131: The Creator of the Self-Mastery Journal & Habit-Tracker Journal – Dallen Reber
From Aspirations to Realizations is the theme of Dallen Reber the creator of the Self-Mastery Journal and Habit Tracker Journal. He is Dr. Brad Miller’s guest on Episode 131 of The Beyond Adversity Podcast.
DISCOVER YOUR PURPOSE: Live your life with purpose. Each page includes a journal prompt designed to discover what gives you energy. The more you understand the life you desire to create the more you understand who you need to be today.
LIVE WITH PASSION & WAKE UP FULL OF ENERGY: You deserve to create a life that excites you. Purposeful goals will lead you to a life of passion and energy every day. Stay focused on what matters (today) and your dream life is inevitable.
HABITS THAT MATTER: Included in this bundle is Habit-Tracker Mastery. Your weekly planner to establish weekly goals and habits to make progress inevitable. Tear the page out and place it where you will see it, or use it as a bookmark in your Self-Mastery Journal!
MADE EASY: There are too many complicated journals/planners out there. We simplified them into a journal that flows with ease, making it easy for you to master each moment.
LIVE STRESS & ANXIETY FREE: Journaling makes you happier. Beginning the day with gratitude creates a happy mindset. Making progress on your goals provides a sense of purpose. This bundle assures that you don’t allow stress and anxiety to get the best of you.
Dallen Reber the Creator of the Self-Mastery Journal & Habit-Tracker Journal is here to help you conquer overwhelm and confusion & discover your path to productivity and happiness.
January 2021
Dr. Brad Miller
Transcript of the Interview (note that the transcript was generated by AI software and there may be some typos)
Brad Miller 0:00
Dr. Brad Miller here with you on beyond adversity the podcast, where we feature helpful tips, opportunities and guidance from teachers to help you to overcome adverse conditions in your life and to achieve peace of mind, prosperity and purpose in your life. Our guest today is involved with something that is close to my heart, and that is journaling. journaling is a practice that I have used off and on in my life for since my teenage years and found to be very helpful in processing things personally and spiritually and decision making processes. And his name is dallin raber. And he is with us today he is developed something. He has processes called from aspirations to realizations. And he has a realization self mastery bundle, which is the place the intersection of gratitude and gratitude meeting productivity. It’s available on Amazon now and you could find more about him at Dellen raver.com Welcome to Beyond adversity. delen.
Dallen.Reber 1:13
Hey, Brad, appreciate you having me. I’m excited about this podcast. Love your message. And I’m excited to speak with you today.
Brad Miller 1:19
Well, I’m so glad that you’re with us today. As I mentioned, in our introductory comments, that journaling is something that I’m involved with, and, and enjoy doing. And sometimes I go and streaks where I go for a long time. And sometimes I miss for a while. But it is always important to have that discipline to doing that. And a part of what I like to teach is disciplines in life. And I’d like for us to for you to unpack a little bit how you got into this process in the first place. What I just believe that almost everybody has kind of some event happened to them or some something’s going on in their life that caused them to make a change to do something as important as journaling. Tell us your story. What were some transition points for you or some some obstacles that you needed to? To deal with?
Dallen.Reber 2:05
Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ll try to keep it short and sweet. So my story basically, you know, I went to graduate school got a master’s in exercise physiology. And I was working shortly after, as a sports scientist doing a lot of pretty cool research and, and long story short, I kind of you know, I quickly found out that although I like this job I love the people that I work with, it wasn’t something that truly gave me purpose, or made me super excited to wake up in the morning, I always felt like there was something more that I could do for the world. And so this made me You know, it took me down a series of events of introspection and discovering more about myself through reading, and, you know, spiritual practices like meditation and journaling, as well. And I ended up joining a group that was designed around journaling and learning how to journal correctly. And it was in this process where I was able to realize the impact that journaling can have because through this process, my my vision, my life vision, my personal vision, everything became much more clear. And once I felt like I had that clarity, then I felt like my day to day action made a lot more sense. And not only that it was purpose driven. So that’s something that I talk a lot about is purpose driven action, right? There’s a lot of time, where where we take action, but we find ourselves spinning our wheels, or we’re busy, we’re not productive. And one of the most beneficial beneficial things that we can do is, is discover more about ourselves and search for that purpose. And journaling is a great way to do that. So it’s a great way to dive into yourself and understand more about your truest desires and what it is what exactly your vision is. And then once you have that set in stone, it’s much easier to break it down and understand, you know, your day to day action and how you can not only gain ground towards this vision, but how you can be the best version of yourself today. And when you do that your action inherently brings us purpose with it. And you’re you feel this purpose on a day to day, which at least I did. And that’s one of the reasons that it was so impactful for me.
