Join the 21-Day Journaling Challenge for Overview Last week, I asked all of you what you wanted

to see for November s Challenge . Ma ny of you commented with excellent ideas, and from there, I cast a poll for you to vote for your top pick. 354 votes were casted, and the winner is clear a journ aling challengeis what we ll be having in this month of November! Introducing: 21-Day Journaling Challenge (#21DJC) Come next Monday, November 7, we ll be having a 21-Day Journaling Challenge! Are y ou ready? Because I sure am! Why Journal? 5 Key Benefits 1. Connect with your inner self . We re always busy with our daily life, rushing f rom one task to the next, never stopping to connect with our inner self. Journal ing helps you to (re)connect with that inner self, because it s when you peel off that external veneer and write from your heart. 2. Grow . It s undisputed that journalingis a fantastic tool for personal growth.T he blog at Personal Excellence is my personal, public journal, and writing here in the past 3 years has allowed me to gain so many revelations aboutmyself, and in turn grow as an individual. To be really honest with you, I doubt I d be as con scious as I am today if I hadn t been writing all these stuff at the blog. 3. Help you gain mental clarity . In Increase Your Mental Clarity in 15 Minutes , I shared a brain dumping exercise, where you expel the things circulating your mind so you can havea clearer mind for other tasks. Journaling is sort of the s ame thing. See it as sorting out the files and folders in your computer so it s ea sier for you to find what you want. 4. Improve your writing skills . Whether or not you re interested to be a writer, the fact is this writing is a key tool of communication, right next to speaking. Every day, we write to convey our message to others, be it in work, school, or personal life. And to improve your writing skills, you ve to first spend time in w riting in the first place! Think: To develop any talent, you need to invest your 10,000 hours . And what better way than through 21DJC?? 5. The 5th benefit is integral to joining 21DJC . By joining 21DJC and journalin g with a big group, you re going to get exposed to a whole lot more insights than journaling by yourself. You re going to be so much richer, wiser, and intelligent, because you ll have accessto the perspectives of hundreds of different people of different backgrounds, from all around the world. How s that for a mega boost in p ersonal growth?? How It s Going To Work It s simple. 1. Starting next Mon (Nov 7), which is Day 1 of the challenge, I ll be postingone question a day, for reflection. The question may be a very simple, benign questi on, to a deep, thought-provoking question. The intention is to get you to think, reflect, and write. Some questions will be loosely based on questions from the hit post, 101 Important Questions To Ask Yourself In Life . 2. Your task is to answer the question and share your answers via the comments a rea within the day itself. 1. Use as many or as few words as you like. I recommend to go for at least 30 wo rds; more if you can. That s because the more you type, the more you get to the de epest answers within you. Usually the top-level answers are just fluff; nothing more than mere conditioningfrom the society and media. It s the answers within you that we re looking for. 2. In each day s post, I ll include a simpletext box where you can type your answer in, for your convenience. I ll also include a word counter, just in case you want to know how many words you ve typed. 3. After typing your answers in the textbox, copy+paste in the day s comment area and share it with everyone else. 3. Besides just posting your answers, check out others answers too. Shareyour tho ughts. Discuss your answers. This is a group challenge, and we re all here to lear n and engage with oneanother! 4. The challenge will end after 21 days, which is 27 Nov, Sunday. I will close a

ll comments and 21DJC posts by 30 Nov, Wed. 8 Tips To Excel in 21DJC! How can you do well in 21DJC? Having been writing at Personal Excellence for 3 y ears, I ve a fair amount of experience when it comes to writing. Here are some tip s I have for you: 1. Just write whatever comes to mind. Seriously. Leave the editing for later. 2. Clear your mind first before you do your writing. This can be just a few seco nds of tuning in with yourself. Don t write while you re talking to your friend on t he phone, or while your parents are nagging at you, or while you are watching TV . That ll only result in pretty poor quality output. 3. If you re short of time, make use of time pockets. For example, when you re waiti ng for the bus/train; traveling to school/work; waiting in the queue; waiting fo r a meeting to start; ironing your clothes; and so on. 4. Don t worry about the number of words. It s okay if you have 10 wordsonly. It s oka y if you have over 100, 300, or 500 words even. Focus on conveying your desired message that s the key. 5. That said, write as much as you can to get to the deepest answers. As I menti oned above, the first answers are usually external, imposed messages . It s the an swers within you that we are looking for. You can delete the top level answers a fter you are done. 6. Since it s a public challenge where other members will be reading your answers, I seek your help to use proper capitalization, punctuation, spelling and gramma r where you can help it. Common English mistakes include using your instead of you re , dissappoint instead of disappoint , suppossed instead of supposed , occassion instea asional , and so on. Please also do not use chat speak and shorthands like d instead of the , mi instead of me , haf instead of have , and so on. It s pretty rude to type le passage laden with English mistakes and expect others toplough through that b ehemoth of errors. It s perfectly okay if English is not your first language. Howe ver, it s not okay though if you re just being lazy and inconsiderate. 7. Let your heart do the speaking. Don t worry about your command of English (see #6). We re not here to compete on whose English is the best! This is not an Englis h or writing competition. This challenge is all about journaling, self-reflectio n, and sharing of insights. 8. Since you may get special a-ha s through the course of 21DJC, you may want to cr eate a special 21DJC file to store your journal entries. Simply create a word or text document and save your entries inside every day as you type/share them her e at PE. How To Sign Up Regular challenge members should know the drill by now! 3 steps to sign up: 1. Sign up for the Personal Excellence newsletter and RSS Feed now . So you will receive all thetasks for the challenge The daily tasks will be delivered to you r inbox every day as they are posted. Signingup for the newsletter will also get you 2 members-exclusive ebooks, 101Things To Do Before You Die and Most Inspiri ng Quotes of All Time ! Not only that, you ll get a life-time access of free perso nal excellence articles from PE! 2. Spread the word about the challenge via emailing to a friend, liking on Faceb ook , retweeting on Twitter , voting on Google Plus and/or even posting on your blog if you own a blog. The more people we can get to join the challenge, themor e powerful the experience is for all of us!! There are the convenient share butt ons at the bottom of the post for this purpose. 3. Last but not least, post a comment here with your intention to sign up. Make sure your email is the same as the one you used to sign up for the Personal Exce llence newsletter in step #1. Once you do the 3 steps above, I ll update the participants list with your name wi thin 24 hours! Stay Connected! This is not compulsory, but staying connected with the community will enhance yo ur experience of the challenge. Many readers are on my social media pages, where I post latest updates on my life, including real time updates about challenges and more.

1. If you have Facebook: Join my Facebook page (over 3,200 readers to date!!) 2. If you have Twitter: Follow me on Twitter @celestinechua . Use #21DJCin your tweets so other participants who look up the hashtag can see your tweets too. 3. Blog comments: This is where all the discussion and sharing on the challenge will take place. Bookmark Personal Excellence and check by thecomments section o f the daily posts. Post as many replies as you want; askquestions; share your th oughts; add your 2 cents to others comments! Spread the Word! The best way to make this challenge a real success is to get as many people on b oard as possible. Those of you whohave been in previous challenges wouldhave exp erienced this When we havemore people doing the tasks with us, we generate more positive energy, we gain momentum, and all of us benefit together . We get more people sharingtheir results, their insights, and we learn so much more in the pr ocess.