Sweet Peace: A remarkable gift of 2022:

Becoming the journaler I always wanted to be

Cover design with images of mystery and transformation.

In mid-December, 2021, I decided to embark on a journey to make peace with food and my body by writing 52 weekly blog posts exploring this life-long challenge. To assist with the process, I began a journal where I could write whenever I wanted about things that might be too sensitive or complicated for public posts.

Bottomline? As the year progressed, the scope of Sweet Peace expanded to include a lot more aspects of my life. Stunningly for me, I broke my sugar addiction with a 66-day sugar fast, to the point that now I may occasionally indulge in something sweet but it doesn’t call to me. (The two rules I now use are: no solitary sugar consumption (social celebrations only) and it doesn’t live in my house.) An eleven-pound gradual drop in weight over the year was also a significant positive.

However, one of the more surprising gifts of this project only appeared at the end of the year when I started harvesting the fruits of the journal … the little lessons, insights, and shifts that happened throughout the year. When I counted the entries on my “Collected Treasures” page, there were 67 significant things I wanted to remember (we’ll talk more about reflection and “Collected Treasures” in a future post).

The richness of this little journal stunned me. This was what I had always wanted journaling to be, and here it was. I began to examine it more carefully to see what had made it different and kept coming up with things I had never thought about before. The next several weeks will offer the tips I’ve gleaned from this study. Here are a few:

Commitment: My firm commitment to publish a post every week meant I had to be journaling about the process. I didn’t journal every day but some days I would fill several pages. Unlike previous journals, this one had a purpose although the purpose expanded from just peace around body and food to peace in my life.

Purpose: The journal was a tool to help me get some place I wanted to go. Early on I decorated the cover in a way that would remind me of the purpose of the journal: exploring the mysteries of self and transformation … creation of my personal sense of Sweet Peace.

Printing: My handwriting doesn’t tend to be legible so I’ve started printing anything I might want to read in the future. I believe it deepens my thinking in that it slows me down a bit and feels like I am honoring the process.

Stickers: This was pure happenstance. I had bought a bunch of stickers to use to provide a colorful, visual aspect to Gratitude Mojo, the workbook/journal printed in black and white. One day when it seemed like there was nothing of interest to write in the Sweet Peace journal, I pulled some stickers and stuck them on a page. That broke some sort of blockage and I began using them as visual prompts and metaphors. Here are some examples:

The orange lines with a black dot in the middle is what I call a flower and I use it as an icon for marking things to come back to or think more about. This one led to a thought about creating a University of Life for myself with a curriculum laid out in semesters. Still an unrealized idea.

Having been on my computer entirely too long, this reminded me that real beauty was outside my computer screen. This had nothing to do with what I was journaling about, but pulling the rainbow sticker brought this insight with it.

I often underline in different colors when I want to remember something. This little balloon dog seemed to have a lot to say.

When I look back over Sweet Peace, the use of stickers as random inputs seems to be a game changer that I highly recommend.

I would love to hear which of these ideas might be useful for you.

For the coming weeks, this newsletter will focus on two posts:

Sunday: focusing on gratitude and each of the thirteen themes of personal development included in Gratitude Mojo. (Reminder: this journal is only available as a printable pdf and is free with an annual subscription to this newsletter. Actually, you can gift a friend with a second copy … just send us their email address and we will send them a copy of the pdf also.

Thursday: dedicated to a deeper dive into journaling with tips, stories and illustrations.

Thank you for reading gratitude mojo. We love your “hearts” and please feel free to share this post if you think any of your friends and family would like it.

And if you would like to see other Gratitude Mojo posts, click here:

In good times and challenging ones, practicing gratitude helps us recognize the good things in our lives and build resilience for the challenges that come our way. Gratitude journaling is one of the best ways to better understand yourself and deepen your practice of gratitude.

Any journal will do … however, we have a bias toward Gratitude Mojo, which comes to you free with your annual paid subscription … including one copy for a friend because having a Gratitude Buddy makes the journey better.

We want to help everyone develop a deeper practice of gratitude, therefore, all posts are always free. … And, we always appreciate paid subscriptions as they help support this work.