Brad Miller 4:15
That’s an awesome sharing of your story there. I’m going to go back with you just a piece of that before we move forward here. And you said you were relatively satisfied in your career and you’re plugging along and doing things in it. There had been some point of kind of, I sometimes I call it holy discontent, you know, where you just have that knowing sense of sensibility that that this isn’t where I need to be or something bad happens or whatever I sometimes in adverse conditions can happen to us. But to tell me about what was you mentioned that kind of vague terms, but was there a specific event that you just said, Okay, I can’t do this anymore. Gotta do something different.
Dallen.Reber 5:02
there absolutely was, I wouldn’t say it was in as much of an adverse event, but it was definitely something that was eye opening to me. But it was when my wife and I expect found out, we were expecting our second child. So this definitely caused me to look at things from a different light. At the time, I was unsatisfied with my job. And there were things that I wanted to do, and this and at this moment, to the whole idea of the journal, and, you know, this vision I had for it, and how it could impact people. I’d been kind of tinkering with it, but I hadn’t taken it completely serious yet. And at this moment, I, when we found out that we were expecting our second child, it made me look at it from, you know, 20 years down the road, how can I how would I be able to preach to my kids to have courage and chase their dreams and accomplish, you know, and really have the courage and discipline to create the life that they ultimately envision, if I didn’t have the courage to do so myself. So this definitely took me up a gear where I was able to take it much more seriously. And it was, you know, following this event, I started to get much more serious in my future, and the the risks that I had to take in order to basically bring this to fruition and actually take it from idea to product. You know,
Brad Miller 6:28
that’s what I was getting out there down, because I just think all of us have some pivotal moment, you know, it might be an answer, or it could be a good thing like this, or just life event happening, you know, and that can cause us, but the thing is, that a lot of people, those life events happen, and they still remain stuck, they remain in that place, because there is a sensibility of remaining comfortable or remaining what they’re used to. And then sometimes people end up living a life of regret or go down. Sometimes they go down, you know, unhealthy pathways, since I think part of the key to that is to how do you respond to that call? How do you do something about it, and that’s the tag taking action piece, took some action by taking a course or getting with a group of people, they’re telling you more about bold actions or actions that break out the pattern for you and what you advocate for others to do. You said you want to be an example to your kids. But what are some the bold steps that you took that you might advocate for others to take to break out of these patterns, they may be stuck in,
Dallen.Reber 7:36
you know, I think that the one of the most foundational things that we can do for change and for growth is is self awareness is cultivating habits and basically mindfulness of, of your day to day because I think each day there, there’s there’s definitely positives as well as negatives that we can take from that. And we can use that as a strength moving forward. So when you’re talking about taking bold action, in order to take bold action, you first need to be aware of that, right, and so you can’t change anything that you’re not aware of. So one of the things that I like to preach, and obviously goes back to journaling, right, one of the things that I do daily, and that prompt in my journal is at the end of every day, you write down one thing that went well today, and one thing that you can improve upon moving forward. And at least for myself, this has definitely helped me evaluate my areas in life where you know, I’m crushing it, as well as where I need more, more improvement in order to take bold action moving forward. So I think it all boils down to self awareness. And a lot of times that’s where people don’t spend time, right, they don’t take the time to reflect and to understand their their experiences. So and that that reminds me, one of the things that I think is important is learning from experience. We we talk all the time about, you know how important experience is, but what’s really important is dissecting this experience understanding it, because that through understanding your experiences, you can then apply it moving forward. And that’s something that, for me has been a game changer. And I think if a lot of people, if people put more time and emphasis in their self awareness, then they would become more aware of where they need to take bold action and how to do that moving forward. And they actually do it and they absolutely absolutely.
