Monday Morning Journaling Exercise

INTRO: WHAT IS THE MONDAY MORNING JOURNALING EXERCISE?

If you take a weekend off from journaling, it is important to make sure to have a session of journaling to claim what happened, and was memorable, on Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. That way, you do not forget about it later.

I recommend this exercise if you didn't do any journaling--or if you did. This Journaling Exercise might bring out more from your journaling, after all, if you did journal over the weekend. 

TIP: Make sure to do it first thing Monday morning before you get too busy. If there is one thing I've learned, if I get busy, I might not get this journaling down on the page. 

ANOTHER TIP: You can do this Sunday before you go to bed as well--or each night or morning over the weekend. Do whatever works for you--and works for you at the time. You might need to do something different each week--depending on your schedule and what comes up in your life. 

ANOTHER TIP: Do this every week and do not skip this. You'll get a lot out of it. 

THE MONDAY MORNING JOURNALING EXERCISE

TIP: Do at the very least #'s 1-4, preferable #'s 5-10.

1. Take out your calendar/planner and make sure to fill in what you did over the weekend, if you haven't already. If you have, go back through it and see if you forgot anything.

(TIP: I always put everything first on my online calendar that I have on my phone, Amazon Kindle Fire, and computer/PC. That way, if I don't have time to journal, I at least have that record and can journal more about it later on the week. I've noticed if I don't do this, I will forget about it. So, I always start here.) 

2. In your journal, write at least these section headings:

~ Friday night

~ Saturday a.m.

~ Saturday p.m.

~ Sunday a.m.

~ Sunday p.m.

3. Under each heading, write a sentence or more description of everything you did and/or at least one thing that was memorable. 

4. What was most memorable about the weekend? List three things and why. Then, number them in priority order.

5. Write more about each of the three items listed in #4.

6. Write more about your #1 memorable thing from the weekend. 

7. What did you learn this weekend?

8. What did anything from your weekend remind you about something from the past  If you didn't, think of some now. 

9. What future plans did you make this weekend? If you didn't, think of some now. 

10. Write a summary of your weekend. 

TIP: If you don't have time to do all of these, do at least numbers 1-4, and come back to these each day of the week for a couple of minutes.

~ Stacy Duplease

(Image credit: Stacy Duplease 17 November 2012. Virginia Beach.)