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133. Transforming Your Day Through Journaling with Marc and Angel Chernoff
120 Plays1 year ago
This week, we have a special treat for you as we welcome the incredible duo, Marc and Angel Chernoff, to the show. You’re probably already familiar with Marc and Angel through their blog, Marc and Angel Hack Life, and their many best-selling books. Marc and Angel are renowned authors, speakers, and most recently, the creators of The Good Morning Journal, a powerful tool designed to help you start your day with intention and positivity.
In this episode, we dive deep into the transformative power of morning rituals, discussing how The Good Morning Journal can enhance your mindset, productivity, and overall well-being. Marc and Angel share their insights on cultivating gratitude, setting meaningful intentions, and the importance of consistency in creating new habits.
If you enjoy this episode, please feel free to rate and review the podcast on whatever app you’re listening on, and share with a friend!
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CONNECT WITH MARC AND ANGEL
Website: marcandangel.com
Book: The Good Morning Journal
Instagram: @marcandangel
Facebook: facebook.com/marcandangelhacklife
CONNECT WITH THE SHOW
Website: WellnessAndWanderlust.net
Instagram: www.instagram.com/wellnessandwanderlustblog
Facebook: www.facebook.com/wellnessandwanderlustblog
Twitter: www.twitter.com/moses_says
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Transcript
Introduction to Wellness and Wanderlust
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the wellness and wanderlust podcast. We're here to demystify wellness and help you add a little adventure to your life. Tune in for a new episode every week, where we'll hear from incredible guests and talk about ways to be happier and healthier in our new normal. I'm your host, Valerie Moses. Let's get started.
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello there, friends. Thank you so much for joining me here at Wellness and Water List. This show is all about taking ownership of our lives and health through small but powerful steps. I'm so thankful that you've joined me here today, and I'm really excited to share this episode with you. It is a really fun one.
Meet Mark and Angel Chernoff
00:00:39
Speaker
This week, we have a special treat for you as we welcome the incredible duo Mark and Angel Shurnoff to the show. You're probably already familiar with Mark and Angel through their blog, Mark and Angel Hack Life, and their many bestselling books.
00:00:51
Speaker
Mark and Angel are renowned authors, speakers, and most recently, the creators of the Good Morning Journal, a powerful tool designed to help you start your day with intention and
The Power of Morning Rituals
00:01:00
Speaker
positivity. In this episode, we dive deep into the transformative power of morning rituals, discussing how the Good Morning Journal can enhance your mindset, productivity, and overall wellbeing. Mark and Angel share their insights on cultivating gratitude, setting meaningful intentions, and creating consistency in our habits.
00:01:17
Speaker
I'd like to thank Laird Superfood for sponsoring this episode. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that I'm always on the go and looking for quick lifestyle shifts that can make a major impact on my health. That is why I love Laird Superfood products. I'm a big fan of their functional mushroom coffee with chaga and lion's meen. It's a great way to boost my energy for the day while getting a lot more out of my cup.
00:01:38
Speaker
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00:01:59
Speaker
to fuel you from sunrise to sunset. Use our promo code wanderlust at checkout to save 15% off your purchase today. All right, my friends, now let's dive into this week's conversation.
00:02:09
Speaker
Hi, Mark and Angel. Thank you so much for joining us at Wellness & Wanderlust. We're thrilled to be here. Thanks for having us. Yes. Thank you, Valerie. Well, I'm so excited to have you both on. When I shared with listeners through social media that you guys were coming on the show, they were very, very excited and you guys have a lot of amazing work out there. So many of our listeners are probably already familiar, but for those who are not, why don't you introduce yourselves to our listeners and just tell them a little bit about how you got to where you are today.
From Hardship to Healing
00:02:37
Speaker
Sure. I can give you the quick elevator.
00:02:39
Speaker
We're Mark and Angel Shurnoff and we run the blog, Mark and Angel Hack Life, which was started all the way back in 2006. So it's like historic in the, or pretty historic, should I say, in the blog era. Blogging actually isn't as cool as Instagramming and TikToking and Snapchatting these days, but our journey started, we started our blog as a public accountability journal for some of the hardships we were going through at that time.
00:03:06
Speaker
So we were in our mid to late twenties at the time and you know, had never really had any significant hardships or losses in our lives. I mean, we had lost grandparents and so forth, but never anyone that was more our age or incredibly close to us who was passing away or, or struggling out of order. But in 2007 ish timeframe, we started running into some significant issues. The first was, you know, just the shift in the downturn of the economy. So angel lost her bread winning job.
00:03:33
Speaker
We were a newly married couple at the time, so there was a lot of financial stress that came onto our young family. And then as we were trying to cope with this, Angel's older brother died by suicide, unfortunately, deeply heartbreaking.
00:03:45
Speaker
And within two weeks of that, we lost a mutual best friend, Josh, to cardiac arrest at the age of 27, but it was driven by a severe asthma attack. And so we were incredibly close with him and his wife and their two kids. And all of that, again, just sort of happened back to back to back. The two deaths were actually incredibly close. So we, as a newly married couple,
00:04:09
Speaker
You know, instead of turning to each other for support, we kind of turned against each other. We were not having the conversations we needed to have. We were not supporting each other in the ways that we could support each other. And we were in kind of denial about the grief and the struggle that we were going through from all these different angles. And we both fell into what eventually was sort of diagnosed as, you know, mild to moderate depression. And so the therapist that we saw said, hey, listen, there's hope, of course, right? People struggle.
00:04:35
Speaker
But you guys have a lot of rituals in your life that are not serving you. And they were right, right? We were turning to substance abuse, you know, just alcohol. We were just numbing ourselves with binge-watching television. We were basically distracting ourselves from the pain and grief and struggle that we were dealing with instead of turning to it, right? Focusing on moving through it.
00:04:58
Speaker
And so what we discovered was that we needed to shift some of the rituals in our lives, not just starting new things, but actually replacing some of these negative rituals that were just band-aids and kind of our philosophical way of sweeping the pain under the rug and replace them with positive rituals. One of those rituals is why we were talking today, which is journaling. But there are other healthy rituals that we can talk about as well.
00:05:22
Speaker
And so we started this journey of blogging and writing about the things that we knew we needed to do, right? That our better judgment knew, our logical mind knew, but that we would just go right over our head in those moments of struggle. And so Mark and Angel Hack Life or markandangel.com was started as a public accountability journal, like here's what we're going through today, here's what we're feeling, and here's what we know we need to do for ourselves to move through this period of our lives.
