Why Men don’t Journal and Why they Should #670

Most men don’t avoid journaling because it doesn’t work.
They avoid it because they think it’s not for them.

In this episode, Lachlan Stuart breaks down why that belief nearly cost him clarity, resilience, and emotional control and how journaling became the tool that carried him through 58 consecutive marathons from Alaska to Brisbane.

You’ll learn:

• Why thoughts feel heavier when they stay in your head
• How writing slows thinking and restores control
• Why high-performing men are managing, not thriving
• How journaling builds a calm mind under pressure

This isn’t therapy.
It’s a control panel.

Links: 

• Speaking: https://www.lachlanstuart.com.au/speaking
• Scorecard: https://lachlan-p0moailx.scoreapp.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lachlanstuart/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lachlan-stuartmtc/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LachlanJStuart

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Men Avoid Journaling
• 1:45 A Coach’s Background And Credibility
• 3:30 Rethinking What Journaling Really Is
• 5:10 Early Pages And Vision Building
• 8:20 The Backpack Metaphor For Mental Load
• 10:30 Science Behind Expressive Writing
• 12:00 Making The Invisible Visible
• 13:30 IVF, Guilt, And Writing Through Strain
• 16:00 Calm Mind And The Core Four

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Journaling, that's enough for guys like me. I remember in 2014, I said it and I believed it too. 12 years and a dozen notebooks later, I've journaled through everything imaginable, including 58 marathons in 58 consecutive days. Those pages are some of the most valuable things that I own. And if you're watching this thinking journaling isn't for me either, I get it. Most men don't avoid journaling because it doesn't work. They avoid it because they think it's not for me. But here's what I got completely wrong and why that belief is quietly shutting the door on one of the most powerful tools that you can have. If you're here for the first time, I'm Lachlan Stewart, a life performance coach and keynote speaker based in Brisbane. And I have coached over 1200 men, and I'm also the guy who ran 58 consecutive marathons from Alaska to Brisbane. And through it all, the coaching, the running, and the challenges, the one tool that's made the biggest difference isn't what you'd expect, but is why you're probably watching this video. It's journaling. But let's be honest about why most men don't journal. Growing up, journaling looked like something made for the girls, you know, the colorful notebooks, the stickers on it, the emotional processing, feelings everywhere. As a young dude, I'm like, nah, keep that away from me. So we never learned how to use it properly. We wrote it off before we'd even tried it, and that belief quietly shut the door on one of the most powerful tools that us as men can have. And I was the exact same. Consider myself a practical dude. I worked with my hands, I did real work, so to speak, journaling. That wasn't in my toolkit. But then later in 2014, I went to a personal development seminar, and a lot of the people who were speaking on stages, the ones that I was looking up to, they kept saying, You should journal. And I just kept ignoring them. Then I saw it done differently. Not feelings everywhere, no poetry. Not that poetry is a bad thing, I actually quite like it now. Just questions, thoughts, plans, clarity. And later I heard one of the GOATs, the OGs of personal and professional development, Jim Rohn say something that changed everything. One of the greatest treasures that you can leave behind for future generations is your journals. Because they show how you thought and how you became who you became. I remember when I first started journaling later in 2014, and I can go back to some of my earlier journals, and I was writing more about what I wanted my life to look like, creating a vision, writing what my ideal day would look like, who I would need to become, how I would need to think. And as I continued to develop that process, I started writing out like business plans. I started sharing thoughts and challenges and doubts and all of those sorts of things. And it was really, really cool with how much it helped me move forward. And looking back, and this is an interesting part, but looking back at the things that I was either about, I was fearful of, they're not even really in my sphere of thought anymore. And it just proved to you that we go through seasons in life and things that worry us now will hopefully not worry us in the future. And so that's what really surprised me about journaling was it really slowed my thoughts down and allowed me to process it. And so that hit differently for me. So I gave it a go. And over the last 12 years, like 12 years, it's gone so fast. I've filled journal after journal. I'm not even kidding. I drove a box full of books, multiple boxes of books that I've read, but a box or half a box of journals that I've completed over the years, and that's not including the digital journaling I do on my iPad. And I took it up to my parents' place because I just didn't have space for it. But whenever I open it and read through it, man, it's nostalgic. Moments that once stressed me as I was saying, they don't touch me anymore. And ideas that were once messy finally made sense when I put them on paper. Big goals first appeared in those notebooks long before they became real. I've even journaled every day while running 58 marathons in 58 consecutive days from Alaska to Brisbane. Right? When I'd get off back in the van and I'd put my leg sleeves on, I'd start writing. I'd start writing about what the run meant, where