Restart your journey. Record your thoughts. Close the book. Your power is inside you.
Since 10th Century Japan and right through our childhood days of “Dear Diary” journaling has long been an important tool in documenting our lives. While I admit that I have not always had the patience to repetitively record my life, I have always had successful interactions when I have done so. So have my clients. The health, healing, and problem solving benefits are extraordinary. Journaling works.
Journaling has so many virtues. It forces us to pause and to think about our feelings, our interactions and our successes and failures. Writing our thoughts down validates them and in essence allows us to really hear ourselves speak. It provides a space to be alone. When we shut the book on our writing, we also close that chapter of our lives and move ahead. Journaling allows us to respond to life with less anger and more choices because venting is a big piece of the journaling process allowing us to gain clarity and reduce stress. For those who have trouble sleeping, journaling provides a safe place to catch our active nocturnal ideas, allowing us to record them and let go. Still for others, journaling creates legacy. Many people, especially moms, journal to record the moment in order to share it with future generations.
Our “biographies” provide great insight at the end of the year as we look back to look ahead. What have we accomplished and what got in our way? Journals can also provide a mental to-do list allowing us to jot down a “success list” and actually begin the task of converting our lists to reality. Recording our thoughts in journals provides us with endless opportunities to “say” what we never had the opportunity to in a relationship that has ended or in response to the loss of loved ones. Journaling helps in the healing process associated with so many changes in life.
Journals allow us to manifest what we most want personally and professionally because in order to attract what we value we need to first define it and then create a path toward it. Journaling provides the ultimate conversation with our Forgotten Woman (or Man) because when we discover our inner child and allow ourselves to reconnect to our alter ego, we essentially reconnect most deeply to ourselves. Journaling provides a mental “play” time that is a necessary element in better understanding who we are.
In this season of giving and celebration journaling is a gift we give to ourselves. It is also a gift that keeps on giving because our greatest successes and best solutions come from within. Journaling sets our thoughts free, empowers us to learn, and promotes vision and opportunity.
Not into keeping up with a journal but want to reap the benefits? Here are 3 suggestions:
Keep a Journal Jar: Start off 2016 using an empty Mason Jar and record your successes by writing a small note about them and placing it inside the jar. At the end of the year have a Journal Jar Party and celebrate your year!
Keep an Anger Journal: Success Magazine recommends keeping a running tab of what triggers your anger and your responses and reactions. Every month look back for clarification and for insights as to how you may have been able to better handle the same situation with more emotional intelligence and higher energy.
Let It Go Letters: Put pen to paper once a month and write yourself a letter. What did you get right, what do you want to do differently and what are your next steps? Writing these letters and sealing the envelopes is powerful and impactful. At the end of the year open the letters and read what you wrote. Our own solutions are always the best ones and our self-to-self letters reveal interesting insights.
There are many more ways to journal beyond the traditional book and pen. Here are 5 suggestions that will entice you to begin the process of journaling or to take it forward in a new and different way.
Blog posts are journals gone wild! Start a blog about something you are passionate about and your thoughts have a voice and an audience. Powerful!
On line videos/podcasts/Blab/Periscope are virtual ways to “journal” your ideas through social media.
Vision boards and treasure maps are creative arts & crafts methods of journaling. You can do a vision board at the start of a new year or each month during the year. Vision boarding leads you toward and highlights your dreams and goals. It is an activity that connects you to your “why” and challenges you to think about, evaluate, and focus on what you really desire in your life by creating a physical representation or collage of what you most want to achieve.
Sketchbooks and scrapbooks are another creative way to keep a journal and record your thoughts, memories and desires. Great legacy component as well since whatever you create is unique, individual and one-of-a-kind.
Yes, there are APPS for journaling too! If you cannot separate from tech screens, there are many great APPS to record your thoughts allowing you 24-hour access, no pen or book required.
~ Randi Levin, Certified Transitional Coach, mentor, writer and inspirational speaker, partners with her clients to define and navigate the many “acts or chapters” of their lives. She is a subject matter expert in the art of reinvention and it is her joy to unleash her client’s unlimited potential and to tap into what she calls, “the evolving business of you.” Contact Randi@RandiLevinCoaching.com or 201-803-1333