The 5 Minute Journal
Here is my interview with UJ Ramdas, hypnotherapist and co-author of The Five Minute Journal. During the interview we geek out on communication techniques, language, and positive influence. Below are my thoughts and takeaways from the interview. As always, let me know your thoughts and takeaways in the comments below!
I absolutely love speaking with fellow behavior geeks! UJ and I speak the same language, so to speak. (In fact, he and I had a 3 hour chat after this interview!)
Tapping Into Your Trance
As a hypnotherapist, UJ helps his clients break out of their bad habits and ineffective patterns. He, like all hypnotherapist, leverage the trance state.
UJ points out something that most people don’t realize. We are in trance states regularly. When you drive your car, you are in a trance. When you take a shower, you are in a trance. When you watch television, you are in a trance.
In completely unscientific terms, a trance is when our conscious mind sits in the passenger seat. It’s still going along for the ride, but it’s not focused on steering, navigating, or taking control. Various people, including masterful communicators, learn how to leverage the trance states to influence others and influence/improve themselves.
Bookending Your Days
How you start your day and how you end your day will set the foundation for your entire day. It is a way for you to prime you day. UJ and I speak about this extensively.
In the interview I mentioned a show that I fell asleep to one night that inadvertently affected my thought patterns the next morning. The show was An Idiot Abroad. It’s a funny British show produced by Ricky Gervais. Karl Pilkington, a highly negative and unintentionally hysterical Brit, has built a career by being Gervais’s whipping boy. An Idiot Abroad is a travel where that follows Pilkington’s adventure as he complains every step of the way. He is an olympic winger….and it’s laugh-out-loud funny.
When I woke up the next morning, I caught myself complaining about the littlest things. I woke up in a winging mood. No bueno.
The thought patterns you have at the end of the day will determine the thought patterns you have when you wake up. The 5 Minute Journal is structured to help you end the day in a positive state.
Amazement in the Unexpected
One of the questions in the The 5 Minute Journal is “What 3 Amazing Things Happened Today?” I was surprised to learn that UJ’s answers to this question were very similar to my own. We both are amazed by the “little” things. Our amazing things mostly consist of wonderment about nature rather than hitting numbers in our business.
I thought that I was odd or an outlier in my list of “amazing things.” Surely other people have more amazing things going on in their life, right? And yet I’m writing things down about the breeze through my windows in the morning.
I think that when we tune in to appreciating and being in awe of the simple things, we are more in tuned with achieving the greater things. *Click here to tweet that piece of metaphysical awesomeness!* 🙂
What are your journaling practices? What works for you? If journaling was highly effective in just 5 minutes a day, would you journal more? I would love to learn from your experiences, so please share in the comments below.
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