Want to make the most of your meditation practice? Ashley Wray is the Founder and CEO of Mala Collective and a meditation and mindfulness coach for high performers. She is sharing her practical wisdom to set up a post mediation journaling practice you will want to keep. This simple exercise can help enhance meditation benefits by capturing inspired thoughts, feelings and “aha moments!” as well.

Ashley Wray: “After I complete my meditation practice, I do 10 minutes of gratitude journaling and 10 minutes of reflective journaling.

Here’s how I set that up: The left page in my journal is dedicated to gratitude. My right page is dedicated to my reflections.

LEFT PAGE = GRATITUDE
With my gratitude page, I write out the things that I am grateful for. It can be free flowing, run on sentences or bullet points.

If you’re feeling grumpy or not in the mood to be doing gratitude, your gratitude list can start with more generic, physical objects around you.

• I’m grateful for this coffee.
• I’m grateful for this chair.
• I’m grateful for my home.
• I’m grateful for my friends.

It can also include more specific people, experiences, and reflections:

• I’m grateful that [insert name] remembered my birthday.
• I’m grateful that [insert name] was able to have lunch with me today.

And if you’re feeling expansive, it can also include the harder things to be grateful for like:

• I’m grateful that I went through that really hard breakup.
• I’m grateful for that huge thing that I thought that I wanted that didn’t come true for me.”

Ashley reminds us that the benefits of gratitude extend well beyond what we capture in our journals. “I do think the beautiful thing about gratitude is that it shifts us into a mindset of possibility and opportunity and abundance.”

RIGHT PAGE = REFLECTION
For the reflection exercise, Ashley suggests pulling one thing out of the gratitude page and writing about it for 10 minutes.

“Often, we seek out others for advice for ourselves, but I do believe we know best about who we really are and what we need to do. This part of the practice really allows that inner voice within us to speak.”

So much needed wisdom does indeed come from ourselves! Thank you, Ashley, for showing us this simple practice to help us hear these inner truths that want to speak to us.

MORE FROM ASHLEY WRAY

• Find out more about Ashley and how to work with her at ashleywray.co
• Shop Mala Collective. Use promocode: Seeking20 for the Seeking Center discount
• Free Meditation Series: visit Mala 5 Day Free Meditation Series

Listen to the entire Seeking Center conversation. (do we want to put graphic of episode and link?)