Discover how journaling can transform your happiness and self-development in this month’s Happiness Challenge! Join Klaudia and the inspiring Madeline McQueen - executive coach, speaker, and passionate advocate for personal growth - as they explore the science and strategies behind making journaling a joyful, consistent habit.

Whether you’re new to journaling or looking to deepen your practice, this episode is packed with practical tips and uplifting motivation.

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Hello happiness seekers. Welcome to the Happiness Challenge podcast. I'm Klaudia Mitura and I'm on a mission to explore the best happiness hacks that science has on offer.

Like so many others, the pandemic cut me off from my family and work. So I decided to use my training as a psychologist to discover what science can tell us about the art of happiness.

What I found set me on the path to joy and now I'm ready to share my journey with you.

Each month I'm publishing three linked episodes where I'm speaking to a leading expert, putting their tips to the test and sharing my findings and feelings.

From mindfulness to exercise and random acts of kindness, I'll be sharing a light on the simple happiness habits that can bring more joy to our lives.

What's very exciting, you can Also now find 26 science backed principles on how to create more happiness at work, in relationships and in your own skin in my new book, the Alphabet of Happiness. So join me as I embark on my challenge and together we can become more successful, resilient and happy.

Hello happiness seekers. Welcome to this month's Happiness Challenge where we exploring the transformative power of journaling for happiness and self development.

To help us dive deep into this topic, I'm joined by the wonderful Madeline McQueen, executive coach, speaker and advocate for personal development for leadership success.

Madeline brings a wealth of experience helping people unlock their potential and today she will share why journaling is such a powerful tool for happiness. How can we make it a consistent habit and the kind of prompts that truly make a difference.

So grab your favorite notebook, settle in and let's dive in. Welcome Madeline.

Hello. Thank you so much Claudia. I am so happy to be here. Journaling is one of my favorite topics.

Oh I love them. And you keep them as well. Which is always my question. Do I, do I keep my journals? Do I discard them? But maybe we'll come back to that one.

So I guess I really think that in the current world when there is so much happening, there's just so much overwhelm. Often our thoughts and feelings can feel overwhelming or scattered.

And journaling offers a quite simple yet profound way to reconnect with ourself and nature that lasting well being. But from your coaching experience here, what is it about journaling that it makes it so such a powerful tool for happiness and self development?

The thing about journaling that is so important for development is about space. And what do I mean by that? The mental space that you create when you journal.

So many of us have so many thoughts, so many feelings, so many emotions going through us, and what we don't do or we don't have often is space to process them.

And I just cannot advocate enough for the power of journaling and how it provides that space for you to be able to process your feelings, your emotions, your thoughts, the crazy stuff that happens at 3am in the morning in your mind. It's such a wonderful place to be able to do that.

And what I recognize is that what journaling does is allow you to organize those thoughts, feelings and emotions. And because of that, you gain clarity. You can start to build confidence. You can also find solutions.

You can also, again, as I said, give your brain space because it's so blocked with all of these thoughts, feelings and emotions, it's. Oh, it's very difficult to actually find answers. You feel confused because it. There's so much swirling.

What journaling enables you to do is to stop the swirl, enables you to clear up your head and find clarity.

I love that. And this idea of intentional space, intentionally finding headspace. Yeah, you mentioned that 3am Wake up.

And yes, I always have it around 4am when my brain is going on one. And you think, yes, that's because I haven't processed lots of things. I haven't had the time to really check in how I feel of what's happening.

And it's just that amazing structure. So lots of great benefits. And I think many of the listeners will be like, yep, know it, heard it, and maybe even experience it ever so often.

But we still struggle to do it consistently.

Yeah.

What are the kind of most common barriers that you have seen in your practice and how can we overcome them?

So the first one is the mantra, the affirmation, I'm too busy. And actually, when you say this, thoughts become things. And in effect, every. I love this phrase. I can't remember who said it. I think it's Alan Watts.