we were, how my body felt, the thoughts that I had, the ideas that I had, the doubts that I had, and I'd just put them down. And those notes didn't just help me process what I was experiencing physically and mentally. I'm so grateful I did this, but they're now helping me write a book about the journey, and that will be out around April in 2026. And if you're wondering where you actually stand right now, across your health, your mindset, your purpose, your uh confidence, I created a free life performance scorecard that'll give you clarity in under four minutes, and the links in the description. So think of your mind like a backpack that you carry everywhere, right? It's stuck in your skull. Every worry you've ever voiced, every unfinished thought, every pressure that you don't talk about, you're just throwing them in that mind, in that backpack. And most men, we never take the backpack off. We just keep loading it day after day until the weight becomes normal. We become strong enough, apparently, to carry it. But journaling is taking that backpack off and laying everything out on the table. When thoughts are on paper, they lose their weight, they lose their power. They stop bouncing around your head, you can see them clearly, and you can decide what matters and what doesn't. And that is such a freeing feeling. You don't carry them all day anymore, and that's a rule that I want you to take away from this. The blank page isn't therapy, right? The book in front of you of that blank page doesn't need to be therapy, it is the control panel, and the man with the pen, which is you, you get to decide what matters. And this works, and there's plenty of science behind it as well. But research on expressive writing shows it reduces stress and anxiety and it will improve your emotional regulation. Many of us blokes need that, and it increases your self-awareness. Who would not love to be more aware of how you're showing up in the world, how people are perceiving you, what your challenges are, what you really want. Who wouldn't want that? So when you write down what's going on in your noggin, in your head, you're literally slowing down your thinking, you're creating the distance between you and the problem, which means you can look at it objectively, but you don't need the studies to feel it, and you know that. You feel it the first time you get something out of your head and you put it onto the page and you just look at it. The relief is immediate and the clarity, man, it's real, it is real. You feel like you can really take action on it. Here's what journaling does that nothing else can. Writing slows thinking down. Your brain, well, it can think faster than it can write. So when you write, you're forced to process one thought at a time instead of juggling 10 or 100 of them. And that's where the clarity lives. Thoughts on paper lose their power, and I said that earlier. When something's stuck in your head, it feels massive. But the moment you write it down, you realize it's actually quite, you know, not as big as you thought. You can actually see it for what it is. You can't solve what you can't see. And most men are trying to fix problems that they have not even defined yet. Journaling makes the invisible visible. Once you can see it, you can do something about it. There was a period on the 58 marathons. My wife and I had just started or just decided we were going to start IVF. And the very first night of the trip, where I was in Alaska and it was about 10 o'clock at night, and I get a phone call from my wife, and she's in hysterics, like she's just crying and sad. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on? And she shared how we'd made a mistake with one of the appointments for the IVF, and it meant we had to wait another month. And she was so upset, and I was I remember just thinking, like, there was nothing I could really say in that moment. I'm halfway across the world, and I feel her sadness, and it was horrible. And I felt guilty that I was about to take off on this adventure for the next couple of months. The next morning, when I got up just before my run, I just thought I'd draw a few things down, and the guilt was overwhelming me that morning. And when I started writing about it and going through that, my wife and I had spoken about it, and she wanted me to be out here and it was building towards our future. The words lost power, right? The guilt that I was experiencing or the guilt that I was holding myself to, it didn't disappear, but I had control over it. And then I was able to go down, have breakfast at the crew, and then get on and run the marathon. So there were plenty of days on that trip where sitting down and being able to process my thoughts helped me overcome it because when I was running for hours on end, man, the noise was wild. So being able to put it down on paper, slow it down, process it, put it in order was an incredible experience. And this is one of the exact reasons why I created that life scorecard that I mentioned. It takes less than four minutes, but it shows you where you're strong and where you're drifting across all four areas of the core four, which is a strong body, calm mind, clear purpose, and confident life. So there's no fixing, no judgment, just awareness. Grab it in the description. So this part really ties into what I call calm mind, one of those four pillars of the life performance core four framework. I wouldn't even call it a framework, actually, I just call it a system where it just keeps feeding back into itself. But what a calm mind isn't an empty mind, it's a clear mind, one that can think straight under pressure. Who doesn't want that? And one that isn't drowning in noise. And journaling is one of the