Journal Your Way to the Best Birthday Ever

Journal Your Way to the Best Birthday Ever

In honor of my birthday this week (I get a week), I’d like to share some of my annual journaling rituals.

Journal writing is the perfect tool for creating personal development rituals. Goal setting and life assessment rituals provide the opportunity to regularly measure your progress so you can consciously direct your energy and resources where they’re needed most.

The end result is an accurate, up-to-date life map that gets you exactly where you want to go.
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How to Infuse Your Journal Writing with Heart

How to Infuse Your Journal Writing with Heart

While journal writing is foremost about Process, I’m beginning to think a little focus on Product may create a more authentic and well-rounded journaling experience.  A little more Heart to balance out all that Head.

I was reading Creative Journal Writing by Stephanie Dowrick this week when I came across a passage that grabbed my attention. Dowrick is musing on the lapses in her journaling; she encounters obvious leaps in date. She imagines during these sabbaticals she was thinking, “I will remember this. I don’t need to write it down.”

She goes on to say:

“Some of those times were the most joyous; others were the most harrowing. It is the joyful times that I truly wish I had recorded more faithfully and in infinitely greater detail.”

As I actively seek out other journal writers and research varied journaling methods, I’m learning many ways to deepen my own craft.  Although I write daily, my journals ironically lack “snapshot of life” storytelling.  I’ve been focused solely on the head part of journaling.  My journals could use some heart.
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How to Purge Negativity and Get Positive

How to Purge Negativity and Get Positive

Lately I’ve really been enjoying one of the perks of journal writing: purging negativity on a visceral level so I can start daily with a clean slate.

I was always aware of this benefit, but recently I’ve developed a conscious appreciation for the fine art of bitching.

The generally accepted outlook in Psychology is that ruminating on a painful topic, worrying it to death like a dog trying to get at the marrow of a bone, can actually make you feel worse about it. You experience the snowball effect; a small spark of irritation is fed into a full blown fire and you’ve lost all perspective on the situation.

Writing down your complaints, however, tends to stop them from bouncing around in your head. Journaling turns off the merry-go-round.

Here are three major benefits that purging negativity on the page can offer you.
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Get Real About Your Past

Get Real About Your Past

I have a habit of romanticizing the past, sometimes to the extent of rewriting history. Part of it is my creative brain that likes clean plot lines and dramatic tension. Part of it is a crappy memory from sordid adventures in my twenties.

My journal is a great tool for bringing me back down to earth when I soar off into Wishville. To make wise decisions and keep growing, it’s essential to look at how situations actually were. Not how I’d like them to have gone down.

My present apartment is small. Really small. And that’s coming from a girl who lived on a 200 sq. ft. houseboat for a few years. I was recently bemoaning my residence, beating myself up for moving out of the Perfect Place I had. (I moved three times last year but that’s a story for another day.)

This Perfect Place was a sprawling haven of nutty hardwood floors and 20 feet of glass overlooking misty pines. It had ample storage and parking spot, for godssake. It had a sunny balcony where I housed my extensive container garden.

Oh, and it had squirrels.
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What Do You Have to Say for Yourself?

What Do You Have to Say for Yourself?

Whether you’re new to journal writing or you’ve been journaling for years, sooner or later you’ll come across the roadblock “I don’t know what to write about – I have nothing to say.”

This roadblock can be especially crippling when you’re just starting out. Many new journal writers feel extremely self-conscious when they first start documenting. Even if you know nobody else is going to read it, you might feel silly writing down your thoughts. “Who am I talking to, anyway?” You may worry you’ll spontaneously develop an invisible friend or delve into multiple personality disorder and starting signing your entries “Love, Sybil.”

It’s awkward at first. Let it be.

Remember that the point of journaling is the process. The process is putting words one after the other on a page. It’s as simple as that.
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