It's Finally Here! - WISER Newsletter

Hello 1,521+ friends, it’s Michael here!

Thanks for checking out this issue of the WISER Newsletter!

Let’s get WISER together!

🎉 It’s Finally Here! 🎉

That's right: The Wise Guide to Journaling is finally here!

Before I get carried away with how proud we are of this e-book, I wanted to share a bit about my personal experience with journaling.

Everyone always raves about journaling, but if, like me, you've attempted journaling, you may have a collection of unfinished journals.

I must have tried to start journaling a handful of times with the idea of making it a long-lasting healthy habit, only to find myself giving up a few days later, just 3 pages in.

Sound familiar?

Journaling is not an easy habit to form, but if you approach it with some strategy, I am confident that you will be able to reap the rewards of writing regularly.

It's been transformative for me! Let's look at a few ways it has helped me:

Organisation

It'll come as no surprise to those that know me personally that I am not the most organised person, but I am certainly better than I use to be because of journaling!

In fact, you have to have a decent amount of organisation to put out 9 visual posts, 25 tweets and 1 newsletter every week. And don't forget that this is whilst juggling replying to comments, custom visuals for clients, making an e-book and doing all my other life commitments!

This is a lot, but it is far more manageable to achieve because I'm able to process it paper prior to putting these practices in place. (I have my business partner Zac to thank for making this more manageable too!)

I'll regularly scribble down lists of the things that I have coming up for Wisdom Made Easy and all the bits that I'd like to achieve with it, and it's helped me get to a position where we're able to launch The Wise Guide to Journaling e-book!

Mental Health

Did you know that I was diagnosed with depression in 2013?

Since then, I've had a turbulent journey with my mental health; numerous ups and downs.

Now I'm fortunate to be in a place where I'm able to manage my depression; I'd say that I have depression, I no longer suffer from depression.

One of the things that has allowed me to take ownership of my mental health is journaling. It's helped so much that as of May 2022, I have been able to function without antidepressants that I had been taking daily for 6 years straight (with the support of a medical professional).

I have nothing against using medication, but it felt like the next natural step on my mental health journey, and because I was able to check in with myself daily through scribbling about how I was feeling in my journey, I was able to identify when I was experiencing unhelpful thoughts and stop them in their tracks.

It's worth noting that journaling is just one part of the equation to managing one's mental health. I'd also recommend community, sleep, diet, exercise, prayer and much more to stay as healthy as possible.

Habits

I owe a lot to my journal when it comes to habits.

I don't want to cast judgment on anyone reading this, but when I engaged with these habits, they were unhealthy for me. Since journaling, I have managed to stop:

• 🚬 Smoking cigarettes

• 💨 Vaping

• 🍔 Binge eating

• 🍻 Drinking alcohol excessively

Journaling allowed me track how I was doing with stopping these habits.

I would celebrate the wins when I made it a week without these vices, or I'd scrutinise what was going on in life when I slipped up to identify what to avoid or manage better in future.

Journaling can help you close the book on an unhealthy you and embrace the identity that you were always meant to.

It can also help you develop new habits! I try to keep accountable by applying the 2-Day Rule. To learn more about this principle, check out this thread by Sahil Bloom (featuring a visual by yours truly):

What Do You Think?

There are 3 areas of my life where journaling has helped me in the last 3 years. In that same amount of time, I have:

• Got a promotion

• Moved to a new town

• Planned a wedding and got married

• Given up those additions

• Started a profitable business

It amazing to have a nearly-daily record of all of those interesting life events. It’s a joyous experience to revisit the older journals ever so often.

But that’s enough about me!

❓ What about you? Do you journal?

• Have you tried journaling before?

• Do you think you could benefit from being more organised, managing your mental health better and stopping unhealthy habits?

• What other benefits do you think you could get from journaling?

• Would you like to learn more about journaling? (If yes, check out the recommendations!)

I’d normally end this section with an encouragement to consider journaling through the above questions yourself, but today I’ll ask you to consider purchasing a copy of our e-book!

It'll take you through how to start journaling, so if you've ever wanted to form the bit of journaling and experience some of the benefits that I've mentioned, pick up a copy here:

Recommendations

1️⃣ I’ve already spoken enough about our The Wise Guide to Journaling e-book to you, so let’s dive in with the second recommendation!

2️⃣ This week's second recommendation comes from a fellow journaler: Amanda Stern's newsletter: Good Things Come to Those Who Journal.

Amanda is a passionate empower for those that want to start journaling.

Much of her content online speaks about the value that she has got from putting pen to paper, and I'm confident that this is something that you will benefit from too.

If you'd like to hear more journaling tips to help you in this practice, check her out and subscribe here:

* Please note that these may be affiliation links. Purchasing through these links could support Wisdom Made Easy encourage more people to get wiser.

✍️ What We’re Working On

We have finally finished our new website! You can find it at wisdommadeeasy.com. It's a great place to learn more about us and learn about how we could work together. If you're interested, you can learn more here.

Michael recently was on Heather Parady's podcast talking a bit about why he started Wisdom Made Easy and how to transform complex ideas into bitesized visuals. You can watch this here:

And if you want to hear even more from Michael, he's been getting involved in some Twitter Spaces recently talking about how to get started in visual creating. To hear about some of the common mistakes to avoid, listen here:

Do you enjoy this newsletter? If so, please share it with someone! Forward this to a friend, or share it on social media!

If you’ve just received this as a forwarded email, subscribe here:

😊 Thank You!

Thanks for checking out this issue of the WISER Newsletter. If you have any feedback, we would love to hear it!

Simply reply to this email, and we will get back to you.

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Catch you in the next issue!

Thanks,

Michael and Zac!