Tracker Journal, Part 1

My therapist recommended I start keeping track of my various habits and behaviors in order to understand myself. It’s also to help my memory. I was open to suggestions like journaling, but thought “Oh great, another wellness journal. More work.” I remember healing starts with language, and I think instead “I’m grateful to have another chance with this.”

Now let me tell you about this amazing tracker journal and how it is helping me! I suppose this is a quasi-product review. But when it comes to journals, and maybe you’re buying them online and can’t see them in person, having someone describe their contents can be helpful.

These are the five dimensions of wellness that the journal tracks:

• Physical Wellness: sleep (awake, bedtime, hours, quality, disturbances, ease of), diet (hydration, medicines, meals, snacks, beverages, fruits and veggies, calories, notes), exercise (walking, stretching, cardio, strength, sports, dance), body care (routine), body positivity (writing space), and a space for a favorite photo of yourself.
• Emotional Wellness: about me (introspective questions), affirmations (many writing prompts), daily (six times of tracking) and weekly/monthly mood tracker, gratitude, acts of kindness, dimensions of wellness (many questions), and moments with loved ones photo collage space.
• De-stress and Detox: stress and me (questions), breathing exercises (directions), meditation (prompts and log), mindfulness log, and detox log.
• Seek Joy: more introspective questions, new experiences log, list of favorite things, and things that bring me joy’ photo collage space.
• A Year of Wellness: a section dedicated to a retrospective look at your habits as tracked over the year, monthly intentions, wellness tracker for each day of the month of the whole year, and the last page of the book is for final reflections.

I don’t have any cons for this journal, yet, because there are so many good things about it.

Better than journaling: While journaling allows a release of feelings, it isn’t always guided with prompts to direct your introspection. I’ve found I’ve used journaling to vent about my frustrations, instead of using the writing process as healing itself. For myself, I allow my thoughts to be focused on what is upsetting me versus something constructive. I redirect that undesirable behavior by using this tracker journal in addition to an empty journal for my thoughts to create a double-pronged approach to the journaling process. I track my emotions in this journal, then use its guided prompts to direct my reflections written in another journal.

Useful categories: The activities this journal has you track are the many components to wellness, physically and mentally. I appreciate this holistic, and what I feel is the most appropriate, approach to examining one’s life. In my month’s experience with the journal so far, I found that habits and mood are correlated — what a shock it was to see time and time again that days I was feeling worse were days I ate less food and drank less water! Shocker! This revelation let me know that there are some easy fixes that can provide my daily life significant improvement. I just had to see the absence of a good habit hurting me, then see how to the reciprocal presence of a good habit can help me.

Pre-written: With some journaling systems, you are expected to design the layout and organization of the trackers upon empty pages. Not in this journal. While in this sense customization is limited, it is great for people new to the tracking process who find that staring at a blank empty journal does them a disservice. Some people prefer creating their own journals from scratch, but some people prefer a predesigned system. I’m of the latter group — I seek to avoid doing more work and stressing myself. Plus, I’m not the best visual creative, so I appreciate the simple but thoughtful, elegant, and uplifting design. I also don’t fully know how to introspect in a healthy way, so the questions included and the space to write feels like having a personal life coach saying ‘try this thinking instead, answer this question instead of the one you’ve asked yourself a thousand times.’

Visually stimulating: This journal is hardcover, and includes cardstock divider pages for all the dimensions of wellness you are tracking. It helps you switch between sections easily, and go right to the section you need for certain habits you want to track. The final chapter on a year in wellness isn’t used much, and sits at the back of the book, nicely section away. I find that the tracking activity I do occurs mostly in the first half of this journal. I add my own post-it tabs so I can flip directly to the page of the thing I want to track. For example, I fill out the mood trackers and food logs more than I visit other parts of the journal, so I mark those pages.

Creative: The introspective questions, prompts, suggestions for mindfulness exercises, examples and directions for breathing exercises, and so on…there’s so much helpful information they’ve chosen to include. And it’s helpful. It’s almost as if the journal were engineered with the input of many people who have kept tracking journals themselves.

Inexpensive: $14.99 plus tax. Relatively speaking, of course, this journal was inexpensive for me. I say ‘inexpensive’ in comparison to let’s say the cost of one hour of therapy. No investment into my wellness is too expensive, but some things might not be affordable right now.

I’m extremely excited about the journal. I have looked forward to the tracking process, even on days I feel crappy. But on the days I feel my worst, I know I can look inside the journal and see my progress. It is an invaluable tool to provide an at-a-glance snapshot of my past circumstances, my current state, and my future desires. I’ve already found benefits in tracking and seeing the correlation between my food and water intake and angry moods. I find benefit when I see moments I’ve documented, even though I don’t remember them. I see that I can feel happy because I have felt happy before, and I see all the mood circles I filled in with yellow marker (their suggested color code for happy moods — even that detail is amazing!).

I continue to really like this journal as if you can’t tell. And I can’t wait to keep telling the world about it. You can buy one for yourself at Francesca’s here for $14. This is not an affiliate link, this post is not sponsored, and I do not make any money from you buying a journal. ISBN 846307–065713, pictured as is!

Baby steps, my friend, baby steps. Do the work, but take baby steps.

— TS4D

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