Every I am is a prayer. Like it's a declaration. You are putting it out there that this is I am, this is who I am. And so you've decided you're busy.

And if you've decided you're busy, then you act like you're busy. Your entire being is around busyness. And so then even if you have space, you can't see it because you've decided that you're busy.

And changing the narrative in your head around your busyness is going to make a really big difference. No, I can find time. I can find time. I am important. My time is important.

So I think that's one of the first one is really the way that we tell ourselves that we can't do something, not because we can't, but because we've decided that this is. We've made a decision and we're always making choices.

And the second thing, if I think about why people don't do it, it's because they think it has to be a particular way. And so many of us are performing like we need to do the performance of journaling. And the reason why I say that is.

And then we're also because our validation too often is external, not internal. What? So I had somebody recently say, my handwriting's not very good. It needs to be neat and it needs to be this and it needs to be that.

And I need to be structured and it to have all of these things. And it's. No, it doesn't because it's your journal, it's for you. It's not to present. There's no kind of like marking system.

You're not going to get house points for it.

Claudia so why on earth, you know, these are the things we work ourselves up into, kind of a complete again, adding more stress, adding more swirl around what it should look like and what it should be. And so often the reason why we don't journal isn't because we don't have time. It isn't because we, it has to be perfect.

It isn't because, oh, I, I don't know if I can. It is because we've made it so much about everybody else and not actually about us.

Yeah.

And I think it's incredible that you're pointing those two aspects because I think they both can be overcome to some extent with the intention, as you said, because we often say we don't have time and yet we had time doom scrolling and we had time to watch endless TV and we have time to maybe not spend our time more intentionally to say, you know what, I'm not going to be looking at my phone and for 10 minutes I'm going to journal. And that another aspect, I love this because I had that for a long time.

So yes, my handwriting and this is not the right notebook, but all of those are really those kind of excuses and we can just set, I'm just set an intention. I am going to do it. It's for me. And it doesn't have to be perfect. But let's say that we do need a little bit of a hook.

We need a little bit of a notch that's blanks page is scary for us and we don't want to start with Dear diary, today I had a cup of tea situation. Are there any particular journaling prompts or exercises that you recommend?

Especially if someone is sitting with the journal to boost their happiness to reflect on their well being and personal growth.

There are lots of prescriptive journals out there. One of them that I've used in the past really helpful has been the Daily Greatness journal. And there have been other journals.

However, what I love dotted paper. That's my dotted paper. And I use a brand called Noonar which is just because it's beautiful paper. I always use a gel pen 1.0.

I like it a particular thickness. I use the Uniball gel pens. So here's my thing about journaling. Sometimes I start my journal with just Good morning World.

And then I allow myself to go from there. I think the biggest problem and this I'm coming back to the prompts, the biggest problem is that we think that we have to prescribe what we journal.

And because of that then if we don't have any of that today, then I don't think I've got any of that. So I don't know if I can.

So I don't have specific prompts because I think again, we're all complex human beings and different things are going to appeal to different people.

But what I do want to share is different things that you can journal about, which I think is may help people a little bit more when they're looking at you. Talk about happiness. It might be my. A miniature. I'm just going to say you can just start. So you don't even have to say dear Journal, Dear Diary.

You don't even have to say Good morning world. You can just say I feel happy today. I am really struggling with my happiness today. I find happiness difficult to find. I wonder why that is.

So the thing for me is even if you just started with I because we're talking about connection, ourselves and whatever that takes you. So my things for journals are how do you feel? Let's talk about how you feel in your journal. I feel really frustrated.

Let's talk about relationships in our journal. He gets on my nerves. You know that that is in my journal right now, 37 years in with my husband.

We've been this year we celebrated our 30th anniversary. But sometimes the journal is. And it really annoys me and I can process how I feel, what I feel and what I want to say to him.

It may be I'm going to talk about gratitude I am so grateful for. So I might start with gratitude. Gratitude might be later. My gratitude might not even be in my journal today.