00:05:49
Speaker
And again, that, I mean, that's a long time ago. Again, back in that 2007 into 08 timeframe. And from that point, I mean, you know, the blog kind of started as just a place for us to write for ourselves, but people found it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that stuff started taking off. Social media in general took off and people found the blog and, you know, left us comments. Hey, I resonate with that. I'm going through this. What do you think of my story?
00:06:11
Speaker
And so it turned into kind of a public support group, you know, where we, we brought people together. We hosted a free, you know, coaching sessions to get people talking to each other. They weren't so much coaching as it, again, as it was kind of community. And from there, you know, it turned into books and audio programs and eventually Penguin Random House gave us a book deal almost a decade after that. And one of our books, Getting Back to Happy hit the New York Times bestseller list back in 2018.
00:06:37
Speaker
And Angel and I still pinch ourselves because we didn't intend to be on this journey. This was definitely, we'll call it accidental entrepreneurship or even accidental authorship based on the pain that we were going through and the story we were living.
Transforming Pain into Purpose
00:06:50
Speaker
That is an incredible story and it's a theme that I find a lot of times on this podcast and with many of the guests that we have is that turning pain into purpose and finding that meaning and
00:07:01
Speaker
figuring out how we can use that to help other people. So I think that is amazing that you are able to not only make those changes in your own lives and use that accountability piece, but then to also pay that forward and to help other people who are struggling. Because when you're struggling, it is a lonely time and it really can be. And I think one of the worst things we can do is really isolate ourselves and not share or not have somebody to talk to in those moments or to give us those insights.
00:07:28
Speaker
Absolutely. And it's so tough, like when you're going through one of those seasons to see that that will help you get to where you need to go, right? Or be the pivot that you need in your life to go down a different path, right? But looking back, you can't, you know, Steve Jobs said it best when he said, you know, you can connect the dots looking backwards, but you can never connect the dots looking forward, but you have to continue to take one step in front of the other.
00:07:57
Speaker
You have to trust those dots behind you. And again, it's like none of us would choose pain and hardship as the way, but that's life. Life is actually filled with those kinds of twists and turns in our journey. And it's not saying, hey, this is what I would choose if given a choice, but it's saying, hey, this is the reality. You look at those dots going backwards. This is the reality of the journey. I had to walk. What can I learn from this? How can I grow through this? How can I use what I'm learning to make a difference in both of my lives and the lives I touch?
00:08:25
Speaker
I mean, it's always been a goal of Angel and I, like, as we've gotten a better handle on it. And it's one of the reasons we ultimately decided at some point to pursue this work full time, because we felt like it mattered, right? That helping people and making a difference. And like you said, making people aware, which I think our better judgment knows, but we forget in the heat of those really tough moments. We're not alone, right? We're all in this together. And a lot of us understand each other at those fundamental levels of struggle and loneliness and so forth.
00:08:55
Speaker
Oh, 100%. And it's so funny, my episode that came out this week, our guest was talking about feeling terminally unique. And I think that's something that we all deal with where nobody else could possibly understand what I'm going through. But when you actually talk to the people in your life or reach out to community, they do. And you'd be surprised at how much, and I've been surprised at how much that vulnerability and sharing and having those conversations has built my relationships and it's improved my life.
00:09:24
Speaker
in so many ways. Wish I didn't have to go through it, but. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more, right? Like you said, pain and hardship, we want to isolate.
00:09:34
Speaker
but we do group coaching and just having that community, we can see ourselves in other people's stories. And it's a reminder that we're not alone, right? Even those who don't want to be as vulnerable with a group of people, just sitting there and being present and listening to other people's stories, remind them like, oh, okay, I'm not the only one going through this, right?
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. And something that you kind of touched on a little bit as we're talking about going through these difficult moments, and this is 100% a conversation. I always say this, I have the conversations for this podcast when I need to be having them. It's always something that ends up happening in my life where I'm like, wow, this is
00:10:18
Speaker
It's divine timing for sure. But when you have that difficult moment in your newest book, and I would love to talk more about that, you're talking a little bit about how we strive to gain control. And there's only so much control we have. It's over the way that we personally are dealing with it, but we can't really control the circumstances.
00:10:37
Speaker
And I'd love to know a little bit more about how that resonates in your life and what some of the things are that you've done and some of those practices to take that control back for what it is that you can do and to accept kind of in the serenity prayer, but to accept the things that you can't.
Embracing Uncertainty and Mindfulness
00:10:54
Speaker
Absolutely. One thing again that we logically know that we do forget in those tough moments is that there's a lot we can't control and a lot of our pain comes from our resistance to that very truth. We expect life to be easier than it actually is. We expect the road to be straight. Getting from point A to point B is going to be a straight line. Logically, we know better, but it always surprises us.
00:11:18
Speaker
those twists and turns and curve balls, they surprise us. And so it's about grounding, right? I mean, that is really on a day-to-day basis. It's about grounding. It's about knowing in your heart and reminding yourself that we are not responsible for everything that happens to us in life, but we are responsible for undoing those self-defeating thinking and behavioral patterns that those circumstances create in us. And one of the easiest, we'll call it ways to access that clarity is through grounding practices.
00:11:48
Speaker
Right? So, you know, it's like in a world of things that you can't control, you can decide to sit down and close your eyes and focus on your breath for five minutes, right? A simple meditation, right? That's something that you can control. You can control how many reps you're going to do on this particular set of exercises at the gym.
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, there's a physical benefit to going to the gym, but the mental benefit of being able to control something for a short period of time in an otherwise chaotic world, maybe on a chaotic day, is incredibly grounding. At a simpler level, maybe just making the bed or washing the dishes or watering the plants in your house, just bringing some presence and focus towards something small that you can control. Doing it once or twice like that, it calms you.
00:12:34
Speaker
But being consistent with that, having the ritual of those kind
The Role of Journaling in Emotional Health
00:12:38
Speaker
of practices in your life helps ground you, helps you see, you know what, like there are little things that I can control. And then you can use that presence to step into things that are of deeper value to you. And that's kind of the key, ground yourself and then use that presence to step into the next
00:12:55
Speaker
you know, moments or the next conversation you're having with a family member or a work colleague or something with more presence, right? Putting your whole heart and soul into that moment, even though it might not be the thing that excites you the most. Yeah. It reminds me of the analogy that we use in our Getting Back to Happy book about being blindfolded and being thrown in a pool. So imagine you're blindfolded, right? You can't see. And you get thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool.
