What is Journaling?
Journaling involves keeping a diary and or a journal which explores your thoughts and feelings around the events and what is going on of your life.
Patrick Grove has built not just one, but several million dollar businesses, including 5 that he took public.
And he gives credit to his success to the oddest of things that of journaling.
When he first began, he wrote down everything that caused him stress, like how his business wasn’t large enough, why he didn’t live in a trendy city and so forth.
Once he made a note of all the negative stuff, he started journaling about what he wanted in his life. He wanted a better home, a fantastic relationship with family members and friends, the ability to travel, and of course, a substantial income. He was journaling his vision for what he wanted to get out of his life.
But his real breakthrough came when he started writing down how he was going to accomplish the things he wanted to do. Instead of asking why he didn’t have the things he wanted and asked how he was going to get them.
- How do I go on more inspirational holidays?
- How do I have a closer relationship with my friends?
- How do I have a better body?
And then one day he went to a Starbucks he’d never been to before, with a brand new notebook, and wrote down the following question:
“How do I make $100 million in 12 months?”
At the time, he thought it was a crazy, CRAZY thing to try and do, but he did it anyway.
By doing 3 or 4 journaling sessions on how to make a 100 million dollars in 12 months, he figured out a way to do it, and he did it.
Patrick says to journal consistently. When he’s trying to solve a problem like how to make a certain amount of money in a specific time frame, he will do several one hour sessions where he is focused on this one question, without interruption.
He says that because he has ADD (attention deficit disorder) he has to write things down or he will forget them. He keeps his journals and writes down every thought and idea that he has concerning reaching his goal. If he doesn’t write it down, it doesn’t happen, which is why he writes down everything. EVERYTHING.
He forms a plan, perfects the plan, and then gets out there and DOES the plan. He’s all about taking action once he knows how he’s going to get his goal accomplished.
His next goal was to reach $1 Billion in 12 months. Sad to say, he didn’t reach his goal. He only reached $500 – 600 million in 24 months when he started iFlix.
That’s right – he built a company to half a billion dollars in 2 years, all because he kept journaling. As they say, if you reach for the stars, you may get to the moon.
Would you say he failed to reach his goal? Technically, yes, he did. But building a 500 million dollar company in 24 months is anything but a failure.
Patrick says to set such a crazy high goal, and then try to reach that goal, and if you only attain half that much, it will still be a pretty significant achievement.
Before you think that it’s been all sunshine and roses for Patrick, know that he lost nearly everything during the first dot com crash in 1999. He was 24 years old and had raised $20 million from investors, including his mother’s lifetime savings.
When the market crashed, his 23-year-old CFO told him they had $2 million in the bank and owed $6 million. His staff of 300 went down to 30 in one afternoon. He said to his mom that her money was gone. And when he went to bed at night, he hoped the building he was in would blow up when he was sleeping, so that he wouldn’t have to face the world the next morning.
Then he read Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins. Reading that book gave him the mindset and mental clarity to become more effective in communicating with himself. He learned how to train his brain to be better, stronger, and do what he needed to do to turn things around.
He’s now built five companies that he’s taken public, including one he sold to Rupert Murdoch for $700 million. His mother has all of her money back, and he has 3,000 employees. And he’s the chairman of 4 public companies, collectively worth over a billion dollars.
What can we take away from his example?
First, that no matter how dark things might be, we have the power to turn it around.
Second, find your inspiration from those who have gone before. Reading the Anthony Robbins book was all it took for Patrick to begin climbing back out of the hole he was in and going on to start five different highly successful public companies.
Third, journal your goals. Don’t ask “why,” as in “why don’t I have what I want.” Instead, ask “how?” “How can I reach my goal?”
Ask yourself – if my goal is only to accomplish 1/100th of what Patrick has done, what will that mean for me?