Brad Miller 9:38
That’s a part of the piece here I wanted to get with you about is you know, it’s when they be self aware there’s nothing to do something about it and sometimes even other people can even call you call attention to things you hate. You need to stop smoking, you need to lose weight, you need to stop kicking the dog, whatever it is, but you you need to do that but we don’t always do those things even if someone else calls it our Attention. But it’s so much more important when we when we become self aware, mindful, as you say, and then take some action, and you chose the tactic or the process of journaling. And I’ve just wonder what caused you to that particular medium, you know, other people do other ways to do and this might be reading great books. And I think we can do a lot of these things, or maybe prayer or meditation, or am I being music, any number of things that people have, but you were led to the medium of, of journaling? Tell us what led you there?
Dallen.Reber 10:34
Yeah. So I guess we’re reflecting back on my story a little bit is I did go through a bunch of different tactics, I tried to apply as many things as I could to basically learn more about myself, right, because I felt like there was misalignment between my inner desire and the action that I was taking. And the only way to create alignment was to understand my inner desires better. And so and when I when I say journaling, I’m also I guess, the way that I speak about journaling might be different than the way that most people interpret it. So a lot of people when they hear journaling, they, they what comes to mind is just a pen and a blank sheet of paper. Well, I think that the the most effective way to journal is to answer a specific question. So in my journal, you know, included in, I guess the definition of journaling includes goal setting, affirmation, gratitude, journaling, and practices for self awareness. But also, there’s journal prompts, that I refer to as purpose prompts, because the idea is to provide an alternate perspective, not only on the life you’re building, but the person you’re becoming. And in order to answer these questions, you have to first envision it. And as you do, so, your vision becomes much more concrete and clear. So this is through through these practices, these techniques. A, I felt like I had, you know, I would say, for me, it was a, it was a spiritual experience, where I was able to practice mindfulness, and I was able to become better aware of not only my surroundings, but myself, and what actually brings me joy, and what actually, you know, what brings the best out of me. And when I, when I did this, I had, I guess, a little paradigm shift, where instead of stressing about, you know, what I want to do for the rest of my life, or stressing about finding another job that, you know, that might satisfy my needs, I started to focus on the type of person that I wanted to become. And once I established and got granular on that person, I realized I could be that person today. And that, to me, was a pivotal moment that journaling was able to provide and in doing so, you know, in focusing more so on how I can be my best self today, it’s just, it just allowed me to, to gain momentum and to really, you know, create and, and move towards this ultimate vision.
Brad Miller 13:13
So what I’m here to say is, this is, you know, much more than diary entries, kind of, yeah, today, I, you know, did this and this, and, you know, I had activities here, this is about processing your life in many ways and being prompted to do so as you, as you say, the purpose prompts. And that’s a helpful piece of your product that you have produced here. And we’ll get into that into a second. You mentioned though, there download something, I think it’s important for us to, to touch on here about journaling. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring it up, and that is in the world I come from journaling is also a part of a spiritual practice, you know, it’s getting deeper in your spiritual walk, and it’s with a god or higher power or some way to process your inner life. That is an expression of how you, you have an outer life. So tell us a little bit about how journaling can be a part of a process of drawing on a higher power in your life for transformation to help you to come out of whatever you’re dealing with. And to come up with a better way tell us about the spiritual processes or the power of spirituality in journaling, as you already mentioned, was a process for you.
Dallen.Reber 14:28
Well, I think one of the big things when you’re speaking of a higher power is you know, the best thing that we can do is, is maximize our potential right is fine practices. A lot of people find it through religion a lot of people find it through meditation or nature or reading podcasts even, but as to find a medium that allows you to connect with your spiritual needs and then maximize your potential because I think, you know, a lot of people and myself included throughout throughout my experience, there’s many times where I had thoughts and ideas, but it didn’t become a reality until I sat with it. And I actually dove into it. And you know, this, my experience might be a way of journaling, and a lot of people might connect with this on through meditation, or religion, whatever it might be. But I think through identifying your spiritual needs, and and, and basically acting upon them, and you’re able to connect with your higher power through way of Mac of seeking your true potential. And that That, to me has been part of my experience. And why I say it’s been, you know, for me a spiritual experience, because I’ve found, I’ve found, basically, ways that I can access my my spiritual needs and act upon them. And I feel like when I do, so, I perform my best. And that That, to me is this spiritual connection with a higher power,
Brad Miller 16:05
that’s awesome, well, then, and I believe, if you’re going to have transformation in your life, you have to, you just can’t do it completely on your own, you have to him. And this is just my belief that you have to have a connection with a higher power in order to have transformation to take place, but we have to, we have to open ourselves up for that. And absolutely another aspect, I think, when life transformation takes place is and if we’re able to overcome adverse life conditions is through helpful and relationships, loving, powerful, nurturing relationships, I like to call it the fuel, which helps us to get through adverse conditions in our life. And I have found journaling to be a way to help process relationships sometimes, you know, challenging relationships, sometimes, you know, really beneficial relationships, but tell us about the place or purpose of journaling in terms of a human relationships and how that’s a part of the process here.
