Why do we encourage you to journal while attending your fitness retreat?

When you arrive to Unite, you will discover the cutest little gray journal in your welcome bag. Why do we give you a journal? You may wonder, are we back in elementary school? Why should you keep track of your day to day and your feelings and emotions that come about? The reasons are many. Keeping a journal is one of the best ways to express your feelings and how you perceive situations. Keeping a journal is one key component in becoming more self-aware and mindful. It’s also a great stress buster. Let’s explore a few more ways keeping a journal can improve your well being and open up doors to some serious self awareness.

1. You will become more grateful. Start each journal entry with one or two things you felt grateful for today. When at your fitness retreat, perhaps, you overcame a fitness plateau or you were moved by the scenery on the daily hike. Perhaps you feel gratitude for being able to be in nature or for having the opportunity to improve your health. Maybe you are thinking about your family and you feel gratitude for their love and support.
2. You will begin to understand your WHY and your VALUES. What is your why? Why are you at a fitness retreat? What brought you here? Why do you want to change? What are your values? Do you want to get healthy so you can keep up with your grandkids or maybe you want to feel confident in your own skin. Perhaps you are a caretaker and you’ve been someone else’s everything. You’ve put yourself on the back burner and now you are ready to take care of yourself. What are your values? What is important to you? How will this experience change your life?
3. Become accountable for your actions. Life isn’t always pretty and your experiences won’t be either. Part of improving yourself includes being brutally honest about your actions and words and how they affect those around you. For example, if you’re having relationship struggles, how are your actions contributing to the situation? What things do you want to work on? What are your deal breakers? It’s impossible to make positive changes in yourself if you aren’t willing to go through the difficult process. Writing down how you respond to situations helps you see things more clearly.
4. Track your progress and your personal growth. Write down unique goals each week. Maybe you participated in every class, yay! How did you that make you feel? What fitness goals did you achieve? How did trying something new make you feel? What are your goals next week? How about your personal growth goals? How can you work on your mindfulness today? A journal is a good place to write your long short and long term ambitions, aspirations and intentions. By keeping them in a diary, you can monitor your progress and feel motivated to continue to focus on your next milestone!

It’s your turn! You don’t have to attend a fitness retreat to start a journal, that’s for sure. You can start today! If you are interested in learning more about attending a fitness retreat, please give us a call, we’ll have a journal waiting for you.