The Five Minute Journal Pdf

[Ozella Vires]

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I was missing something. It was purpose. I wanted to keep a journal because it was something that successful people did. But I didn't know why they did it or to what purpose. I never felt like I was getting anywhere.

Then I found the Five Minute Journal. I was listening to a Tim Ferriss Podcast and he suggested it as the single best thing that has helped a lot of his audience. What I loved about the pitch was the emphasis of gratitude. I am not a naturally grateful person and it is something I wanted to work on.

In the morning you write top three gratitude's and top three actions that will make the day great. It gets you thinking about what you love about life and how you will make today count first thing in the morning. No need to drone on with a bunch of words to fill the page. One sentence per item so 6 sentences in total.

The other side effect is that I feel a huge sense of accomplishment each day. It is easy for me to get caught in the day doing what others want me to do rather than being mindful in accomplishing my purpose. Spending these five minutes to journal is one way I can do something specific that helps me get in touch with what is important.

When your journal is ready, keep it somewhere handy to make it easy to add to your routine. Consider taking a few minutes before bed to jot down thoughts from the day, or set aside your phone while you sip your morning coffee and pick up your journal instead to spend a few moments setting the tone for the day ahead.

Avocado is a Certified B Corporation, a new kind of business that balances purpose and profit. We are legally required to consider the impact of our decisions on our workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. B Corporations are a community of leaders, driving a global movement of people using business as a force for good. B the change.

Alex talks a lot about gratitude, and the positive impact it can have. What better way to start than asking him what he's grateful for, and walking through how he's incorporated that philosophy into the Five Minute Journal.

Did you know that his favorite movie is Wallstreet. That's right. He didn't turn into Gordon Gekko, but he did have a side hustle that got him fired from a Canadian Bank. It turned out ok, though. Him and his wife, Mimi (another co-founder), went from unemployment to launching Luxy Hair, a company that successfully exited in 2018 with 250K customers in 165 countries.

He also talks about another brand he's launch called Love Hair. He talks about the differences between that and Luxy, and shares that he's looking for someone to join as a senior leader, possibly even to take over the management of the whole thing.

Today, I'm talking with Alex Ikonn, who is the co-founder at Luxy Hair; a DTC brand that started back in 2010 and now has over 250 thousand customers in 165 countries. He's also co-founded Intelligent Change, where he's building products to boost happiness and increase productivity. Thanks for joining us, Alex.

Oh, I'm really grateful for my life just in general; to be alive, to be healthy, I think, especially with all the craziness are always going on around the world. I think it's good to remind ourselves that we're healthy. And then I'm just grateful for my family; for my wife, my daughter. It's always the basics, you know?

Yeah, I think for myself with 5-minute Journal and we've kind of created one of the first guided journals. And what a guided journal really is; for a lot of people, it's overwhelming to fill out a blank journal from scratch and say, Okay, what do I write? What do I do?

And we were just kind of thinking for ourselves when we created the product is that I have realized that in my life, the thing that has helped me the most on my entrepreneurial journey is really my mindset. I think what really surprise most people is not just knowledge or wisdom, you can be very smart, but your mindset around how you approach problems or how you approach life can make all the difference.

And one of the most powerful mindsets that I have been able to gain over the years is the mindset of being grateful. And I think that the thing that most people don't understand is that you don't just become grateful overnight or you're just not just a grateful person; kind of like sort of thing that you're just born with. I'll say I myself, like many, grew up, not really appreciating my parents or appreciating my opportunity that I have or really where I am or being young and have the energy.

However, overtime, once I changed my mindset, I was able really to get more in life. That's the really funny thing with life, is that the more appreciative you are, the more things you actually see and get without kind of that expectation, of course.

If you want to stay healthy, you have to keep eating healthy and you have to make it more by lifestyle. How do you incorporate, for example, exercise in your daily life? Well, you have to think about it; whether you bike on your way to work or you go to the gym every day, that's how you kind of stay safe. It's the same for your diet.

Now, just talk about material success, I'm also talking about life; friendships, partnerships, love, you know, the whole shebang. And you have to have a statement that empowers you on a daily basis and remind yourself who you are.

And then in the eating portion, as we brush our teeth before we go to bed, we brush our mind before we go to bed. So, it just sort of recaps. So, it's the same thing; what are three amazing things that happened today? And you recall those things.

Because most people when go to the end of the day, they complain to their partners or anybody else or even to themselves. And like I said, create a lot of negative thought patterns in our mind. And once you have those negative thought patterns, they bring you down even more.

Now, we have two over 500 thousand customers of that product alone, more than 50 thousand customers of the product, activity planner. And I've also created a lot of other competitors in the space who have done really well as well. So, we kind of in a way, created an industry which has been great.

So, Mindset by Carol Dweck has definitely been a pivotal kind of idea and work for us. And this is the same thing as I really was speaking about is that idea fixed or growth mindset. Once you have a fixed mindset, you're like, Well, this is my level. This is where I'm at. I grew up in this area. My father was like this and I'm doing it still this way. And my parents call me stupid, so I'm stupid.

So, this idea of mindset is really how do we help people, and most importantly yourself, develop this mindset of always learning, of understanding that you can always improve and understanding that you can evolve as a person and that you're not fixed as an individual?

This is something that I, of course, I really believe in, because in my own life, this has worked for me so well. Because actually, I guess, while growing up, I wouldn't say let's say my father would me -- and it would really kind of motivate me in a positive way, he would actually like, to try to fix myself, sort of like compare me to my sister, call me that I'm not good at math and things like that and kind of really fix my mindset.

And to this day, I'm learning more. I love whether it'd be listening to audiobooks or podcasts like yours or read other books; always trying to see how I can improve and better myself as a human being.

Yeah. So, same thing, I think, as many entrepreneurs, but what I realize is that we're all over the place. I think especially being entrepreneurial, you may have many ideas or visions of how you want to create, but if you're just having visions and you're not executing, well, you're just hallucinating, as a famous kind of quote goes.

And what I would find myself over and over with having 20 plus tasks in a day is that most of the time, I'm just cherry picking the tasks that I want to do versus the tasks that I actually have to do that will help me kind of improve and grow maybe as myself or the business.

And then I got introduced to the Pomodoro Technique. And the book, The Pomodoro Technique is really about just doing one thing at a time and setting in for 25 minutes and doing just one task. And for me, that was really game changing.

And so, that's what we really did is we just combined Ivy Lee method of doing three to five tasks a day, do the your important task of the first and only then moving onto your second task. And utilizing the Pomodoro Technique by working in 25 or 30 minute chunks, taking a 5-minute break and then moving on.

And kind of that system has worked. Like since I just had an idea that helped me, put it together, and here we are with a quarter plus million customers who love and use the product. And now working on kind of new, improved editions, which I'm really excited about to be launching later on this year as well.

Well, what happened was I got fired. So, I was working at a bank because I thought, you know, that's what I do. I get, you know, where you are right now in Toronto, Canada, is especially, I think, now is changing with more entrepreneur culture.

The side was one of my friends, who was really also an entrepreneur and to this day, very successful in Toronto and still the same business actually, but just locally. He was from Australia; he knew people would want to buy cars from the US because there was arbitrage of when you import cars into the US to buy from US, like buy them at auctions, their savings, so you can kind of charge kind of a commission for that.

Being an entrepreneur is really when you create an organization or a system that can function without you. So, whether that is even if you're making sales or it's online or whatever, but it's really a business that can grow and function without just a single individual, especially you as the founder.

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