simplest and most effective tools to get the get you there. And there is no right or wrong with how you do this. I think that was what held me back for such a long time. Most men think I don't know how to journal. What I've learned is there is no right process. The man holding the pen decides what the outcome is. So five minutes or 90 minutes, questions, goals, stress dumps, vision planning, processing, all of it is valid, right? Preparing for what's coming tomorrow, it all counts because the goal is to get you in the habit of it and knowing that you have this tool that can help you in any stressful moments or any down moments. Some days I personally join journal for like 10 minutes, and some days it's an hour. Some entries are just literally lists, and other days are paragraphs of streams of my thought, right? My thinking. But the point isn't to follow a formula unless you find something that consistently you're like, this is the thing. I fucking love this. The point is just to create the space, right? Space to think clearly, space to understand what you're feeling, space to decide what actually matters next. And here's the thing: journaling gives you the space without anyone else's opinion in the room, no filter, no performance, just you and just your truth in that moment. When I first started, I thought I had to have this perfect framework. And I remember I did play around with some over time when I was given them, and I would write every day, How am I feeling? What's going on? All of these things, and it kept me to a certain time limit. And what I found was some days I just didn't have the bandwidth to do it, I didn't have the capacity, maybe I didn't have the stress or the inspiration to do it, and so that stopped me doing it, but I kept coming back to it. And eventually, I you know, I made the decision that journaling to me was what I've shared with you. But even things that I've written about recently, like I can give you here's one. If we look at from later last year, this is earlier in this journey, mistakes that I've made. It's a question that's all I asked myself. And here was one of the answers. Feeling valued, seen and hurt is something that we all want yet rarely admit. I wanted to fit in, become so good they can't ignore. Uh sorry, I wanted to fit in, become so good they can't ignore you. I'm sure you've read that statement before. I dismissed it for a while thinking the right people will see my value, and this rarely happens. When I believed this, I was choosing to be a passenger in my own life. I watched people who had less natural talent achieve greater things than I was. Looking at this, it's become it's because they weren't waiting. They were telling the world what they'd wanted, they were learning what it took to be so great that people couldn't ignore them. They were learning how to tell themselves, people, and the world what they had to offer. And I won't bore you with all of that, but that was something, and like reading that now, I'm like, man, that's pretty relevant to me right now. So I think that's important that you start. I really do. If you're listening to this and you've listened to my podcast for long enough, you're wanting to improve your life, and the only way you can do it, you can listen and consume as much as you want. But if you don't start doing the output, meaning you change in your actions, nothing is really gonna ever change. You're not gonna get the feedback to go, actually, what Loki was saying was right, or actually, some of the things Loki was saying are relevant to me and some aren't. You don't need any more motivation because motivation isn't gonna help you in a couple of months' time. It's gonna be habit, it's gonna be process, it's gonna be the systems that do that. You need more space. You've got enough on your plate already, I can imagine, with the responsibilities that you have, and there is enough noise coming at you from every direction of life. What you don't have is a place where you can think without interruption, where you can be honest without consequences, where you can process what's actually going on instead of just managing it. And that's what the blank page gives you. Most high-performing men that I work with, and just most men that I work with, guys who are crushing it in their careers, leading teams, providing for their families, they're all carrying that backpack that I mentioned earlier, and it's packed bloody full. And they're still performing, they're still showing up, but inside they're managing, not thriving. They're not where they know they can be. They're successful and they know they need to fill themselves up, they know that they're running on empty and they know that something needs to change, but they just can't see it yet. And the blank page helps you see it. If this episode resonated with you, the next step isn't doing more. It's getting clear on what you actually are or where you actually are. So, in the description, take that life performance scorecard, literally under four minutes. It's free. And it might be the most honest conversation you have with yourself this week. Because here's what I know from having worked with hundreds, actually thousands of high-performing men. You can't improve what you can't measure, and you can't measure what you won't look at. The blank page is waiting, so is the next version of yourself. If this episode was helpful for you, subscribe to the channel, check out some of the other videos, make sure you share them, drop comments, do all of that sort of stuff because we're building something here for the men who want to perform at their best without burning out. The blank page doesn't judge, it just listens, and sometimes that is exactly what you need.