why 28X exists
Around six years ago, during a period when I felt lost and unsure, I began journaling to try and understand myself better.
I started creating exercises to help me work through what I wanted to know, what I needed to untangle, and ultimately figure out a bit of direction for myself.
Friends started asking for the exercises I'd created.
I made the ‘first versions’ in 2024, cobbling together my favorite exercises and methods.
Since then, what began as something personal has been developed into a considered, structured journal, with a deliberate progression from one exercise to the next. The original foundations remain, including the Mojo Wheel and the four-part chapter structure, but the exercises have been brought together into a more coherent journey.
28X began with my own search for self-understanding. It's built around the belief that the better we understand ourselves, the better equipped we are to decide how we want to live.
why journaling
The only person to know you completely - is you.
Hence: you are the expert of your own life.
Other people can offer perspective, guidance and support, but no one else can know your inner world as you do – understanding who you are, what matters to you and what you want requires you to look inward.
Talking things through helped me enormously, but journaling gave me the opportunity to ask myself my own questions, sit with the answers, refine and review, implement and integrate.
Writing things down slowed my mind, whilst giving my thoughts somewhere somewhere to land. Seeing them on paper exposed patterns, contradictions and answers.
I saw connections that had been difficult to recognise in my head, and things that I would otherwise have missed were obvious.
And unlike a passing thought, something written down can be revisited. You can return to it, question it, add to it and see how your understanding changes over time.
That became the foundation of 28X: creation of space to think for yourself, so you can begin to understand yourself "in your own words", develop that understanding over time as you uncover the layers, and build upon these strong foundations in whichever direction is most aligned.
this journal is different
This journal brings 28 unique exercises into a progressive format. The 7 chapters build on one another, from awareness (though vision, values, strength, and more) through to alignment, and within those chapters, the exercises follow a four-part-rhythm: ground → aim → act → review.
So as you move through the journal, you are constantly learning, constantly evolving, growing and progressing, page by page.
This is not a journal with the same prompt every day. There are no; morning and evening repeated exercises, nor will you write ‘daily gratitude’ exercise, nor affirmations 50 times.
These all have their place, but this isn’t that type of journal.
This is a guided journal.
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Each exercise is functional; unique and different in it’s own way, serving 28 intentional purposes.
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Every exercise is explained, followed by a page for you to respond. Your writing page has been designed to facilitate the type of response required (ie some might require listing, or a certain 3-part structure. Some exercises are designed to respond in table-format; with specific columns and headings to match. Whatever is required of your response, has been designed too.
Thus, the exercise and the response pages are guided.
The aim isn’t to tell you what you should do or how you should live your life,
its to help you work out your best, for yourself.
where 28X is going
your self is literally just the start.
But just like your self, what a very good place to start.
The first 28X journal is about understanding yourself: building a clearer picture of who you are, what matters to you, what you want and how you want to live.
Future journals will take that foundation into other areas of life, from self-optimisation, productivity, female cycle tracking and syncing, sleep, to a travel journal, dream journal, pregnancy journal, and beyond.
Each will have its own focus, exercises and structure, built around the same underlying philosophy; self-understanding isn't an end point, it's a foundation you can keep building on.
Understand yourself. Then build from there.
In whatever direction matters to you, or whichever phase of life you’re in.
This is the philosophy behind 28X: