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Hello darling heart, and welcome to the Drink Less, Live Better podcast.

This is the podcast that helps you to see that drinking less doesn't need to be stressful, lonely, or boring.

I'm your host, Sarah Williamson, and I decided to have a year alcohol free as a little life experiment and haven't looked back.

With my experience and training, I now help other people with their alcohol free or drink less adventures.

You can find out more and sign up to my 5 day drink less challenge at drink less live better dot com.

I'm here to tell you that you can relax, connect, and have fun without alcohol in your life.

Join me here each week to find out how.

This week I'm going to talk to you about sober journaling.

I used to desperately want to be a sober journaler.

I could see people around me raving about all the joy and the peace that journaling gave them, and I wanted a piece of that action.

Well, dear listener, I'm here to tell you that I have not yet become a regular sober journal keeper.

I have had spades in and out of journaling.

It has served me amazingly well at particular points in my sobriety journey and less well at other times.

Today, I'm gonna share with you 3 different types of journaling that I have used over the last few years.

A type that I really struggled with, a type that served me okay for a while, and a type that is what I do now.

I have what is known as the journal graveyard on one shelf of my bookcase. There are over 20 journals there. There are blank diaries. There are beautiful artistic notebooks.

There are, prompted notebooks and journals, printed out ones, beautifully bound ones, homemade bat homemade ones, a 5 size,

a 4 size, and tiny little a 6 size, a complete and utter mixture. Some of them are full completely.

Some of them have 1 or 2 pages written in.

One of the things I used to really struggle with was the idea of journal perfection.

And I could not start writing in a journal because I was afraid of either stuffing it up and writing something that I then

needed to tippex or rub out, and also or writing something that I then didn't want somebody to go back and look at later on.

I got over the fear of making it not look nice enough by starting to use pencils and later on using erasable beautiful colored pens.

One of the other tricks I use is to print out tiny pieces of paper and, draw nice borders around them.

And then I use those to write little slogans or, quotes on, and I then stick those in my journals.

So my journals now have a certain element of scrapbook about them, which I really love.

I'm really happy to doodle in my books as well. I write spidergrams.

I draw thought bubbles and little pictures along the sides and in the margins just because I think it makes my journals look

prettier, and I give my brain the space to think whilst my hand is doodling on the page.

I had to get really clear about why I wanted, to be a successful journaler.

Originally, it was because other people were doing it, and I wanted the same.

But now my reason is because I love having the record to look back on.

I was recently looking through my 2019 journals, because I was about to deliver a workshop, And it was so good to look back

and find out what I was thinking, how I was feeling, what my emotions were at the time that I was first toying with the idea of sobriety.

I'm so happy to have a record of that now.

The first type of journaling that I really got serious with is called morning pages.

The idea of morning pages was put forward by the lovely Julia Cameron.

And if you're interested in morning pages, I would suggest you Google Julia Cameron and have a read around, how and what morning pages looks like.

It is supposed to be 3 pages, a handwritten stream of consciousness that you do first thing in the morning as soon as you get out of bed.

You write about whatever comes to mind.

I wrote my morning pages for about 6 months, and whilst I definitely did get some value out of it at the time, longer term,

it was not a method of journaling that works for me.

After I finished my morning pages, I turned to bullet journaling.

I really love bullet journaling for the creativity that it allowed me, the space to take that gridded page, make it into whatever

shape I want, use it to record out what I want as far as my mind, body, and soul is concerned for the day.

I used it as a bit of a trick tick list, and I used it for recording thoughts of not only what had gone before, how I was

feeling in the present moment, but also what my future plans were and what my goals were looking like at that time.

And that worked okay for a while.

I did, a solid, I think, 4 months of keeping a daily bullet journal, and then I just got out of practice with it.

The journaling method that has worked really well for me all the way through since from 2,000 and 19 until now is a daily diary.

I like to buy an a 5 diary that is 1 page a day and just fill that one page every day.

Some days, it is a bit of a stream of consciousness.

Some days, it is more drawing than writing.

Some days, I use journal prompts to write in it.

But, mostly, it is just a little record of where I am in a given moment.

I aim to be having progress rather than protect pro rather than perfection. See?

Progress rather than perfection in my journaling practice.

As long as I just keep going with it, I don't have to worry about it looking immaculate or worry, edit my thoughts and feelings.

If you found these these thoughts about journaling useful today, please drop me an email or a DM.

Let me know what it is you're particularly loving about journaling or what's keeping you stuck around journaling.

And if you need a little nudge in the right direction to get going with it, let me know that too. I'll happily be your accountability buddy.

Check out the show notes on this podcast or any other episode.

You'll find details about the Drink Less, Live Better 2023 retreat.

You'll see the link to a hidden podcast episode to help you with your 5 PM cravings, and you'll be able to read about my 1 to 1 coaching program.

I'd love it if you could follow and download the podcast, and if you feel inclined to leave a review, that'd be lovely as well. Thank you for listening in today. Please come back again next week. And PS I believe in you.