Dallen.Reber 17:15
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I love that, that perspective on it, one of the things and also liked what you said about, you know, connecting with the higher power and being open and willing to, to change, really. So I think that the, you know, the skill of being open to change is half the battle, because, you know, recognizing it, and then being open to change is oftentimes one of the most difficult things and, but when it comes to relationships, one of the, one of the references I like a lot is, is you can’t pour from an empty cup, right? So I think that through these practices, and getting self awareness and being open to change, you’re able to identify not only on a personal level, but at a family level on a relationship level where you might be lacking and where you can improve. So goal setting doesn’t just have to be for professional purposes, right? It can be How can I be a better husband today? How can I be a better father today, and one of the greatest benefits that I’ve personally experienced is the power of being present. So that’s one of the things that I enjoy most about gratitude journaling is it allows me to recognize the blessings and Ben and things that I do have in my life that I’m extremely grateful for. And to put my attention there, I found in the past, you know, there were times where I would be home, but I wouldn’t be present with my kids, because maybe there’s things on my mind and my wheels, wheels were spinning, but through gratitude journaling, and through practicing these techniques, it’s allowed me to enjoy this time, you know, the present moment that I have with my family and really focus on the memories and experiences that we’re creating together. And when you know, you’re talking about relationships, I think that’s the most powerful thing we can do is, is be present in the moment because that’s what’s ultimately going to strengthen those relationships. And that’s how you’re going to cultivate these memories and experiences that are going to help you come together and grow together.
Brad Miller 19:31
Interested you you say that Alan, I think in facing adverse life conditions, it’s often you have the sense of something’s been taken away from you, you know, something has been removed from you, it might be you know, right now or this COVID crisis. So it might be your health has been taken away from you or your livelihood has been taken away from you or a relationship has been disrupted or your your sense of peace of mind has been disrupted. We have that sense that versus taken away from us. And what I’m hearing you say is that if you look for the process and journaling in the relationship, you can look for what you do have, in gratitude, focus more on that instead of what you don’t have, and build on that. And then how that goes to attitude that goes to tone of voice that goes to how you treat people. And I think it goes back to one of your original premises of your journaling process was the impetus that your birth of your second child had, you want to be you want to be a better man, didn’t you? When?
Dallen.Reber 20:31
Absolutely, absolutely, I wanted to be able to be proud of the story that I’m creating for them, I want, you know, I want to be able to create the life that I envisioned for my family and, and be you know, one day be be able to have them reflect on my story. So that they’re not that they’re not timid to take risks that they can understand that challenges are part of the process. And it’s all about how you confront these
Brad Miller 20:59
challenges is taking risk and confronting challenges. Confronting adversity, is where there’s so many people remain remain stuck. And journaling is one way that you can process through this. And I think there’s a some other aspect of this I really want to talk to you about in because journaling is tough. And the sense of, you know, it does mean a discipline, you know, it does mean habit and building a habit here. And, you know, like any habit, whether it’s exercising, you know, or you said you come from the physical health world, whether it’s reading or education, or building a business, any number of things, it takes some discipline in order to do that. Tell us a little bit about how you journal and how you advocate people do that. And tell us a little bit about some of the disciplines or the habits or the processes that people can do, if they want to take this step forward to to do this in their life.
