A future journal is basically a journal that you keep in order to write about the future. In it you will do all your dreaming, you will write down your aspiration for the future. This journal is for all your crazy dreams and desires, no matter how improbable they might seem. Your future journal is for thinking big; your genie lamp that allows you to put down on paper all of your desires, and all of your craziest and most intimate dreams.

I’m not sure if you have read at all about the fact that the act of making lists and setting goals has an incredible effect on your future? Studies have shown that those that make such lists and write down their goals are the only ones that actually get things done. And it seems that the goal setters and the list writers are a pretty frighteningly small number.

The act of writing is a very powerful tool. It takes those whimsical and disordered ghosts in your head and turns them into concrete ideas. And most historians and anthropologist believe that the invention of written language is in single biggest contribution to human development! Ever!

You need to write your dreams down or else they will never be anything more than fleeting phantoms in your head. I want to stay away from the idea that this is some kind of metaphysical exercise but this journal exercise works whether you believe in the law of attraction or the law of thermodynamics.

In order you get what you want; you first need to dare to dream big dreams, you need to make your dreams and desires concrete by getting them out of your head and on paper, you need to develop ideas on how to make your dreams real, you need to create timelines, you need to break the big things into smaller easier to handle tasks, and you need to take steps everyday toward your dreams, goals and desires. You begin this process by starting what I like to call the Future Journal.

When you go out and buy a journal for this task, I recommend that you get one that is inspirational to you. Perhaps you might want to get a journal that looks like an old tome, or perhaps one with a nice cover picture on it that is an inspiration to your life goals (a picture of a tropical beach somewhere has always been very inspirational to me). Also make sure that the book is easy to write in; having a good-looking journal is actually a very good thing but you also want to be able to be comfortable writing in it. If you find it a pain to write in, then you will never use it. Whatever kind of journal that you get, make sure that it’s special to you.

Every time that you write in your journal, you want to date your entry. For this reason, I prefer a journal with simple lined pages without dates, that way I can date it myself and if I don’t use it for a while, I can just start where I left off. If you plan on writing on it on multiple occasions throughout the day, then I recommend that you add time entries as well; for example, 01/01/2009-3:34pm.

The reason for this is that you want to be able to look back at your journal entries and you want to be able to see the exact date that you entered something. This is critical if you want to see where you are on specific timelines, or if you want to see how a certain future dream has matured over time. Are you the same person now that wrote that journal entry then?

When you begin to write in your journal, always write, “It is now this date and I have…” or, “it is now this date and I am…” Write as specifically as possible all of the things that you want, will have, will do, or whatever it is in the most specific way possible. Picture your future goal or desire as perfectly as possible and write down in as much detail as you can everything that you imagine. Make sure that you write and see this future goal in the present tense; that is don’t write about what you will do or what you will have but write it down by saying, “I now have…”, etc.

Once you have written your future, in the present tense, as descriptively and as precisely as possible; work backwards from the dream time to your present moment and write down what you will need to do to get your dream accomplished. Don’t get too complicated, just write what you need to do to get where you are now to where you want to be.

Do this for all your dreams, wants and desires. Just make sure that you do this in a pleasurable way, don’t work at it, just have fun exploring your future dreams.

I recommend that you do this exercise at least once every fourteen days. You can do it more often like every three days or even a number of times a day on certain occasion, but do not obsess over it. Make it fun and use “The Future Journal” to explore your own being.