What is journaling?

This lecture introduces you to journaling

A journal is a written record of your thoughts, feelings, experiences, and observations. You can write in your journal daily, or only when you feel the urge. Journaling is then the act of keeping, writing, reflecting and making personal change through the art of keeping a journal.

Benefits of journaling

Because your journal is private you can:-

• Express your feelings and thoughts in an uninhibited way.

• Clarify goals, before acting.

• Release unhelpful thoughts and learn to let go.

• Gain a sense of perspective and control.

• Store and analyse your dreams.

• Catalyst for change and creativity.

• A source for your stories.

You will start to:-

• Understand who you are, what you want and how to get it.

• Find new ways to tackle old behaviours, issues or problems.

• Unwind and relax.
  

• Communicate with others better.
  

• Create positive intentions and affirmations.
  

• Discover a pathway to self-awareness which provides insights, upon which you can act and create change.

• Find creative solutions to problems and challenges.

• Discover memories.

Let me ask you:-

• Do you feel stuck and unable to move on?
  

• Have you tried every personal development course available, but still feel no further forward?
  

• Have you ever wanted to write your life story or memoir, but stopped, staring blankly at the page in front of you.  Full of doubts you put your pen away.
  

• When you do write, do you fill up with emotion and can’t move on?
  

• What if you could take the bold step of exploring you and your life and could discover how to make changes through writing and reflection?  Would you be tempted?
  

• What if you could get your story out, heal your wounds, be in control and confident.  Would you want to take that step?

Follow this 45 day plan which takes you through journaling, reflecting and storytelling, who knows where you will find yourself at the end of the course.

Why does writing from the heart make a difference?

In this lecture we examine why we should write from the heart.

It is vital that we journal and write in the right place, in the right frame of mind, that we let go of our self-consciousness, become one with ourselves and write without judgment.  If you write from your head, your left logical brain is engaged, in writing from your heart you will open up the space for you to love and to be loved.  When we take responsibility for loving ourselves then our lives can change.

Hearts get broken and unbalanced by our relationships with others and ourselves.  By writing from your heart you can let go and start walking towards the person you know that you are. 

Every good journaler and writer needs their rucksack stuffed with relevant things for their journey; they make the job of writing easier.  What should go in yours?

Inspiration

Where does inspiration come from?

Inspiration comes in many guises.  In this lecture we look at ways to find inspiration for our writing.

Your workbook is in lecture 4.

Mandalas are fab for getting to the heart of your 'questions'. As you go through the course and things come to you and you want some time to focus inwards. Use a mandala to help you.

What is a gratitude practice?

Practicing gratitude starts by paying attention and taking the time to notice what is going on. When you wake in the morning, how do you feel about the quality of the sleep that you experienced? What about the gorgeous breakfast or the shower that was magically just the right temperature? What about when you look at your face in the mirror do you feel grateful that the person looking back at you got you to this point? As you emerge from the house and look up into the morning sky, do you behold it in wonder?

Gratitude helps you to cultivate a meaningful framework for life and the gifts that you receive. Everything is a gift, even the rubbish stuff because through every experience you learn something and through that learning can make conscious choices.

The practice of gratitude helps you to develop a conscious connection with everything. Imagine that you are ill, and by practicing gratitude, your body responds and heals quickly. What about if you find yourself lost and someone goes out of their way to show you the way you need to go, or they help you out if you find yourself in a not too favourable situation.

What are the benefits of practicing gratitude?

• Creates strong foundations for all areas of your life

• Increased happiness, contentment and positive mood

• Less toxic, negative emotions that could cause a physical impact on the body

• A sense of inner peace

• More satisfaction with life

• Less materialistic

• Better able to deal with stress

• Better health

• Better sleep

• Greater resiliency

• Encourages the development of kindness, patience, humility, and wisdom

Practicing gratitude creates contentment, inner peace and compassion

Your gratitude journal

As you go about your day, engage your five senses as often as possible so that you become aware of the things you can feel grateful for and appreciate. Then take a moment to be present to each element as you notice it and become aware of your feelings. Also go deeper and fully understand what has been made available to you.

When you begin your gratitude practice recall what you have noticed during the day or week. When you are ready, write at least three things that you are grateful for stated in the present tense. They can be anything. State I am grateful for… For example:

• I am grateful that it is safe to love me

• I am grateful that I am surrounded by beautiful and loving friends and family

• I am grateful for my healthy boundaries and kind heart

When it comes to gratitude, write anything from the mundane to the magnificent, while focusing on one or more of the heart chakra areas. Could you manage nine things that you are grateful for? Why nine? Nine holds wisdom and spiritual energy. Nine is the container for all worldly experiences and contains all of the lessons and challenges of one through eight. It’s considered the number of knowledge, divine wisdom and universal love. By writing up to nine things, you are grateful for, you are invoking universal love.

Remember to consider the source of your gratitude and appreciate the abundance that is coming into your life. Regular gratitude and appreciation will rev up your energy and help you to create a more loving and fulfilling life.

When you have finished writing what you are grateful for, write one thing you have learned, envision how you want your day and breathe love into your heart.

What are affirmations?

Affirmations are things that you affirm to be true, in other words, positive statements. These statements describe something positive that you want to achieve. They are usually short sentences and are something that you can easily repeat during the day.