00:13:23
Speaker
Well, what would most of us do, right? Most of us would resist where we are and we would splash frantically, right? Trying to figure out where we're going, how to get to safety. We'd be resisting where we are, right? And so by resisting where we are, being blindfolded, splashing, looking for an edge that is not there, we could possibly drown in the midst of
00:13:50
Speaker
trying to find that edge that's nowhere close, right? Not knowing that we could accept where we are, realize that we are in a body of water and we can just float, right? And so leaning back, floating, and then once we're accepting where we are, what do we have control of? We can gradually move and shift and get to that edge, right?
00:14:20
Speaker
we can float again, so much comes from our resistance to where we are, right? And the wanting to control things that we can't control. But rather, what we need to do is accept where we are, and then gradually take those steps to get to where we need to be. It gives us the power puts us back in power, right? Even though no, we don't want to be pushed in that pool, right? philosophically, we want to have that blindfold on us. But
00:14:46
Speaker
But when we hit the water, we actually had all the tools we needed, like Angel said, all the tools we needed to center ourselves, to be right where we are so that we could, in a safe way, get to that edge of the pool. But our immediate reaction, and it's just a good philosophical example for other surprises that occur in our lives, our immediate reaction is to resist that circumstance, right? And what we do is we drown in the process of that resistance. And it's something that, again, with grounding,
00:15:15
Speaker
exercises and having the regular practice of doing this in little ways in your life you can you can bring more of that awareness into those surprise moments and you're just better equipped to handle those like you said it gives the power back to you right like the grounding exercises are what can you control and each of us may benefit from different grounding exercises right but the point of the exercise is just to bring presence into what you can do in this moment and
00:15:44
Speaker
and have control over, right? For Mark, it's like, all right, I'm gonna go to the gym, right? He has control over pushing the weights. For me, it's like, all right, let me do the dishes or do the laundry. Like, that's something I can do right now when I am feeling overwhelmed and out of control. And one that Angel and I have always used, again, is the practice of journaling, right? Just not denying those thoughts and those feelings. Hey, I'm gonna ground myself, and then if something's still bothering me, I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna acknowledge it. It doesn't mean I have to sort through it forever.
00:16:13
Speaker
But I'm gonna take five minutes and I'm just gonna write down what's in my head and heart. I'm gonna reflect here a little bit. And I don't need to coach myself or judge myself for having these thoughts, but I just want to acknowledge them and get them down. And then if I feel so inclined, I can go back later and address it. But acknowledgement of that, again, can be grounding. It's an important part of the equation, especially if you're, let's call it a longer term season that's filled with a little bit of struggle and stress.
Setting Intentions and Practicing Gratitude
00:16:42
Speaker
Well, I think that journaling piece is so huge. It's something that I've struggled at different points with getting into a consistent practice with. And it's something I'm really trying to cultivate a lot more of in my life now, because I find it's all energy that's swirling around. And if I can get that out on paper, if I can get that out somewhere, that's oftentimes half the battle just allows me to even think through what is it that I'm feeling and experiencing and not just
00:17:10
Speaker
having these very confusing, intense emotions and not really working through them. Mm hmm. Absolutely. Yeah, I think I mean, that's definitely a common, you know, fallacy in human thinking is that if I ignore it, it'll go away, right? I mean, that's just how we that's how we do it as human beings. And there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of benefit to focusing on gratitude, right? Our journal, The Good Morning Journal, which is our newest publication, like you mentioned, our newest book slash journal out,
00:17:47
Speaker
is not so much focused on just the happy side of things.
00:17:52
Speaker
We're multi-dimensional and our lives are multi-dimensional and there's difficult moments too. So having some kind of prompt or space to reflect on the things that are troubling you or the things that you're working on improving, right? Or just realizing and being able to see that although you're not there yet and you're resisting, again, wanting to be right where you are,
00:18:16
Speaker
the steps that you're taking are necessary, right? And you are making progress and being able to have a place to reflect where you can see just a little bit of that progress is important. All of life is just, again, it's multidimensional, it's full featured, it's real. So it's important to reflect in that way where you're looking at both sides of the equation.
00:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think it just allows you to make sense of things a little bit more. And looking through, I started the journal and even just thinking about things I need to embrace in myself, I was given a very difficult decision to make on a short turnaround time. And while I don't know how that's going to turn out in the long run, just even knowing, you know, even just getting out my thoughts on how I handled it and how proud I was of how I handled certain aspects of the situation that was very, very difficult for me and
00:19:06
Speaker
kind of, again, making sense of many feelings I had swirling around that rather than kind of pushing it down and being annoyed that I had to deal with it, but rather, okay, I dealt with it. What did I learn about myself? What did I uncover? What's next for me in this? And yeah, it made such a difference for me and it always does. And even just there are days where I know that I have a lot on my calendar and to think like I've had days where I ended up
00:19:31
Speaker
journaling about kind of an intention I had for getting through the day with everything kind of. And when I did start out with that positive intention or when I did start out with that time of reflection, things came a lot easier throughout the day. It was easier to handle if there was something
00:19:47
Speaker
you know, if there was a shake up or a challenge or something like that. So I think there's so much value in it. It's something I need to be more consistent with myself. And I'd love to know for you because this is one of those grounding practices. Talk to me about the role journaling has played in your life and if that was part of that 2007 time period, but how it's transitioned into your life overall over the years.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. During that dark season, it was important what we learned for us to journal what was going on in our head and heart, right? Because I think so often it's hard to articulate our feelings and our emotions and our thoughts. And I think during that season for us, it was important to get them down. And by bringing awareness, and this is actually a practice we have continued to use,
00:20:38
Speaker
By bringing awareness to our thoughts, we're able to ask ourselves a series of questions about, like, is this true, right? Because what we think we often see, right? Like, we make sure, like, our thoughts are accurate, so we're going to prove ourselves right based on what we're thinking. Like, everything first begins in our mind.
00:21:03
Speaker
And so by bringing awareness to where we go and what we're thinking about, and then questioning those thoughts, right? Is this all that is true? When I think this thought, how does it make me feel? If I could never think this thought again, what else would I see? Right? So journaling has been eye opening.
