We like to keep it fun and easy at Never Stay Stagnant. Who has the time for pages of instructions when you are an independent boss *ss b*tch, and living your best life? We kept our instructions simple in hopes that you take this freedom to create something amazing in your life.
Here are the instructions at the beginning of your journal:
That is all! We wanted this journal to focus on you and your journey with as much freedom as possible. There are various amounts of studies and articles like this one from the Huffington Post about the benefits of journaling, or this one from Psych Central, but we didn’t want to dive into all those topics at the start of your journey to make yourself proud. If you are interested and either reading this after or during your purchase of this journal then we have an inkling that you know journaling is beneficial to keep you accountable, and serves as a record of your progress through different challenges.
While we kept it short in your journal, we wanted to explain a little more to help you create better habits and live a fuller life. Throughout Make Yourself Proud, there are bullet journal style prompts to keep you thinking and evaluating your daily habits. While completing the same prompt each day could be fun for some, we wanted to switch it up while maintaining the themes of bettering your life in fitness, nutrition, mental health, career, and overall health habits. You’ll find throughout the journal that each week you focus on a different part of your daily habit.
Let’s get started and get ~deep~ about how you can use Make Yourself Proud to push your life in a positive direction.
Meal Planning
This easy to use meal prepping template is at the start of each week. When thinking about our health, we immediately started with our healthy eating habits. Meal prepping is a beneficial way to keep you on track for your nutrition goals as Oxygen explains in a recent article. We purposely only gave you room to prep 5-days because you need some fun in your life too. This is not a grocery list section but you can always use your meal planning to create your grocery list.
Sleep Tracking
Sleep is important. Your body needs sleep to complete certain functions, so it is important to ensure you are getting enough sleep each night. We always thought, “I sleep enough hours--one all-nighter isn’t going to hurt,” and then realized that it wasn’t just one all-nighter but on top of that, 5-hours on average the following nights--HELLO lack of attention and mood swings. Sleep has so many benefits to living a healthy lifestyle and reaching your goals--don’t sleep on sleep. If you want to reach your goals and own your life, get your Zz’s in as noted by Healthline with 10 different reasons why you should actually care. Each one of these Zz’s in the prompt count as a half-hour of sleep. Track your habit and see how it changes throughout your journal.
Hero-ship
While you shouldn’t compare yourself to others, we wanted to keep track of our hero’s/ inspirations and what they were doing. How did Bill Gates get to where he is? What does Sheryl Sandberg do every day to keep her life in growth mode? Look at people who are doing something you could only dream of right now and find one trait that you could adapt. We hope this gets you thinking about your daily habits a little more and puts important actions into your view.
Water Tracking
As the CDC explains here, drinking water has an infinite amount of benefits. You need water to survive and perform basic functions. It helps to create saliva, protects your tissues, spinal cord, and joints, helps to maximize physical performance, prevents constipation (yay for regularity), helps you lose weight (WHAT!), improves mood, and aid cognitive function just to name a few….Yeah we know that is a lot of benefits, so why are you depriving your body of this liquid gold. There isn’t a specific amount of water for everyone--with water, one size does not fit all. The amount of water you need is dependent on your age, physical activity level, body weight, and climate. We suggest starting with at least 70oz (8.5 cups) to keep your body ahead of dehydration. Have fun with filling your bottles and be reminded how amazing you are treating your body with all the water you are drinking.
Keep checking back for more updates on our different prompts to help guide you through your journal.
Don't stop until you're proud of the life you are living.