And the reason why I'm going through some of these and because one I think things I think is really important about journaling is permission. That might be something you're journaling about. I give myself permission to take the time to journal. I give myself permission to put myself first.

And so I'm going to write whatever comes to my mind. And sometimes that might be it. It might be the frustrations that you have. It might be a list of things you want to achieve.

So it might be, okay, here are my goals. It might be that your boss gets on your nerves and it's doing you in. Right?

So when we're talking about the journaling prompts, I think that if it is a how do you feel today? What do you want to achieve? What are the biggest challenges that you have? What does happiness look like for you? Yes, we can have those.

What I really encourage is free writing, where you allow what's in your being to come out. Because we, when we started, we talked about the space that journaling gives you.

And I think that it's the prescription sometimes that puts people off because it doesn't necessarily meet them where they are. So my thing is, whatever it is that's in your mind, in your heart, in your emotions, in your soul, in your being, get it out on paper.

And then you know, the more you do it, the more you do. And the second thing I will say to that is, if you don't do it every day, that's okay.

Now for some people, they going to need a structured time every day. 10 minutes before bed, 10 minutes when I wake up in the morning.

Other people, they just need to have their journal with them and write down whatever comes to their head. And I say this again because sometimes we're always trying to push ourselves into a box that most of us don't actually fit into.

And then what happens? Because we're trying to squeeze into a box we don't fit into, we then abandon it. My encouragement is, get the pen, get the notebook.

I brought mine with me, actually. So this, I have mine with me. I'm on my fourth journal.

Normally I do two in a year, but somehow this year there's been a lot coming out and I'm on my fourth journal and it's just where everything that's in my head and in my being exists. Can you allow for that now One of the other things I can just quickly go back to. What stops us is that we go. I don't want anyone to read my journal.

I'm afraid that if I put it all in my journal, that somebody's going to read it and use it against me.

And then what we have to ask ourselves is, does this go back to a childhood experience, a traumatic experience that is now holding us hostage for the rest of our lives as an adult? And then the other thing is about setting expectations with the people in your life. This is mine. This is for me, and this is not for you.

And so respect my boundary around my journal and then if not, get a lockbox.

There are always, I guess, means to have our journal stored securely. But just coming back to those ideas of a prompts and the structure. So it's very.

It's great to see that you are advising people that we have a choice, that this is for us and we need to choose what suits us. If you would like to have a daily prompt, get a journal that is structured that gives you that prompt.

If you don't want to have any prompts, just get yourself a. Any notebook and freestyle that writing. And I know from my experience, sometimes my writing around journaling would be, I don't know what to write.

And here we go. It starts that conversation. Or maybe freestyle for a question that inspires you, like specifically, as you said, what am I grateful for?

But other questions, my favorite is, what's my story today, how I'm feeling? All of those very much tap into that potential so we can make it work.

Now, thinking more practically, let's say we're doing this specific practice for some. Some time now. We know we're comfortable in it.

Do you have any stories, for example, when journaling actually has made a meaningful difference, maybe to yourself or maybe to one of your clients?

Yeah. So I'm gonna give you one for me and one for clients. So this is a very quick one.

Some years ago, I realized I was in my journal and I really wasn't feeling my best self. I'm 56. My dad died when I was 10. I think I was mostly in my mid-30s when this happened.

And I was realizing I was really struggling around abandonment and all that because he died sud suddenly and he went to hospital. Died on the journey. And in my journal, one day I wrote, help me. Literally across the page, big letters, help me. I need help.

And that was the moment when I went, oh, oh, I need counseling. I need to go to counseling. And that was the thing. If I hadn't been writing in my journal, I would not, not have in the same way got to this.

And this is why I talk about not having it. So sometimes not having it structured because sometimes you may write over all of a page, you might write two words and that's okay.

But just helping you to go work out, what do I need? And then I had another client who definitely was really struggling a lot with their confidence and a senior leader, a lot going on.