00:21:23
Speaker
for knowing where we go and what we're thinking about during certain seasons of our life. And the journal, the good morning journal that's out now, this is a way of providing thought provoking questions and powerful prompts to kind of set the tone for the day, right? All of them aren't heavy, right? Some of them are light, but it plants the seed of a topic
00:21:48
Speaker
and a mindset to step into the day. And so it's really healthy and eye-opening for each of us to put that in perspective, right? To plant these prompts and then step into the day thinking about them. Right. And I think the beauty of this too, I think in both of you are saying this,
00:22:07
Speaker
is that the action of journaling in the moment helps you in the moment, but also looking back when you're feeling more calm and collected and just without feeling like you have the pressure of, hey, right now I need to journal, or right now I need to get to the next thing, and kind of reflecting back on what you've written in your journal can be incredibly empowering, right? And to Angel's point, that's where you can then challenge some of what you've written down. So you've got
00:22:31
Speaker
some content there that's about how you were feeling in that moment, what you were going through on that day, what you were up against that morning maybe even. And you can put a different perspective. You can look back and you can just reading through it will give you some perspective, you know? Like maybe there was a pattern in that week of how you were feeling and you can learn things from just seeing the patterns, right? Seeing, putting that more calm, collected awareness of today against something that was troubling you or something that you were thinking or, you know,
00:23:01
Speaker
worried about maybe a week or two ago.
00:23:04
Speaker
And then you can challenge them to Angel's point, which is something Angel and I always do, which is like just simple questions, right? Just, again, just to bring perspective and like, what else is true besides this thing I'm looking at, knowing that, hey, when I'm in the heat of a moment, I have tunnel vision. And yes, it doesn't mean that that thing's not true, right? Could be a true thing that's happening, but there's more to my story and my life than that tunnel vision of what I'm focusing on. So what else is true? Like Angel said, like is this all that's true? When I think this thought, you know, who am I? How do I approach a day? How do I treat myself and others, you know?
00:23:34
Speaker
And yeah, absolutely, it's just perspective is everything and grounding ourselves through the, again, the regular ritual of that kind of perspective is important.
00:23:44
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I'm always amazed cause I think we think we know ourselves so well, but we get, we do get stuck in these patterns and find that maybe we're not living in alignment with who we are. I is, you know, something I've been struggling with recently. I was speaking with my mom and she said, actually, when you were like, I believed one very specific thing about myself. She said, actually, when you were a child, this is how you handled this, this, and this, and this was what
00:24:11
Speaker
before life and bills and all of that got in the way. And it really got me to thinking and reflecting on, well, how would that version of myself react and realizing that maybe this vision I have of who I am and how I quote unquote always handle things doesn't necessarily have to be true. And there is that room for growth and for change. And for you guys with the Good Morning Journal, I think it's so amazing just having having this practice
00:24:37
Speaker
Talk to me about how the journal works, how readers should go through it, and just the types of questions and prompts that they were looking
Flexible Journaling for Growth
00:24:45
Speaker
at. Yeah, absolutely. In doing our research in why some people journal, but there's also a lot of people that resist journaling, right? And one of the reasons that we found that most people are resisting journaling
00:25:00
Speaker
is because they think they're going to do it wrong. And that right there is so interesting. Like they think that it's got to look a certain way. And if they can't commit to like 30 minutes of writing something down, that's heavy.
00:25:15
Speaker
then, oh, they're not going to do it. And so I really love this journal, the Good Morning Journal, because there's no right or wrong way. There's no dates in it. So you don't have to beat yourself up if you accidentally skip a day. But it's just powerful prompts. So a lot of our readers that love our work, they love the little nuggets of wisdom or quotes or affirmations that were
00:25:41
Speaker
constantly posting on social media or on our website. And so it's filled with powerful quotes throughout the book mixed in with some articles and also some prompts. So, you know, just to give you an example of some of the prompts, one of them is, you know, what is your happiest childhood memory?
00:26:01
Speaker
what makes it so special. And so that's one of the examples. But you can also flip through the book. You don't have to do the prompts in order, right? You can flip through it. You can find a question that resonates with you that day. Another one is, what do you want more of in your life right now?
00:26:20
Speaker
What's the simplest way to get a little more of it? And again, I love these questions because they just plant the seed, right? And you can journal something, whatever comes to mind, or you know, you can also use it as a conversation starter. Like, you know what? This is a question I'm going to ask the people I interact with today, whether it's at work or whether it's with my family members, you can just use this as something you think about throughout the day, right? What do you want more of in your life right now?
00:26:49
Speaker
Again, what we think we see more of. So by planting that seed, right, we're going to be on the lookout for like, hmm, I'm going to sit with that today and see what comes to mind. And again, a lot of these questions I love too, you can use them like you're having family over or company over and just use them as conversation starters to have conversations that have a little bit more substance and you're able to get to know each other better.
00:27:16
Speaker
Yeah, we've always done that too. It's kind of funny, all of our journaling and the prompts that we've written for ourselves have always acted as both, right? Something that we do when we're in solitude, when we're just trying to self-reflect, and then something that we've actually used with our son and family, just as conversation starters. And I think I agree with Angel that this book is filled with a lot of those exact kind of questions. I think journaling as a practice too, just to answer a little bit more of your question, Valerie, maybe one of the biggest hidden benefits of sitting down with a journal like this is that
00:27:45
Speaker
It's not labeled by date, like Angel said, right? So it doesn't have to be an everyday thing, but you want to have a consistent, generally consistent, a few times a week. You want to be able to sit down and have a journaling practice. The space to write is small. So we're talking about, you know, a paragraph or two, right?
00:28:02
Speaker
small answers reflect more than you have to sit there and write for hours. You don't have to do that. But the practice of having something consistent like this that you do in your life, it feels good from the sense of accomplishment too, right? All of our little rituals, and this goes for everything else that we have in our life. Earlier we talked about grounding rituals. One of the hidden benefits of doing this beyond the incredible self-reflection that we have, feeling a little bit more a sense of control and presence, is that
00:28:30
Speaker
We gradually learn ourselves, especially if we're kind of struggling.
Consistency in Personal Development
00:28:33
Speaker
We learn, hey, you know what? I'm able to make progress here. I'm able to sort of finish and continue on with what I started. Wow, I can look back in my journal and look at all these entries. No, I haven't written every day, but I've written quite a bit more than I even remember. And seeing that feels good.
00:28:53
Speaker
And again, you gradually, like if you're going through one of those seasons where you're not feeling like enough, where you're feeling like falling a little bit short, having a place that you can turn, like, and it could be even looking back in a calendar or planner, right? A little things that you've accomplished, but having a place just to reflect on not just what I need to do going forward, but what I've reflected on and accomplished and been working on.
