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The next journal I would like to introduce you to and another one that I keep is my Dream Journal. I don’t mean a dream journal in the sense that you write down what you dreamt about last night – I mean the dreams that you want to make come true, in other words, the goals that you would like to achieve.

I call it my Dream Journal because I am more motivated to make my dreams come true than to achieve a goal. Making my dreams come true sounds so much more GLAMOUROUS :-). So I would suggest you name this journal whatever you want as long as it motivates and inspires you.

So how do I use this journal? My journal is divided into 2 parts, the front and the back, or my dream and the path to my dream. At the front of my journal is a list of all my dreams I want to make come true. At the back of my journal are the steps I will take to make each dream come true. I dedicate a few pages to each dream, I list the steps that I need to take to achieve the dream as well as timelines. I believe that giving your dreams timelines makes them that much more real. You can look forward to a date that you can realise this dream/goal and work towards it. I personally work harder on something when I have given myself a realistic date by when to achieve. It is something tangible, not just something I have thought of and put at the back of my mind.

The dreams that I put into this journal have to meet the following criteria:

1> They have to feed into my dream of owning my own time – the reason I say this is because I have one major dream of eventually owning my own business so that I own my own time. Each dream that I write in this journal goes towards making this one dream come true.

2> They have to be achievable within 1 year – this is just a benchmark I have set for myself, because knowing how I work, if something is not achievable within a year, then either I cannot do it or I have to break it down into further steps and each of these have to be achievable within 1 year.

3>They have to be inspirational and motivational – I am a person who will only do something if I am motivated to do it. Just the fact that it is something that will help me achieve my ultimate dream is motivation enough for me. If sometimes I find that the way I have phrased it does not inspire me, then I rephrase it so that it is motivational.

That said I have different ways of reminding myself to keep my journal going and I also have different versions of my journal. I also keep an electronic journal which is duplicate (and more) of my written journal.

I know, it sounds complicated right? Well not really for me – I have a system that I work with that works perfectly for me. So every time I have an idea it goes into my written journal which I keep in my handbag, and then the steps get put into the back of my journal, then when I am at my laptop or iPad I add this to my electronic journal. Each step is given a timeline, so I set a reminder for each step. I also add smaller timelines in-between the bigger ones so that I make sure that I do a little everyday towards reaching the bigger timeline.

As the steps are completed, I electronically complete it and also highlight it in my written journal.