Review of The Hero’s Journal

The Hero’s Journal is a daily guided journal that uses well-researched productivity and goal setting practices combined with timeless storytelling techniques to turn your goal into an adventure! You become the hero of your own story as you accept your quest and engage with the journey of working toward your goal. I personally loved using this journal, and I’m excited to share a bit of my experience with you! In this post I will review The Hero’s Journal first edition, sharing 5 things I loved most about the journal and 1 thing I would personally change.

If you’d like to watch the video version of this post, click here to watch it on YouTube.

Note: I was gifted a journal to unbox & review, but all opinions in this post are my own honest thoughts.

 

5 Things I Loved Most About the Hero’s Journal

1. It turns your goal into an epic story.

“Well obviously,” you’re thinking after I just described it in the introduction. But I want to discuss this further because it’s really cool!

For those who’ve been around on my blog a while, you know I’m big into the power of story and specifically love using film to demonstrate personal growth lessons. I also made “Story” my “One Word” focus for 2020. So of course I’m in love with the concept behind this journal and how it’s set up!

Nick and Kyle of The Hero’s Journal wanted to create a planner that keeps people more engaged with the journey by incorporating key elements that make a great story (such as The Hero’s Journey) and taking inspiration from some of their own favorite stories such as The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Harry Potter. Except now YOU are the hero and YOUR journey is the story.

You also have a chance to write down your goal every single day to remind yourself of the bigger picture of what you’re working toward and the quest you’ve accepted. Dr. Gail Matthews, a clinical psychologist and professor at Dominican University, did a study on goals and found that a person is 42% more likely to achieve their goals just by writing them down!

So this journal uses a combination of scientifically backed techniques as well as time-tested elements of story to help you live out an epic adventure and accomplish your goals.

The journal immerses you further in this story experience through beautiful illustrations. Maybe it’s the artist in me, but I just LOVE using something that LOOKS really good.

I see so many people with gorgeous bullet journal layouts they designed themselves. In theory that sounds super fun!…but in reality I just don’t currently have the time, and I know I’d be a total perfectionist with it, which would cause me to spend more time prepping my planner for my goals than on actually working toward my goals.

So if you’re someone like me who loves art and creativity but just doesn’t have time to prioritize making something look pretty yourself (or perhaps you’re not an artist), this journal comes already beautifully and creatively designed on every single page!

 

2. The planner is undated.

Each page has blanks to put that day’s date, as well as a letter you can circle indicating what day of the week it is.

I LOVE the freedom and flexibility in this! If you want to use the journal every day, you can. But if you’re using the journal for a goal (like I did) that you’re not working on every single day, you can just use the pages on the days you DO work on your goal. Or perhaps you’re working on a daily goal but would like to take the weekends off. Your journal is always there waiting for you to pick back up where you left off. Being undated allows you to work toward your goal whenever you’d like without wasting any pages.

 

3. Starting your day with gratitude.

There are real psychological and physical benefits to learning to cultivate genuine gratitude. Psychology Today says, “Psychologists find that, over time, feeling grateful boosts happiness and fosters both physical and psychological health, even among those already struggling with mental health problems. Studies show that practicing gratitude curbs the use of words expressing negative emotions and shifts inner attention away from such negative emotions as resentment and envy, minimizing the possibility of ruminating over them (a hallmark of depression).”

It’s important to set goals to help keep us moving forward and growing, but we have to be careful to not let it turn into a feeling of discontentment and lacking. It’s a balance of being able to accept and be content with where we are without becoming complacent and settling for anything less than our full potential.

Practicing daily gratitude helps us with this.

We may long for the end result of our goal, but we can also still feel happy where we are by remembering what we have to be thankful for. We should aim for a target, enjoy the journey, and remember all that we have to be grateful for along the way.

 

4. Three focused tasks “to seize the day.”

I don’t know about you, but I tend to make ridiculously long to-do lists for myself. So it’s been super helpful and healthy to shift to the journal’s way of prioritizing 1-3 main tasks for my day. Then I can write anything extra in the notes for if I accomplish my main tasks and end up with extra time.

I think of it as a “Must Do” versus “To Do.” The 1-3 tasks I list in this section are my top priorities for that day. If I accomplish at least just these things, I can feel great about my day. And then everything else can wait until the next day or later that week. It really helps me prioritize and not overwhelm myself by trying to focus on too much at once. It makes it more manageable.

 

5. Regular journey reflection.

At the end of each section of the journal, there are reflection questions for you to answer. I appreciate these pages for 2 main reasons.

First of all, too often we plow ahead or go through way more trial and error than is necessary because we aren’t taking the time to reflect on what’s working and what’s NOT working and WHY.

Secondly, we often can feel down as we over-fixate on our mistakes, how we haven’t progressed as much as we’d like, or our desire for immediate gratification of reaching our goal RIGHT NOW. So pausing to look back can help us see and be grateful for the progress we’ve made. It’s important to celebrate all of our wins—big and small. It helps us to enjoy the journey more and find satisfaction in “the inbetween.”

It’s more about the journey than the destination anyway.

Seeing how much we’ve progressed also is a huge motivator to keep going. We may not realize how high we’ve climbed if we don’t ever pause to look back down the mountain.

 

1 Thing I Would Change About the Hero’s Journal

I looooove The Hero’s Journal, but there’s just one thing I personally could do without. I found myself hardly using the “Today’s Allies” and “Today’s Threats” sections. I think the concept behind it is brilliant! It’s so important to reflect on what people, places, and things are either having a positive or negative impact on us.

However, I think something like this might be good to list out just once a week or once at the end of each section. Having it on every single page became repetitive for me because many of my same allies or threats were either repeated or eradicated.

I’d personally like to see the “Today’s Threats” section on the right page taken out and the “Notes” section extended in its place. I could always use more writing space for notes. I’m not sure what should take the daily “Today’s Allies” space. Perhaps a section to record lessons learned that day or simply more illustrations?

Now this is just my own personal preference. Others might really like and benefit listing allies and threats every single day. So take this opinion with a grain of salt.

 

Overall, I’m kind of freakin in love with this journal!!! And I can’t wait to start my next adventure with their updated version that’s coming soon!

If you’d like to get one for yourself, go to TheHerosJournal.co and make sure to follow them along on Instagram too!

Comment below to tell me what goal adventure you’d use a Hero’s Journal for!