Are you feeling more drained than filled up these days? Are you keeping a mental list in your head about things that tick you off? With this simple journaling exercise you’ll discover what fills you up and what drains you and find ways to take action based on your insights.
Why It’s Important to Know What Fills You Up & What Drains You
If you want to live a better life (don’t we all?!) you need to know what that better life is made up of for you. The things that fill you up are like little building blocks that all add to your better life.
Conversely, the things that drain you are building blocks that don’t fit with your building style. A giant slab of concrete right in the middle of your beautiful stone-walled cottage. These pieces are out of place and interfere with your enjoyment of life and your basic well-being.
You want to have as many things as possible that fill you up and as few as possible, that drains you.
Once you know exactly what those are you can find out how to incorporate more of what fills you up and less of what drains you.
You can’t get rid of everything that drains you but the goal with this journaling exercise is to give you tools to deal with those things and the awareness to know when you are facing them.
What You Need To Do The Journaling Exercise
You’ll need something to write on and with. You can do this on your computer, but I recommend using a pen and paper. For me at least, that allows me to dig deeper somehow.
You can print out the 7 pages long workbook for this exercise or do it in your personal journal. I like using my Hobonichi Techo Cousin* for this kind of exercise.
If you aren’t using the workbook you’ll need four blank pages to work on.
How To Do The “What Fills You Up & What Drains You” Journaling Exercise
Step One: Making The Lists
Print out the worksheets (or copy the layout into your journal) and begin with the two first pages in front of you.
I find it easiest, to begin by making a long list of everything you can think of that fills you up.
If you need some prompts to figure this out, try asking yourself the following questions:
- What gives you energy?
- What do you LOVE doing?
- Which people fill you up when you talk with them?
- Which items give you joy?
- What are some things you always look forward to?
As you are making the list of what fills you up, you’ll likely think of some things that absolutely don’t. Write those on the “What drains you?” list as they come to mind but stay focused on the “What fills you up?” list for now.
You will likely have a good amount of things to write down right away. Once you get those obvious things out of your system it’s time to sit with the list for a while.
Make a cup of tea, meditate for a few minutes, go for a walk in silence or take a luxurious shower. Basically, do something that grounds you and lets your mind work subconsciously. Then sit down with your list again and add whatever comes to mind now. Don’t skip this part. This is where the golden stuff is uncovered!
Once you feel like you’ve completed the “What fills you up?” list, you can move on to the “What drains you?” list. Hopefully, this list is shorter than the other and you likely already have some things jotted down on it.
If you need some prompts, try asking yourself these questions:
- What drains your energy?
- What do you HATE doing?
- Which people drain you when you talk with them?
- Which items make you cringe?
- What are some things you always dread doing?
As you can tell by the questions, you may have some things on this list that feel like opposites of what you wrote on your “What fills you up?” list. That’s fine, include them all. But you will probably have some other random things on there as well.
You’ll want to sit with this list as well. Let your subconsciousness work and dig out the deep things that really bother you.
You may have to do these exercises over a couple of days. Make sure you push past that initial feeling of running out of things to list. Once you have added several things to both lists after sitting with them you can move onto the next step.
Step Two: Using The Lists To Make Changes
Now that you have your lists on hand it’s time to make them work for you. You may have come to some deep realisations about what actually fills you up or drains you. While this awareness is great, action speaks louder than words on a page.
Begin by sorting your lists into categories. Do this for both lists.
Ask yourself the following questions for the “What fills you up?” list:
- Which of these things are entirely under my control?
- Which of these things depend on others?
- Which of these things are completely out of your control?
- Which of these things cost money? How much and how often?
- Which of these things are completely free?
- What are the top 5 things that fill me up?
- How can I add more of these into my day to day life?
Ask yourself the following questions for the “What drains you?” list:
- Which of these things are entirely under my control?
- Which of these things depend on others?
- Which of these things are completely out of your control?
- Can you delegate any of the things to others?
- Can you fix any of the things by spending some money and time? How much would it take?
- What are your top 5 offenders?
- How can you make sure to have less of these in your life?
Taking Action
When you have completed the journaling exercise you should have an idea of how you’d like to incorporate more of what fills you up into your life and how to rid your life of (or at least minimise) some of the things that drain you.
Some things will be easy to implement.
One of the things that drain me is having recycling items on the kitchen counter. That’s an easy fix. I simply need to make sure they are getting recycled each morning. That’s something I’m entirely in control of and it’s free to do.
Other things will be much more difficult and take a long time to implement. For me, one of these things that drain me is my wardrobe. I can’t just go out tomorrow and purchase an entirely new wardrobe but I can make a budget, start a style Pinterest board and begin to plan my purchases and slowly buy things.
Then there are things we have to come to terms with. I can’t control when the sun shines (something that fills me up) but I can make sure I get outside and soak it up when it shines. I also can’t control family drama (something that drains me) but I can focus on how I react and engage with it.
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