00:29:14
Speaker
is important. It's a way to restore faith in yourself. Your daily rituals are really a vehicle. If you're paying attention, if you're giving yourself credit where credit is due, which is, yeah, I'm doing the thing a little bit at a time, it really becomes a grounding exercise that allows you to actually restore the faith that you once had in yourself that you maybe lost a little bit of track of in the busyness, haste, and complexity of life. I wanted to mention that as a side note that I think that that's one of the absolute core benefits, and it's maybe a hidden benefit
00:29:44
Speaker
an underspoken benefit of journaling as a ritual, but also as just doing the little things consistently that matter to you in your life. I love that. I think it's such a confidence boost sometimes, A, to know that you're being consistent with a practice. I think when you're going through a difficult time, it really is hard to say, I'm going to commit to doing this every day or a few days a week, and it can feel a little bit out of control.
00:30:10
Speaker
And I think also to know that not only are you putting this time in for reflection, but when you do reflect back on what's written there too, it can be so eye-opening to see. When I see some of what I've done on paper, even though it would be great if I remembered that on a day-to-day basis, but I don't always. And sometimes to see on paper, oh my gosh, yes, I did do that, or I did believe that, or I did get from point A to point B.
00:30:37
Speaker
And how amazing that is and how much growth you experience through these challenges, even if you're not recognizing it in those moments. So I really love the idea of using that practice for those multiple benefits there. Yeah. And you know, day by day, it feels like nothing's changing.
00:30:56
Speaker
But when we look back, we realize so much is different. And so many of these prompts in here give you that time to do some self-reflection, right? To give yourself credit for where you are today. And so it really is giving you that ability to slow down.
00:31:14
Speaker
and get to know yourself better. Which is something inherently we know we probably didn't be doing, but we just, again, life gets away from us. And that's why we titled the new journal, the Good Morning Journal, because we do think, as you mentioned earlier, Valerie, if you can set that good foundation in the morning, and it doesn't have to be the early morning. Not everyone's an early morning person, but just generally at the beginning of your day. If you can
00:31:38
Speaker
kind of ground yourself. And again, bring your whole heart and soul into the moment, reflect for a few minutes, and then take that presence into the next thing you do. And we've found, at least in our personal lives, that it just makes a difference, right? It really does. Think of it as a practice that fills you up rather than another responsibility. I have to check off the to-do list, right? What fills this up for me? I enjoy my espresso machine and having my latte first thing in the morning with the journaling.
00:32:05
Speaker
So it's something that fills me up, not just another obligation.
00:32:11
Speaker
I love that. And I think, again, this is such an important practice. And I love the prompts that you have in the book and just the different nuggets of wisdom. And one that really stood out to me, and I think this ties into a lot of what we've been talking about, too, is that concept, I can't remember where it was in the book, but of living life as a bystander. And I think it's something that we end up on autopilot. And I've certainly been guilty of this. I'll kind of go with the flow and wherever the wind takes me and then you end up
00:32:39
Speaker
in a place or in a decision that you're not happy with and you're not even sure where you decided and I'd love to know how some of these practices how we can not live life as a bystander. Yeah. Well, I think again, that's the power of self reflection. Surely there's a lot as we've said that you can't control in life, but there's also a lot that we can write and our power is in not resisting the things we can't control. It's putting our focus on the things we can.
00:33:05
Speaker
right, and not pressuring ourselves to be any further down the road than we are right now. So we have to embrace where we're at. The self-reflection itself becomes a vehicle to notice some of those twists and turns in the road that we may have not even realized we took, like you just said, right? Sometimes I go with the flow, and going with the flow is a good thing on some levels, but you also have to have some boundaries to that flow, right? Because you can go with the flow of life, which can be generally healthy,
00:33:34
Speaker
But it has to be within the boundaries of what matters to you, what your high priorities are, within the boundaries of what you love and who you love and who you care about. So we have to have boundaries. And another big fallacy in human thinking is all or nothing. That it's all this or it's all that. Most things happen, as we know, in the gray area. But that's where boundaries come in. I don't want to be all with the flow of somebody else's agenda or all just in flow with whatever life's doing to me at that moment.
00:34:04
Speaker
I also want to have some boundaries that bring me back to the middle so that I'm flowing with life, but at the same time navigating it with my own personal rudder. Because that's how success and failure happens, right? The consistency of that. We as human beings, we over amplify the importance of those big defining moments in our lives and we underestimate the importance of doing the little things, right? The little rituals on a daily basis.
00:34:29
Speaker
Because that's how, again, success and failure happen in the same way. If you're thinking about a business that's failing, you'd say, okay, well, this business owner failed to check the books, the accounting books. They failed to listen to their customers. They failed to innovate. They failed to check their support email. And at some point, the business fails, but it wasn't one big catastrophic event. It didn't fail on the day the business failed. It was from all those little things that they didn't do or that they did do. Such is true in life. And success happens the same way.
00:34:57
Speaker
It's not just one big defining moment. It's all the little things that you're doing that move you in the right direction. So again, we want to say how do we, going back to what we talked about at the beginning, right? When Angel and I were stuck in that dark period of our lives, we realized that a lot of the rituals, a lot of the things that we were doing on a daily basis were actually moving us further away from progress and growth and healing.
00:35:21
Speaker
And what we needed to do was not start a bunch of new stuff and slam it on top of what was already there. We needed to prune out some of the rituals that were not serving us. Being really real with ourselves and say, what is it I want to change in my life? But maybe more importantly, what am I doing consistently that's actually got me stuck where I am? And again, that goes back to self reflection. We can't see that if we're not reflecting.
00:35:42
Speaker
But once we can get real with ourselves that we're actually doing things consistently that aren't serving us and aren't moving us in a positive direction, and in fact, keeping us stuck in situations we don't want to be in, then we can say, I can let those go a little. I can make room for more positive rituals, like journaling, maybe an exercise practice, maybe it's a job search or whatever it is, right? Or even a relationship search. Like I can start, or just investing more in relationships that matter, but I can start some new rituals with the time
00:36:10
Speaker
that I'm saving by not engaging in certain things that I'm doing by default. And again, I don't necessarily choose to do these things that are negative, but we get stuck in these default patterns and we don't even realize we're doing them. So that's, again, self-reflection on unearths that and brings that to our awareness, which allows us to make a lot of healthy shifts.