What they do is to tell your unconscious mind that something is real. Your unconscious mind will see these positive statements, and it will be triggered into action. Try this – I have a beautiful smile. With any luck, you immediately smiled and forgot that perhaps you didn’t like your teeth, for example. It’s that simple and so infectious.

When you repeat affirmations, your mind finds these motivating and inspiring and trots off to obey you. Like the excellent computer that it is, it will embed these programs into its every day ‘you’ code, and it becomes true.

Affirmations are lovely for designing and building new habits and for healing the body. Two of my big affirmations or mantras as they are also called when I was healing my spine was, I have strong, healthy bones, and my bones are healed. I still have these written on my fridge with magnetic letters.

Surprisingly people use affirmations every day without realising it. Usually, these are the not so useful ones. You may have heard others talk about limiting beliefs? That’s what these are. You tell yourself that you are can’t do or be something often enough your mind says oke doke, I’ll add that to the program, and it will be true, and before you know it you can’t do those things, or you procrastinate.

Now that you know that you can choose to do something about it. Ok, I know that years of negative programming can mean that you have a bit more work to do. But here’s the secret sauce, while you may struggle to start off with, guess what, it won’t take long before you are smiling to yourself as you catch those words daring to come out.

Affirmation examples

• I feel safe and secure

• I allow myself to feel safe and grounded

• I always feel safe and protected in the world

• I deserve to be safe all the times

• I have a right to be here

• I belong

Wouldn't it be nice affirmations

All you have to do is ask - Wouldn’t it Be Nice…?” and see what ideas excite you!

How did we get here?

In this lecture we look at how to place ourselves in the now and to know what bought us to this point.

Timelines provide a visual roadmap, which give you the big picture in the form of a map.  Clarity will come because the human mind sees things in patterns.  When you see patterns you make connections.  When you connect the map of your life to your values, purpose, passion and vision, a clearing to the pathway for your stories and possible book will emerge.

Everyone's perception of time is different. We use the where is my now exercise to put your writing into a timeframe and into context, so that when you reflect you are able to consider more clearly how events that surround your life are affecting you and how things fit together. 

How can I remind myself who I am?

In this lecture are some exercises which are designed to connect you with you and for you to ask the question, who am I and what are my healing intentions?

Life makes memories and memories create stories (and books) and stories change lives.  We remind ourselves of who we are by exploring us through journaling and writing.  

Firsts and the day that changed your life forever

In this lecture we examine how your firsts and these days contribute to who you are and your story.

Your life will have lots of firsts.  Your first memory, kiss, fight, book, car, bike, test.

AND

There are always days that…. The day that you left your job and became self employed.  The day someone close died.  A day your world changed forever.  

What gets in the way of your journaling and writing?

This lecture isn’t about writer's block, it is about things that get in the way of getting your writing started and completed.

The question does actual writer's block exist leaves people in one of two camps.

If you don’t believe that it exists then you will be in the camp that says, when you feel resistance, just knuckle down and get on with it.

Others who say that it does exist, and say that trying to keep at something when it is not working simply makes matters worse.

Whichever camp you are in, you are right.

I know as a journaler/writer there is nothing worse than looking at a blank piece of paper and not knowing what to write. Like me, you will just have to face it that at some point you will not want to write or things will get in the way. 

This lecture looks at some of the things that might get in the way and an action plan for overcoming procrastination.

I find my inspiration often comes at the oddest moments and not when I am poised fingers ready at my computer.

However, whatever your perception, there are in my view things that get in the way.  Some of what gets in the way is as a result of the choices you make and some as a result of things out of your control.

You have to identify what is getting in the way and then take action to end your inaction. 

Truth

Having a journal is an opportunity to be honest with yourself and this can sometimes be difficult to let go and say it as it is. We can learn a lot from our honesty and when we write from a place which is full of emotion it is far better than any skilled writer could ever achieve. 

In this lecture we look at how to be truthful in our journaling and writing.

Values to Vision

How do my values, passions, purpose help me to find out who I am and why am I here?

In this lecture we look at a process called values to vision. By taking steps through the process and working out what our values, passion and purpose leads us towards our vision.  Without a vision we do not have a direction.

When we have clarity we can define where we are headed with our journaling and writing.  In finding out about ourselves, we start to gain clarity of purpose.  What you are passionate about and the purpose of your writing go hand in hand.

You will be working through exercises to uncover your values, passions, purpose and vision.

Writing exercises

Sometimes we get stuck with journaling and writing.  Included here are a selection of writing exercises designed to get your pen moving again.

Reflecting

In these lectures we look at how to reflect and provide a number of reflection exercises to try.

Reflection is our response to experiences, situations, events or new information and a phase where processing and learning can take place. 

When you reflect your unconscious mind searches for evidence and analyses it.  After which it tries to make meaning and draw conclusions based on the evidence presented.

Once we have been able to evaluate what we are reflecting on, we then decide what’s next. 

Reflections

In this lecture we consider how to stay out of the picture when reflecting on unpleasant experiences and in the picture when reflecting on successes and times when things went well.

Reflection exercises

In addition to the other journaling and writing exercises, provided throughout this course.  These additional reflection exercises are designed to do just that, to get you thinking about your thinking.