What's Radical about Our Personalized Journals

So...What makes our custom wellness journals radical?

1. Zenit Journals is based on the principle that everyone is brilliant.

2. Zenit Journals is based on the principle that you are the expert of yourself.

I know what it’s like to have people tell you what to think, what to feel, who to be. Especially as a kid, when this happens enough over time, it wears on you, like waves eroding rock. It harms our mental health and well-being. It limits our opportunities.

One assumption I staunchly hold is that everyone has their own brilliance. And what drives me as an entrepreneur is building solutions that enable and empower others to understand, realize, and unleash their brilliance. 

This is one way I align my work with Zenit with social justice work. Everyone has their unique brilliance, and everyone deserves to be their full, authentic selves. Which means when we deny people the ability to exist as their authentic selves, we are wronging them. We are hurting them.

We know that there are groups of people who have been systematically oppressed - due to their race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, immigration status, and religion, to name a few - in ways that have denied them opportunities to be their full, authentic selves, and to unleash their brilliance. 

I deeply empathize with people who have been told that who they are isn’t “right” or isn’t enough. I understand what it’s like to be told, explicitly and implicitly, that you are worth less because of who you are, and that you need to fit into one mold of a successful or socially acceptable human being. I harness my pain to contribute to the larger liberation movement advancing radical, loving acceptance of who we all are as unique human beings.

With this comes another core principal I’ve founded Zenit on: YOU are the expert of yourself. The systemic mindset that people don’t know what’s good for them is used to oppress people. Do people need resources to learn their options and develop tools to navigate this world? Yes. Education is critical. But providing education and resources from the perspective that “you don’t know anything and I’m here to tell you what and how to think” holds people down. 

There has long been a movement in education that advocates for viewing children not as empty vessels to be filled but rather as independent, active thinkers who bring their own knowledge from their lived experiences, and who can actively participate in their own education.* This is the approach I’m aligning Zenit and our custom wellness journals with when I think of what it means to build resources and products that support our mental health and wellness. 

So, for me, creating a business that is centered on the assumptions that we are each brilliant individuals, who can and deserve to think for ourselves, and we are the experts of our own selves is one way I’m giving a big middle finger to all that external noise saying you’re not enough, or you’re not living your life right, or you’re worth less because of who you are. I might have expertise in wellness to offer you, but I’m not the expert of you or your wellness. You, and only you, are the expert of yourself and your wellness. I am here to honor that with your personalized Zenit Journal.

* See, e.g., Jean Piaget’s theory on Cognitive Constructivism, Lev Vygotsky’s theory on Social Constructivism, Thersa Perry and Claude Steele’s Young, Gifted, and Black, publications by Dr. Arnetha Ball, among many other authorities.