00:36:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's something I think a lot of times we get stuck because it's the devil you know, and you think, well, at least it's a painful thing, but it could be worse. And so I'm not going to make the change. And you had a line in the book that was something that it really, it really has resonated with me deeply lately about stop holding on to what hurts and start making room for what feels right. And it sounds like this type of practice really allows you to start making that space.
00:36:54
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, like you've been experiencing, we put labels on everything, right? Like you had one experience that maybe I identified you as this person and rather than saying, Hey, sometimes I do this, you now said, Hey, I am this and this is all I ever will be and therefore you go into every interaction and decision making.
00:37:19
Speaker
labeling yourself as this person who is x, y, and z, rather than, oh, sometimes I do this, but there's way more to the picture than that one moment. And we don't see it because, again, it's happening at a subconscious level.
00:37:34
Speaker
It's that feeling of not enoughness that a lot of us struggle with, right? And we do, we take those few dark moments or difficult moments and we somehow subconsciously like plaster them all over our ears. We use it as an umbrella to label everything and that's not accurate. It's not all that is true, right? Yeah, exactly. And so that's why again, the self-reflection can help you see that. It helps you broaden the focus, right? We won't go back to that tunnel vision.
00:38:02
Speaker
We all have tunnel vision as human beings, right? Especially when we're under stress or under pressure or something. We're just going through a busy season, but having that dedicated time, even just five to 10 minutes a day to do a little self-reflection, again, it doesn't even have to be every day, but a few times a week, it does help. It helps you broaden that focus so that you're saying, okay, yeah, there's a lot of real stuff that's in my focal point here.
00:38:25
Speaker
that is real, it's stressful, and I'm moving through it, but there's also a lot of other things in the periphery, and being able to see this stuff in the periphery too is helpful, right? Like that, hey, yeah, I made this mistake, but I'm not just a person who makes mistakes. I've also had a lot of great successes, right? So, again, it's like all or nothing thinking we've got to bring ourselves back to the center, and journaling can definitely be a tool for doing that. Well, and these prompts, again, I go back to they help you get to know yourself better, right?
00:38:54
Speaker
So they help to bring awareness to some of the things that you've forgotten that you're capable of for the growth that you've achieved over the many years. So it really is.
00:39:04
Speaker
amazing to bring awareness to some of these hidden thoughts and accomplishments that you don't give yourself credit for. Yeah. Yeah. I found that a lot of times just when I do journal that it almost opens me back. It's almost like talking to another person and getting that other perspective that not exactly outsider, but you're having to approach yourself in a different way and through a different lens and
00:39:29
Speaker
all of the things that your friends might remind you of or that you may, again, like seeing what you've done on paper and being able to evaluate it in that way, it makes such a difference and it provides so much clarity. Even just in a leadership class not too long ago, we were writing out our values and what we wanted to be known for. And it was something that kind of opened me back up to some things that I had forgotten about and I'd lost sight of.
00:39:55
Speaker
It's amazing to be able to get that clarity in a way that is if somebody were to ask me, are you living your truth and are you, what is your brand? And that might've been a difficult thing to, I think for a lot of us to wrap our minds around, but then to really be getting intentional and getting deeper into some of these specific questions and really reflecting on it, it gave me, again, so much clarity and so much self-knowledge that is allowing me to make different decisions.
00:40:22
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree. And again, I think the true beauty and the whole practice of that kind of self-reflection occurs when you do it consistently, right? Like in a day we have a few ahas, but the power again happens in what we do consistently. And that's how human change occurs. Maybe the silliest example of that would be like, if the three of us here had a, I don't know, let's say a plate full of donuts for dinner tonight, or on the flip side, a salad, right?
00:40:51
Speaker
No matter which week we had, we'd wake up tomorrow morning being the same people we are. Physically, we'd be exactly the same. Emmentally, we'd be the same. You might have a little belly ache from eating the dough. It shows that. But we'd generally be the same.
00:41:03
Speaker
Now, that's an isolated incident. If we did that every day for the next six months, if every night we had a plate full of donuts or some of us had a salad, we would be very different people. Those that ate the salad versus those that ate the donuts would be different. And even ourselves, if we compared ourselves for six months eating a salad versus six months of eating donuts, we'd be very different. Because again, that's the power of consistency. There's a compound effect of the things that we do over time.
00:41:28
Speaker
And so I think the same is true for the practice of journaling any small positive ritual in your life. Like you do it once and you'll have a few ahas, you'll have a moment of sensation on some level, but that's not the true beauty, the true beauty or the true power in something. And it can be negative as well as positive is what happens over the course of three months or six months.
00:41:51
Speaker
And they say a human being right now, I think the most modern research is 66 days, right? Like they used to say it was 21, but they had 66 days to form a human behavioral habit, something that we as a human being identifies with. So even thinking about journaling as being something that you would embrace in your life, don't expect yourself to embrace it by default in the first few days or even the first couple weeks.
00:42:12
Speaker
A human being takes about 66 days now, they're saying, to really embrace a human habit, to identify with a process. So you're not going to really be in flow with this for a couple months, right? Yeah. But that's okay. Again, just moving through it, you're going to find yourself, you're going to start to identify with it. And when you do, like Angel said earlier, you're going to find yourself, we promise, actually enjoying it. Sitting down for Angel is sitting down with her lattes and doing the morning journaling.
00:42:41
Speaker
I like tea, but it's like you're going to find your way. You're going to find your rhythm. Maybe you want to journal a little bit later, you know, in the morning. It doesn't have to be first thing in the morning, but either way, it's going to take a little time before you find that rhythm, but it's beautiful when you do. And again, knowing yourself to be consistent with something feels really good also.
00:42:57
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. And I, you know, this all reminds me of a quote, I think it's Aristotle, but I've heard other people attributed to, but that we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is a habit, not just one act. And it's so true that, you know, my dad would always say, what you do today, isn't going to show up for X amount of time. Like you have to keep
00:43:20
Speaker
building and doing it and not expecting an immediate result, but to take that time to really allow it to sink in and to have that long-term effect and that long-term thinking. Any other tips for just in general with journaling, really cultivating that practice and making it a consistent one?
00:43:36
Speaker
Just to piggyback off of what you just said, you know, another quote that I love is how you spend your days is how you spend your life. And so same thing, right? What we consistently do, good or bad, right, will compound and will add up. So yeah, I love that too. It reminds me like it's not again, Mark mentioned that in the beginning of our conversation is it's not one big defining moment, but the little things that we do on the daily. And so
00:44:04
Speaker
Yeah, journaling for me, again, I think it goes back to making it something you enjoy, right? It doesn't have to be, am I doing it right? Or another obligation. It is something that can be enjoyable, that can plant the seed
00:44:20
Speaker
for what you're thinking about going into the day, how you see yourself, how you see others. And so again, I make it a part of my morning ritual with my coffee. I sit down and again, for me, it's thought provoking, it makes me think, but then also I use that question
00:44:39
Speaker
to ask others that I interact with throughout the day, because it really it's different than the weather, right? Oh, what do you got going on this weekend? Like, how are you like the questions where there's just sometimes there's just no substance, right? And so these questions really break through.
00:44:57
Speaker
And again, help you get to know yourself a little bit better and others. And so removing or even asking yourself, what is my resistance to journaling, right? Maybe the term journaling just sounds heavy. It sounds like I've got to write a diary entry, right? And it doesn't have to be that. So maybe even, you know,
00:45:17
Speaker
changing the word journaling, right? Like, oh, this is my my writing practice, or this is my me time is slowing down and making it me time. So yeah, I think and that's I think that's the key right there is that it doesn't have like you having a little slice of time on your calendar daily for yourself for self reflection, right?
00:45:37
Speaker
You have your journal in front of you and you know what, if for some reason the pencil never hits the paper, that's okay. But just having that 10 minutes in your life to just think, to just be, to just reflect, maybe it's a little planning, maybe it's a little journaling. That should be something that's consistently baked into your life. Well, I think that's a great point that Mark brings up is even opening this. If there's the resistance to writing with a pen and paper in this journal, maybe it can just be reading the prompt.
00:46:05
Speaker
and making it a practice just to sit still and slow down for 10 minutes and thinking about that question, or even maybe do a voice memo. Journaling can look like however it needs to be for you. But the goal here is to really slow down and do some self-reflection. Right. That's the key. Do it in a way that works for you, but you want to be able to
00:46:33
Speaker
give yourself a little extra perspective. It doesn't have to be groundbreaking world shaking earth shattering perspective. But again, that perspective comes in time with the power of ritual. So having a consistent practice of giving yourself a little thoughtful perspective on your life and where you are and accomplishments that you've made and the things that you're up against and how you're stronger than you sometimes give yourself credit for.
00:46:55
Speaker
I mean, all of that, again, it compounds and it allows you to look into the periphery on those days when you need to look into the periphery the most to access the wisdom you need. So yeah, I'd say don't label it, don't pressure yourself, but just create that space for yourself. Maybe even have that space on your calendar every day, like a little 10 minute window that is just for you, for self-reflection, self-care.
00:47:13
Speaker
I love the idea of carving the calendar space. I live by my planner and all of that. So I really do love that. But I also, you know, I think those are all really great points. And I also love the idea, and I hadn't thought about this when I was reading it, but about just using these prompts to start conversations with the people in your lives. I think so often, I don't know how many times I've been to an event where there's the icebreaker question, but it's the dreaded, just tell me something interesting about yourself.
00:47:41
Speaker
like, oh my gosh, I don't know, but something like this where you could actually hone in and it can be a meaningful conversation. I think that's amazing. And I think that that can really open up, especially, you know, sometimes maybe in those icebreaker situations, but then of course with family and with people that you care about, it's an interesting question and conversation to be having. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think the power of questions is great. A lot of times there are no good answers. There are no good answers. There's just really great questions.
00:48:10
Speaker
And that's the key. I think the more we can get into the practice of self-inquiry, getting used to just asking ourselves questions and each other questions.
00:48:20
Speaker
Again, that's where perspective comes from. I mean, we might not have all the answers, but that's not the point. The point is to be willing and open to looking at things from different angles. Who knows? There might be one right answer, right? Maybe that's the reason it's no good answer, because maybe there's many good answers. Just because I'm right doesn't mean you're wrong. We can both be right in our own unique way, you know? But I do think that the
00:48:41
Speaker
the willingness to be open to asking questions, again, it opens us to seeing things from different angles. And that makes all the difference, especially as life throws us, again, those curve balls from time to time.
00:48:54
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think that the work you guys are doing, I mean, it's so amazing. I'm very excited about this book and just excited to get myself into this practice.
Closing Thoughts and Farewell
00:49:03
Speaker
Before we get into where listeners can find the book and a little bit more on that, I would love to ask you both a few rapid fire questions. We ask all the guests as well. Sure. Yeah, let's go for it. Wonderful. Um, so what is your favorite self-care practice right now? For me, it is a float spa. Um, have you ever heard of a float spa before?
00:49:24
Speaker
No. Okay. Well, let me tell you about it. So a float spa, and you can just Google float spa in your area. And it's floating in 10 inches of water. So imagine a bathtub and it's filled with a thousand pounds of Epsom salt, and you float effortlessly. And so they have these places called float spas.
00:49:49
Speaker
and you go there and you float in this pod, again, it's like a bathtub, you float effortlessly and you float there for 60 minutes. And it's a form, there are benefits, physical benefits for your body and your joints. But for me, I do it mostly for my mental health because the idea is you're there for 60 minutes and it's a form of meditation for me.
00:50:16
Speaker
And so you're there for 60 minutes minimum. And the reason it has to be 60 minutes is because it usually it takes 20 minutes just to quiet down our mind. And this space, doing this float spa for me every other week, this has been a practice that I have been doing for a couple of years now and I cannot recommend it enough. And I am so surprised that so many people are unaware of this, but it's just a form of self care and meditation for me because I'm in this space.
00:50:44
Speaker
For 60 minutes, I'm giving myself permission to be in this space without checking off my to-do list or running the errands or being go, go, go. But I'm forcing myself to slow down and be in this space. And again, with meditation, recognizing my thoughts, witnessing my thoughts without attaching to them and letting them go. And so it's not so much the act of that hour that I'm in the float spa that I love the most,
00:51:14
Speaker
But afterwards I have so much peace. I have a good idea of what I can control and what I can't control, right? I let a lot go. I'm less irritable. I'm more calm. And so for me, it has been a self-care practice.
00:51:29
Speaker
that has been so beneficial going forward that just brings me so much peace and patience that I highly recommend it for everyone. So it's something that I've implemented in my life and I don't foresee myself slowing down or stopping anytime soon. It has made a world of difference for her. And I've done it with her a few times. I don't think it's for everyone. I see the benefit for her. And even while I'm in there, I love it as well.