Small children as well, the high flying husband having very young kids, herself having a high flying job. Lots of things had changed at work and then there were things from her own past that kept coming up and cropping up.

And so we put journaling in place for her. And over that journey of her journaling, she started to calm down. She started to find clarity that she didn't have before.

The swirling started to disappear and we went through our process of. And then I saw a few years later and she said, madeline, the tools that you've gave me are still working for me.

When I need that clarity, when I need to get find my calmness, it's journaling that I go to. And that's where I can then work out what's really going on for me and what I need.

And when you've got so many competing priorities, sometimes you need a space to work out just what that is so you can calm down, so you can reduce your cortisol, so you can find your own sense of ease and peace and most importantly, so you can actually give yourself some grace.

Yes. And so many incredible, such great two examples really. Thank you so much.

They, as you said, very impactful in the sense that we just don't know what we're going to journal about and that that unlock us. But on the other hand, having it as a tool of that release and that headspace. Wonderful. Thank you.

So for maybe listeners who are new to journaling, what will be one simple step that they can take today to get started?

Yeah, the first thing is get yourself a journal. Like, and that journal can be any kind of notebook.

I think what's really important is that you have to like your journal, the book, book that you're writing in, if that makes any sense.

I think that makes a difference to you journaling because if you don't really like the book, then you don't want to go back to the, if it's horrible paper or whatever. So find a journal that you like and then just make a commitment that you will write one thing in that journal today, nothing else.

I'M not asking you to write four pages, five pages. Just write maybe one thing. Now I could say see if you can fill a page, but I don't want to put people under immense pressure.

But I'm going to give a prompt that might really be helpful for it is who am I becoming? That might be your get a journal and just start with who am I becoming and let it flow from there.

Love it. Oh my goodness. And what an also amazing start of the year. And with that really wonderful question in mind. Thank you so much Madeleine.

This is so inspiring. And I have a journaling practice but I'm always kind of on and off it. So this definitely inspires me to do more of it.

This is podcast about the happiness. So I have a final question for you to tell us. What makes you happy?

I really thought about this question. I've been going through a transformation. Yes, to some extent this is the year of the snake.

So there's a lot of kind of of movements going on to sound a little woo. What I recognize is what makes me happy is me. My happiness comes from me, my sense of safety and security in myself.

And the more I get to know me, the more I embrace me, the more happiness I experience. And so actually what makes me happy is me.

Love that. Absolutely love that. I had so many different people coming onto the show across the happiness challenge and no one said me.

So I definitely we have to celebrate it. And actually it's like why not? Why are we saying that all those other things make us happy? What about ourselves? Love it.

That is really inspiring answer. Thank you so much for your time today, Madeleine. This has been an absolute pleasure.

I've already learned so much and definitely going to take that into my practice and thank you so much where listeners can find you and a little bit more about your work.

Okay, so you can find me@madeline mcqueen.com that's M A D E L I N E M c q u E-E-N.com that's my website. You can find me on instagram as themadaline. McQueen. You can find me on TikTok as well. You can find me on LinkedIn.

I am Madeline McQueen on link LinkedIn. I am on Facebook and I'm also on thread says Madeline McQueen as well.

My work is around leveraging personal development for professional success, especially for leaders. I work with women in leadership around clarity and confidence and empowerment.

I deliver programs for organizations, deliver executive coaching, speaking and I have a program called the Magnificent you program which is a self directed program for leaders and then we're just launching a leadership position. Who's looking, looking for some more community is a group coaching program called the Circle of Brilliance.

And that literally is around all of the things I've spoken about and also around delegation. It's around owning your own power and giving you the strategic plans and tools that are going to help you be a great leader. Thank you so much.

And thank you so much for having me. And I just think, Claudia, you do amazing work. Happiness is important, and we should be be looking for it and seeking it every single day.

Otherwise, what's the point of being here?

That is so true. What's the point otherwise? But thank you so much. That is wonderful. Thank you so much. Again, it was a pleasure to learn from you.

Thank you for having me.