Journal

Oh we must journal! So essential to the healing and centering process. It's an effort for me to do it these days, because mostly my life is strife-free. I'm quite happy overall. I tend to really use my journal when I am in termoil. But, there were many years when I was in the habit of journaling nearly every day or at least weekly. Funny, but I was so habitual about journaling at the coffee shop... it became hard for me to do it anywhere else. Now, I have my physical journal and also one on the compy.

Journaling is so important... because it's like therapy. The biggest benefit I think, is getting those repetitive negative thoughts out of my head. It's easier to see their relatively small weight next to really important things. Does that make sense? hm. Well for instance, this morning I did an exercise that really helps my perspective on myself... listed everything good about me and my life. No qualifiers, no except/if/but, just the good stuff. Try that. It's a long list! When I do that, I can give less weight to those things I beat myself up over. They are relatively dumb and small. And it's just good to remind myself of the whole package... mostly pretty awesome.

The other reason journaling is important, is that when you write every day about the same dumb whiny thing... it loses power. I mean, jeesh. I get tired of writing about it... "what? this again? get over it." I start to feel silly and bored by it, and so I move on.

And for the more involved topics of concern, writing can really work them out. After you write all the basics over and over, new things come out. New solutions, new feelings... things that might not surface if you just repeat the mantras in your head. Even writing about mundane things or random thoughts can reveal creative ideas and solutions that seem to come from nowhere. It's great.

There is a sort of release from putting thoughts on paper. Much like making a list frees your mind of tasks... journaling frees your mind of negative thoughts. Now that they are safely recorded over there, I can move on to something more constructive.

Such as I will do now... later.