Why I Keep a Gratitude Journal Just for My Career Wins

After nearly two decades of presenting live breakfast television, I learned something the hard way. The big moments — the interview that moved a nation, the book launch, the standing ovation — would blur into the next deadline before I had even taken a breath. Somewhere between voicing a breaking news package in a Sydney studio at 4am and rushing to a school assembly, the milestones were passing me by. So I started keeping a separate journal, just for them. It is not my daily diary, not my therapy notes, and definitely not my to-do list. It sits in a navy-blue notebook on my desk and it holds one thing only: career milestones I am genuinely proud of.

A gratitude journal for career milestones is a specific kind of record. It is not a brag sheet I wave around at networking events. It is a private, deliberate pause. When I land a new contract, finish a chapter, or have a conversation that shifts a young woman's view of her own career, I write it down with the date and the small details that mattered. The latte at a café in Surry Hills after a particularly tough negotiation. The text my mum sent. The exact phrasing of a question that told me the message had landed.

Looking back over those pages now, the entries read like a very honest CV of who I have been becoming. They are also a quiet antidote to the inner critic that has, frankly, kept me company for most of my working life. If you have ever finished a project, immediately forgotten it, and wondered whether any of it counted — this practice is for you. I will walk you through how I do it, what I include, and why it has quietly reshaped how I think about success.

The Practice Started the Day I Almost Missed My Own Book Launch

My first memoir came out in the middle of a ratings season. I remember flying back from a regional tour on a Tuesday, walking into a London bookshop on Wednesday for the launch, then being back on a 5am alarm for a regional affiliate hit on Thursday. By the following Monday, the only thing I could recall was the delayed flight from Tullamarine and the journalist who had mixed up the title mid-interview. I had no clear memory of the actual launch. None.

That bothered me more than I expected. I had spent eighteen months writing the thing. I had been genuinely moved by messages from readers, including women I had met at a small signing in Newtown who stayed for hours. Yet the milestone itself had evaporated. So that weekend, between coffee and a load of washing, I wrote down everything I could remember, even the tiniest details. I cried a little. Not from sadness. From the relief of being allowed to mark it.

When I read it back a month later, I noticed my shoulders drop. I looked up the entry again during a stretch when pitches were being rejected and even an early morning in Melbourne felt heavy. The practice had started without me really meaning it to. I now do it for almost every meaningful career milestone, no matter how unsexy it looks on paper.

What Actually Goes Into the Notebook

People sometimes ask if it is a corporate thank-you note, and I get why. The short answer is no. The longer answer is that the entries follow a loose pattern: the date, the milestone in one line, two or three sensory details, and a sentence about how I felt afterwards. I do not write about money, viewer figures, or sales numbers unless they genuinely moved me. Numbers can flatter or haunt, and I do not want my self-worth kept in a spreadsheet.

What I leave out is just as important. I do not include gossip, comparisons to other broadcasters, or anything that might wound someone else if the journal were ever lost. The notebook is a record of my own growth, not a verdict on anyone else's. Some entries are triumphant. Some are relieved. A few, around the time of my divorce or a particularly bruising boardroom conversation, read more like an acknowledgement that I had survived something rather than celebrated it.

If you are wondering how this differs from a normal gratitude diary, the rough distinction I work with looks like this.

It Quietly Pushed Back on the Voice Telling Me I Was Not Good Enough

I have written elsewhere about how to design a personal mission statement that actually sticks, and my mission to use my voice for women who do not feel heard is the north star I check everything against. What the milestone journal does is something slightly different. It collects the evidence that I am living that mission out, page by page. There is a particular kind of strength you can draw from reading, in your own handwriting, that you did the thing. It is harder to dismiss than a compliment from a stranger.

For years, the voice in my head told me that any success was an accident, the result of being in the right studio at the right moment, or of someone else's hard work. Reading back through entries where I had pitched the segment, chosen the framing, and handled the live moment with grace began to erode the accident theory. The wins started to feel owned. They still feel a bit lucky, honestly. They always will, I think. But they also feel earned.

When the inner critic pipes up, which it does around every major pitch and speaking gig, I now have receipts. Not the boastful kind. The grounded, slightly soft kind that says: you have done this before, you can do it again, here is exactly how you felt afterwards.

Pairing the Practice With a Clearer Sense of Direction

The journal works best for me when it is paired with a written sense of what I am aiming for in the first place. Without a mission, a milestone is just a moment. With one, it becomes evidence of a direction being travelled. I revisit mine a couple of times a year, usually over a cup of tea on a Sunday arvo, and I cross-check whether the entries from the previous six months are pointing me where I want to go. If they are not, that tells me something useful.

This is also where the discipline of writing things down outranks any mood-board. A journal tells me in two years' time whether the work I did this year aligned with the person I wanted to become. My mission statement is the destination. The journal is the logbook.

Networking Without the Small Talk Drain

Anyone who has spent ten minutes at a corporate networking event knows the particular exhaustion of pretending to care about someone's golf handicap. I have learned that the most useful professional conversations for me happen when I lead with what I actually care about. There is a way to network authentically when you hate small talk, and I lean into it because my journal reminds me that the conversations worth having leave me buzzing, not drained.

Networking in Australia has a particular rhythm, partly because of the mateship culture that still quietly shapes how professional rooms operate. People here tend to skew more direct than my British instincts suggest, and a flat white over a long brunch in a place like Fitzroy or Collingwood will often get you further than a polished pitch deck. The journal entries from those slower, more genuine conversations are the ones I cherish the most.

Reading Old Entries When the Week Has Knocked Me Down

Every speaker, presenter, and business owner I know has a week that lands like a punch. During those stretches, I pull the journal off the shelf and read it cover to cover, usually with a cup of something warm and the dog asleep at my feet. I let the past version of me remind the present one what she is capable of.

There is something particular about reading your own words from a different season of your life. The entry that felt like a small win at the time often looks, in hindsight, like a turning point. I have entries about returning to live telly after surgery, finishing a book I was not sure I could write, and the first time I hosted a charity lunch that hit its fundraising target. Reading them reminds me that the difficult weeks end. The wins stay on the page.

The Ripple Effect on the People Around Me

I did not expect this, but the practice has changed how I show up for my team and the women I mentor. Because I am no longer racing past my own milestones, I have more capacity to mark other people's. I send handwritten notes now. I flag wins in our Monday meeting instead of saving them for performance reviews. I text the young producer who nailed her first live segment. The cost of marking a moment for someone else is almost nothing. The return is enormous.

If your industry rewards the next hustle over the last win, this kind of journaling is a quiet form of rebellion. It says: what I have already done counts. Slow down long enough to feel it. I am not waiting for someone else to notice. The ripple moves outward. People start keeping their own version. Teams mark small launches with a shared lunch instead of skipping to the next deadline. Through my work with This Girl Is On Fire, I see this happen in rooms full of women hungry for permission to pause.

If you would like to start your own version of the practice, here are the things that have served me best over the years.

A simple way to begin the habit

• Pick a dedicated notebook, not a shared one. The privacy matters.
• Write the milestone in one plain sentence at the top of the page.
• Add three sensory details so you can picture it later.
• Note how you felt in the body, not just the head.
• Date it and read it back, cover to cover, twice a year.
• If you want, seal the first entry to open in five years.