Dallen.Reber 22:02
Yeah, so I think that the most important thing for anybody who’s looking to get started and and this, this same advice can be applied to, like you said, like health or any other aspect of life, that that can be challenging, it’s beneficial, but it’s challenging. So so one of the most important things is to keep it simple. I that one of the reasons that I actually created this journal is because through my experience, I found that a lot of journals and planners out there are extremely complicated. And when something’s complicated, it’s really difficult to establish a habit out of it, especially if you’re starting from zero. So my goal in creating this was to be able to create a tool where people can, they can understand and learn from their past and apply that for their future while thriving in the moment, in the most simple way possible. Right. So the way that I have it set up is and and how I go about it is, I start my workday with my morning routine, which includes journaling, so I write down my, my three goals for the day, a positive affirmation, and then three gratitudes for the day, and then I’m done. So that takes me no more than three minutes. And that’s enough to get me in a in a mindful state to allow for productivity throughout the day. And then I end my day with two to three minutes of reflection, answering the two questions what went well today, and what can I improve upon moving forward. So this helps close things up. And I’m also able to transfer some notes, maybe to tomorrow that I don’t want to forget today. And this, this is actually a method that a lot of people refer to as the right and release effect. Because when you have a lot of thoughts in your head, they take up space in your brand. And this is oftentimes what causes you to not be in the present moment. But when you take those thoughts and you put them on paper, then you you can release it because now these thoughts, these ideas, these goals, they live on the piece of paper, and you understand that so you know that even if you forget about them, if you refer back to this paper, they’re they live there and they’ll never go forgotten. So I like to refer to my journal as the best memory I ever have. Because there’s so many times where you know, I tell myself just to remember something and I forget it more often than not, and but through you know this simple practice it not only helps me remember these tasks and these things that are important to me, but also it helps release it so now I’m able to put my focus on my loved ones around me and when I’m spending that time with them. So that’s it that’s it broken down is a few a few minutes in the morning a few minutes in the evening. And I think in doing so, at least for me it’s it’s definitely accelerated my progress and and my you know, my my ability to live in the present moment and maximize that to the best of my ability
Brad Miller 25:00
I agree with you on several points, you’re, you’re making their downline, which is, a lot of times are weak, and you have just all kinds of things tumbling around in our head, which then causes anxiety and all kinds of consternation. And if we just get it out of our head, on a piece of paper in a journal or for some of us as an audio type of thing, or other ways you can do it. Sometimes it’s just talking to your spouse or that kind of thing I haven’t, I believe you do need to get it out and record it somehow. Absolutely. And I think it gets out of your head. And then you can begins that release, as you say, process. And then I also agree with you that there’s a lot of journal type products that are out there, which are pretty complex, I got one A while back, you’re so go from a very well known writer who I’ve taken personal seminars with and things like this. And they produced a a journal, and I got it and there was seven different moving parts every day, multiple times a day. And I it was an immediate no go for me. It’s just too complicated for what I want to do. And, you know, I’m capable of holding a more than a couple of thoughts on the process. And but it wasn’t worth it. To me, it was too much energy, I want to do something that it produces energy. And that’s one of the things I wanted to speak to you about. Because you say in some of the things that you have your advocate in your in your product, self mastery bundle, is anomaly help you discover your purpose, but it helps you to wake up full of energy, and have passion in your life. How’s that work?
Dallen.Reber 26:42
Yeah, I think that all goes back to, to setting time to learn more about yourself. So the way that it worked for me was through the process of establishing my vision, what, you know, where do I want to be 1020 years from now? And getting really granular with that and getting detailed? how, you know, what, what type of husband do I want to be? What type of father friend do I want to be? And and then breaking that down? What How do I want my professional life to look, and then being able to break that down? Into You know, how, what does this mean, for my, my day to day, if I see myself 20 years from now, being healthy, being disciplined, confronting challenges with, you know, with positive energy, then what does that mean? Today, it means that I have to execute that today, right. And so when you are able to set this destination, then every turn that you make on your way, there makes a lot more sense. And, and when I when I reference, you know, being excited waking up in the morning, it’s because you know where you’re headed, and not only where you’re headed, but you know what needs to be done and why it needs to be done in order to get there. And once you have this, it provides you with a, you know, a burst of energy, a sense of, of momentum moving forward. And now instead of waking up stressing about what you’re going to do in the future, you know exactly what needs to be done in order to fill your day with more purpose and purpose driven action. So this, you know, it’s it’s a combination of things. But I think it all begins with with identifying not only professionally where you want to be, but personally the type of person that you want to become. And in doing so, you know, if you are fully focused on the type of person that you want to become today, then there’s nobody that’s going to convince me that professionally, you’re not going to see it in the way that you want to succeed, right. So it’s a little bit of flipping that script. And instead of stressing about your job, your income your you know, your future employment, and putting the focus on how you’re going to become your best self and be that person today. And in doing so, things will fall in place, things will and not only fall in place, but they’ll accelerate because you are executing at a high level.
Brad Miller 29:09
That’s awesome. Well, thank you for for sharing that. I was just wondering how that is going to work. Because what I’m really interested in is kind of a kind of a final thought to wrap things up in a way and that is how that’s going to help people in my audience and your audience to do some of these things, to have better habits to have passion and purpose in their life to wake up full of energy. If people pick up your product, if people go to your website, what are they going to find that’s going to be transformative for him. Tell us a bit about what you have to offer people.
Dallen.Reber 29:39
Yeah, so my product specifically it’s the self mastery bundle. So it comes with a daily journal that has the the techniques that I’ve referenced, daily goal setting affirmation, daily reflection, as well as a purpose prompt each day. And it’s a very simple layout. So it’s very easy to use. It’s a straight That only takes a few minutes. And then also, it’s bundled with a weekly tracker journal, a habit tracker journal. And the cool thing about this product is we’re solving a big problem, like we’ve talked about before, where a lot of these journals and planners are very complicated. And they require Not only that, not only do they have a lot of moving pieces, but a lot of flipping back and forth between pages that keep track of your goals and things that you’ve you’ve, you know, committed yourself to accomplish. But so with this habit, tracker journal, the weekly, the, there’s weekly goal setting, weekly habit setting, and you can remove these pages are perforated, so you can tear them out, you can place it where will be seen. So you’re mindful of these attributes, you’re trying to cultivate these, you know, goals that you’ve promised yourself that you’re going to achieve. And you can use it as a bookmark in your daily journal, anywhere that is convenient to you, you can put it so that, you know, it’s not out of sight out of mind, which I think is a big issue with a lot of the way we go about, you know, trying to accomplish things is we don’t we’re not efficient in that process. And in this inefficiency, things get lost in the mix.
Brad Miller 31:13
Yeah. I think that’s an interesting approach. So that’s at least I have not seen that. Maybe it’s out there. But hopefully, it’ll be a good Good, good thing for you. Any, any testimonials? Any stories of people who’ve been impacted by your work? I know you do some coaching as well. Do you have any reflections on that anyone out there who you’ve worked with?
Dallen.Reber 31:34
Yeah, you know, um, I guess my I’ve, I have a lot of testimonials, the people who have tested my product and actually really enjoyed the simplicity of it. So I guess no, no life changing event comes to mind. But the most dramatic thing, I think, from my perspective, is being able to hear from people and and their experience with using it and how that is, it helped them cultivate productive habits. And, you know, in regards to health, a lot of people use it as, as a habit tracker to establish healthy habits, a lot of people use it for learning. And so seeing the small changes, that changes that they can make on a daily basis, and then referring to this tool as being, you know, almost a seamless process for them to cultivate these habits has been something that’s, you know, impacted me as a creator. And not only that, I think that one of the most profound testimonials that I get is people enjoying their day to day more, right? They find that when they’ve been able to use this, they’re more mindful of their day the tasks that they need to do and, and not only do they accomplish them, but the the processes and the journeys much more enjoyable. So that’s, um, you know, that’s, yeah,
Brad Miller 32:56
well, that’s what you want to hear. You want people to respond to that and to be able to engage with your product on ongoing basis. So they can find your, the Self Realization self mastery bundle is available on Amazon, and they can also connect with you at your website. dallin raver.com. That’s dlnvr.com. Is that right? Yep, that’s correct. And so he’s all about from aspirations to realizations, particularly through the platform of journaling, and I commend his work to you. So thank you for being our guest today on beyond adversity. Our guest today from aspirations realizations. dallin raber