my template
what i used to track in my daily journal
simplifying: my 3 essential questions
visual journaling aspect
how i use this journal
the most impactful part: reviewing
integrating the joy journal into your Holy Grail HQ weekly reviews
one of my personal goals is to live a more joyful life. i want to enjoy my life and get everything out of it that i can.
i’ve lived with 2 decades of chronic pain & mental health challenges, & it can be really hard to look at life in any kind of positive way. but now, in my 30’s i’m determined that life is only getting better from here on out. and as i’ve done a shit ton of personal work over the past handful of years, i’ve seen that yeah, life is tough, but it’s also beautiful. and it has been getting better as i focus on self-care and really going for what i want in life, shifting my beliefs & mindset, letting go of people-pleasing & perfectionism… and just showing up as more me. i feel more free and life feels more fulfilling.
so for living a more joyful life, I figured a great place to start, would be to really start noticing, and focusing in on the joys that are already present in my life. because once i start noticing all the joys that are right in front of my eyes, i have a feeling that i’ll just keep noticing more and more of them, and before i know it, i will feel like i am living a joyful life.
and it wouldn't be enough to just think of them, and then move on, because my beautiful ADHD brain wouldn't remember these joys or really have anything to hold onto. they would just move on like all my other fleeting thoughts. so I thought a great way to remember them and be able to review them, and therefore celebrate them, would be, if I kept track of them inside of a notion database.
template inspiration
my template was inspired by Marie Poulin’s daily journal. I started using her template in April 2022, which at this point has just been one year of this practice!
i’ve made a lot of edits over this past year to what i wanted to keep track of. at one point, i was tracking so many different aspects that it just felt absolutely overwhelming. some things i used to track: weather, mood, moon phase, astrological season, menstrual phase, food, digestion, a number rating for each day, and more. it was too much and it didn’t feel helpful or useful.
so i simplified it down to the absolute essentials.
3 essential questions to living a more joyful life
i asked myself, what’s really going to help me lean into living a more joyful life? and i came up with 3 questions:
what’s one thing i’m grateful for today?
what does my body need today?
and what’s one joyful moment that happened today?
and i really loved that Marie added a photo a day into her journal entry, so i made that part of my practice as well. at first, i was just grabbing images off Unsplash, but i eventually transitioned into adding my own photos - which ultimately brings me more joy.
how i use this journal
i added this digital journal onto the end of my physical journaling practice i do every day. so once i’ve finished my regular 20 mins of free-write journaling, i grab my phone to do my joy journal.
i’ve got the widget set up on my phone so it’s super easy for me to access.
i’ve got a default template set up with these little dots that look like bullet points, so that when i view my entries in a kanban board, they look like a cute list instead of a bunch of random text.
in the morning, i answer the first two questions.
i write down one thing i’m grateful for.
and then i tap into my body and ask it what it needs for that day. it’s usually a word or concept that i like to set as my intention to carry with me throughout the day.
then, at the end of the day before bed, i check in again and write down one joy that happened during the day.
this is when i also upload a cover photo from that day. i don’t necessarily take a photo every single day, so sometimes i’ll just grab something else from the week. and sometimes i upload things like text screenshots or memes from friends, anything that gives me warm fuzzy joyful smile feelings.
most impactful part of this journal
one of the most impactful parts of this journaling practice is reviewing my entries. i did a lil habit stacking and added this into my weekly review process that i do for my business. since it’s already something i’m in the habit of doing every week, it was easy for me to add this in as a part of it.
i also do this during my monthly reviews at the end of each month.
it’s been a very rewarding process to re-read all my gratitudes and joys and look at all the photos.
gratitude & joy journal template
this is what the joy journal template looks like.
you’ve got filtered views to show you this week and this month. as well as all the entries.
and the default template is set up for you to have the cute bullet points immediately when you open a new page!
how to integrate it into your Holy Grail HQ template
if you’ve got the Holy Grail HQ template, here’s how you can add this gratitude and joy journal in as part of your regular review process like i do.
once you’ve duplicated this joy journal template to your own workspace, grab the link to it.
then go into your weekly reviews and edit the template.
paste a filtered view of your joy journal.
and you’re all set!
if you’d like to start keeping track of gratitude and joy during your day, grab a free copy of my gratitude & joy journal template at the link below.
and if you’re interested in a full system to help you run your small business, check out the Holy Grail HQ down below as well.
i’d love to hear about the joyful moments in your days, please share in the comments on the video so we can all celebrate and live more joyful lives together.
thanks for being here.
i’ll see ya in the next one.
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