How the GrowLoop Journal Works

Post by: Nick Venturella

Journaling has real, physical and mental health benefits, according to Michael Grothaus’ article published in Fast Company Magazine (2015), “Why Journaling is Good for Your Health (And 8 Tips to Get Better).”
 
The article featured Dr. James Pennebaker, a psychologist and leading expert in the field of Expressive Writing (EW), which is a specific type of journaling.
 
The article identifies that journaling can strengthen immune cells (for science folks these are T-lymphocytes) and has been associated with decreases in depressive behaviors, anxiety as well as increases in positive mood, social engagement and improvement in the quality of close relationships.
 
Inspired by this, I began examining my own journal writing habits to determine why I personally found it useful toward my own goal achievement and overall mood.
 
It turns out there is a ton of research on growth mindset, optimism, and journaling self-care benefits:

• Harvard Business Review's, Four Reasons to Keep a Work Diary
• If You Feel Thankful, Write It Down. It's Good For Your Health (National Public Radio)
• Shawn Achor's TED talk about the Happiness Advantage
• ​Learn about WhiteSpace at Work
• 83 Benefits of Journaling for Depression, Anxiety, and Stress (posivitepsychology.com)

 
The point is there is evidence that taking, even a little bit of, time each day to self-reflect and put to pen to paper can improve your life.
 
There are three main components of the GrowLoop Journal

1. Goals - Identify and track progress on goals you want to reach
   
   
2. Daily Writing - Freely write what’s on your mind each day and respond to the brief daily writing prompts
   
   
3. Happiness Tracker - add your daily prompt-completion and mood score up, then use the Happiness Tracker, within the journal, to document trends in how you feel over time.

Ideally, the more you use the journal to develop the daily habit of expressing your thoughts and completing the prompts, you increase your likelihood of being more engaged, productive, confident and optimistic, which positions you for success and better equips you to overcome challenges and obstacles that might otherwise derail you.
 
Daily Prompts

• Identify and document a goal you want to achieve in a specific timeframe (i.e. within 1 year)
  
  
• Use the brief daily writing prompts to help remind you of things to document while you freely write whatever is on your mind (at a minimum, journal for 15 minute each day).
  
  
• You’ll use these prompts (listed below) in the GrowLoop Journal (I recommend noting your answer to the prompt in your writing by using the prompt initial in brackets, so you can easily find it later, as you’ll track monthly summaries of your victories towards your goal):
  ​
  • [V] Victory:  Identify one victory from the day (or the day before depending on when you’re writing). This can be a personal achievement, some recognition (big or small) that you received that day. It could be that you completed the action you set for yourself the previous day. The idea is to celebrate something good that happened that day that you’re proud of.
    
    
  • [A] Action: Identify at least one action (large or small) that you will take today toward reaching your goals (or identify an action you did take during the day, if writing at the end of the day) Be specific, but keep it brief.
    
    
  • [K] Kindness: Write down one act of kindness that you performed that day (or the day prior). It’s important to recognize this for yourself and understand how it made you feel. The more acts of kindness you perform the more it becomes a positive habit. Over time, with repetition it can become an instinctual habit – that’s a good thing.
    
    
  • [G] Gratitude: Identify at least one thing each day that you’re thankful for. This just helps remind you of the good in your life, and it makes you feel good. This is where the warm fuzzies grow, and it's difficult to feel down when you identify specific things in your life that you're grateful for.

GrowLoop Journal example pages

Happiness Tracker​
For each prompt you complete each day you’ll get a score. Then based on your score and mood you’ll rate your happiness in the Happiness Tracker within the journal using a green, yellow, red system (green = good, yellow = okay, red = not good).

Over time you can see trends related to how your daily writing, completing the prompts, and taking action towards your goals is affecting your mood. (The visual of using actual Green, Yellow and Red colors to fill in these boxes – vs. just writing in the letter that represents the color – allows these trends to stand out easier, in my opinion.) 

Example of the "traffic light" color coded overall mood/productivity score. You can see in a 3 month period the trending toward more green (confident, productive, positive mood).

​​The Happiness Tracker is a summary over time of how your journaling practice and goal pursuit is making you feel, and the Goal pages in the front of the journal, along with your documented monthly achievement summaries, shows your progress toward meeting your goals.
 
The more you take action to accomplish your goals, the more likely you’ll be happier with a positive outlook, and vice versa, the better you feel about yourself and your mood, the more likely you’ll take the necessary actions to achieve your goals.

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