00:51:54
Speaker
I just don't feel as drawn to it, but I've seen the absolute positive ripple it's had in Angel's life and even how she shows up for family and everyone. So it's wonderful. I mean, I think that's the beauty, right? And it's finding the thing that works for you. On my end, it's simple, right? Every single day I get at least 45 minutes of exercise in. I have since I was like 16 years old and I'm 41 now. So it's just always been an important thing for me. And like Angel said, as much for the
00:52:22
Speaker
the mind as we've talked about as it is for the body. It's just very centering. Yeah. Oh, both of those are great. And I will definitely have to look for that. I love an Epsom salt bath. And so to do something like that, I mean, how incredible that is. And then the exercise, of course, a it's so important for every area of life. So definitely both great self care practices. And I'm going to have to see if there's a float spa.
00:52:46
Speaker
Yeah. Somewhere nearby. Just google full spa and your zip code and I'm sure things will pop up.
00:52:53
Speaker
It's one of those things, it's not well known, but the people who know about it usually love it. They're super relaxing spaces, too. They're very spa-esque, like a simplified little spa. Again, it's a super relaxing practice, for sure. There are so many other benefits, too. You're already familiar with Epsomstol. Epsomstol is really good as a de-stressor, also to help you sleep, also really good for joint and muscle pain. Again, there are also a bunch of physical
00:53:22
Speaker
benefits to in addition to the mental health. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. Now, for each of you, if you have a one word theme for the year, what is that word? One word, let's hear it. For me, it would be presence here and now. So much of my stresses come from thinking or planning something in the future, or dwelling on something that happened in the past.
00:53:47
Speaker
Um, and so for me, my word of the year, it's just presence, you know, being more present, being here, being here and, and, and being present being now. So again, that's such a simple thing, but not easy, you know, present is a hard practice if it's done consistently. So I agree with her a hundred percent. I'll throw another P in there. How about progress presence and progress? Just again, noticing both forward and backward, right? Like having.
00:54:14
Speaker
something we're working towards is small and consistent and also having a way of reflecting back and giving ourselves credit where credit's due for the progress we have in making.
00:54:23
Speaker
both great words, both great P words. And it's something, you know, the presence, that's something that I have struggled, I think many of us struggle with. It's so easy to get kind of distracted and start to focus on what could happen or what has, and instead using, you know, with the progress piece, like using it as more of a reflection when we're not like getting present in the moment, but then if we're going to be focusing one way or another, then focusing on using that toward that betterment or that growth. So I think that is,
00:54:53
Speaker
Both are great words. My final rapid fire for both of you. What are you most looking forward to right now? For me, we have a bucket list of checking off all 50 states in the US. And we only have 10 left. And this summer we are checking off two. So this summer we will be checking off Delaware and West Virginia. So I'm really looking forward to that.
00:55:22
Speaker
I'm looking forward to that as well and I think a slower paced but adventurous summer I think you know we're only in spring right now but
00:55:32
Speaker
Well, we're just back in rhythm and I think I'm excited for that. Just because of COVID and everything that occurred over the last few years, Angel and I were definitely thrown a little bit off rhythm. Like we hold an annual conference, like in-person conference called Think Better, Live Better. And we put it on hold for a couple of years. So we already, we did that less than a year ago for 2022 and we're gearing up for, you know, what the next one looks like.
00:55:56
Speaker
And just this summer, it just feels like already some of the plans that we've got and some of the things we're putting together, some of the things we've even done this springtime already have just been a little bit more normal, a little bit more and flowing in rhythm. So that just feels good. And I'm excited for how that's gonna continue to progress in the months ahead.
00:56:15
Speaker
I think just getting back to that sense of normalcy and the last few years have really thrown us off course in a lot of ways where I know I have no sense of time anymore. I never know if it's been, it may have been 10 years of this whole thing or it may have been, but in all honesty, yeah, there's so much where I've either been putting things on hold or trying to fill in everything at once now that we can go back to some of those things. And so that is nice to get back to a little bit more of that normal
00:56:42
Speaker
that normal way of living. I think that those are awesome things to be looking forward to. Now for our listeners that want to connect with you and learn more and who would like to learn more about the book as well, where can they find you and connect and find the book? Yeah, you can find the book everywhere books are sold, whether that's Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your favorite local bookstore. It's called the Good Morning Journal, powerful prompts and reflections to start every day. So you can find the book there.
00:57:12
Speaker
And you can find us on social media, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and also, you know, you can subscribe to our email newsletter and that you can just go directly to our website markandangel.com and that's mark, M-A-R-C and sign up for our newsletter. We are constantly pushing out new content, new articles two to three times a week. And so those get delivered directly to your inbox.
00:57:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's still kind of funny. It's still our core is just writing on the blog. So we're writing short stories about things we're going through, variations of things we're helping with our coaching groups, other people going through stories we've heard, and just how hopefully some fresh insights on life and the realness of it and the fact that we're not alone. So yeah, like Angel said, a couple blog posts per week delivered via email. So I would say just Google Mark and Angel and you'll find us up there.
00:58:11
Speaker
and check out our work and see if it's something that resonates with you. Wonderful. And I'm going to make sure to link all of that in the show notes as well. And I just would love to thank both of you for the work that you're doing, for the conversation that we've had today. I'm very excited to get into these journal prompts and yeah, for sharing your time and your energy with us. Oh, we appreciate you and appreciate being here. It's an absolute blessing. Yes. Thank you.
00:58:35
Speaker
Thank you all for tuning into this conversation with Mark and Angel Chernoff. I was so excited to have the opportunity to chat with them, and I'm a huge fan of The Good Morning Journal. I love the prompts in the book. So if you haven't snagged your copy yet, make sure you do so because the book is out now.
00:58:50
Speaker
I loved chatting with Mark and Angel. Our conversation left me feeling inspired and really wanting to embrace more intention in my morning routine, which is actually very fitting because my one word theme for the year for those who don't know is actually intention. So there were a lot of actionable takeaways in this episode and I'd love to know what resonated most with you. So drop me a line, let me know what you think.
00:59:11
Speaker
what you're looking to incorporate next. Don't forget, if you enjoy the show, if you enjoy this episode, leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're tuning in from. It helps us continue to bring you amazing guests like Mark and Angel and it helps us reach more people and make an even greater impact. Please make sure you share this episode with your friends, family, anyone you know that's looking to start their morning with purpose and with positivity. Thank you all again for being a part of this community and I can't wait to catch you next time.