While contemplating ideas for this month’s post, I spent time revisiting times in my life when things felt calm, thoughtful and grounded. What on earth was I doing consistently to produce such euphoria? I want that again!
Ahh yes..I was writing. I was giving myself a few minutes every day to release whatever was on the inside and let it flow through my fingertips to the outside. Sometimes it involved crayons, sometimes it was a black scribbled circle of fury, sometimes I would fill pages, other times a single word.
Journaling is an embodied practice that connects mind and body by bringing pen to paper. This releases stored thoughts, memories, dreams and ideas. The hidden potential of your subconscious finds a path into the world!
The writing may come as a cathartic release: let it out, let it go. Or, surprising new insights may emerge: an opportunity to organize your thoughts, create action items and move some of those dreams into reality.
If you are already journaling, how can you enliven your practice? What areas of your journaling practice feel outdated? How can you breathe fresh air into this area of your life? Do you need a new set of colored pencils?
If you are not currently journaling, I encourage you to try it.
Set the stage (see below), then commit to at least one month of daily writing.
Ritual
Choose a dedicated journal that feels good and a smooth-flowing pen or pencil
Journal at the same time every day
Journal at the same location every day
Prompts
If absolutely nothing comes to mind when you sit down to write, here are a few simple prompts.
List three things you are grateful for in this moment.
List three goals for the day.
List one color you will notice in the world today and a few sentences about why you chose that color.
Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” is a great resource. Her book is known as a quasi-spiritual manual for “creative recovery” and in it she calls for three pages of daily stream-of-conscious writing every morning. I encourage you to commit to whatever length of time works for you. Years ago when I practiced this, I started with 5 minutes of free writing and as the days passed I found it was no longer about the length of time but more when I felt my head to be adequately less full.
Keep in mind, this practice is for you. It is a personal experience. You can make it look any way you want. You can make it big, you can fill it with unicorn stickers, you can color a whole page yellow, you can keep it locked in a box, you can swear at your kids or you can make a list of your favorite foods. Most importantly you can be exactly yourself
With so much stimulus in our daily lives, allow your journaling to offer solace and grant yourself an opportunity to reflect before you react.
Resources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/style/julia-cameron-the-artists-way.html