Journaling for self discovery
Sometimes the best medicine is getting things into perspective. Below you’ll learn how I use simple journaling to help make the big scary parts of life smaller and more manageable.
When I was teaching my Yoga class, I had a student come up to me with some concerns about the stress she was dealing with in her life. She felt overwhelmed and unsure of how to address the things she was juggling. I felt for her as I have been in that place many times. So, I asked her if she had ever done a pros and cons list and an “I have control of/I have no control of” list. She shook her head so I went on to explain what each of these tools were and what they could help her do.
Pros vs cons
there’s benefits and challenges associated with every single choice we make. When you take the time to write out a list of pros and cons for each choice, you can wrap your head around more of the information. Writing lets the idea, confrontation, fear get out of your brain and contain it on the page. This allows you to more easily manage all the moving pieces of each situation.
I suggest doing pros and cons list for your choices AND do another version of this by writing out the pros and cons of not doing what ever it is that you’re thinking about. For example, when I was looking at options for expanding my career, I thought about several options: Start my own business, work for someone else, go back to school and get my PTA. Each choice had a set of pros and cons associated with it. Ultimately, I made my decisions and yes, there are things I don’t like about running my own ship (ugh accounting, taxes, etc). I’m a people person not a numbers person. But, was it worth it to go back to school? For me, no not really. Too much debt, more time away from my kids, not any more money… Did I want to work for someone else and give a huge chunk of my potential money to someone else? No. So although there are still a lot of things that I’m not super great at when it comes to the back end, I knew that my passion for helping people heal outweighed my fear of learning how to do this business thing.
Can control vs Can’t Control
We are all familiar with the random things that go wrong/differently then we planned in life. The car needs to be fixed, your kid throws up on your clothes right as you’re walking out the door, a dreaded diagnosis is shared, we lose a loved one. The list goes on. Much of what happens in life is out of our control, but some of it is in our control. And some of those things we can control can make a huge difference in how the rest of our life goes. So, when my client told me she was struggling with things in her life, I asked to think about making a can/can’t control list. On one side you put down all the things you can control, like what I eat for breakfast, how I act, writing things in my schedule, paying my bills on time or calling for an extension, etc. Things I can’t control: How someone else behaves, running over a nail in the road, when children get sick, etc.
Then, take the list and expand those ideas by adding what you can do to help yourself deal with each. Packing an extra set of clothes in the car, setting up systems that help yourself function, like a command center in the home where all your keys, wallet, and mail go, ordering a meal subscription, etc. Give yourself options to deal with stresses. Write out a bunch of ideas as they come. The more ideas you can come up with the better. You can always cross out ones that don’t work later.
For the section of I can’t control, see if you can enlist help. Talk to family members about your needs, but don’t expect them to cater to everything. Sometimes you have to hire outside help, like a therapist, a house cleaning service, etc. Now look at the list, what things are going to matter in 5 years. Probably less then 10% of them. The things that won’t matter in 5 years, let them go. Breathe it away. And give those little stresses the place where they belong, left on your journal page. The things that will matter in 5 years, spend time processing them. Allow your body and mind to experience the emotions associated with them. Get help from a therapist, or a close friend, and write it all out. Feel free to burn, rip, or destroy these pages after you’re done if you want. And then come up with ways you can cope with these struggles. Journaling, dancing, art, spending time in nature, listening to music, going on outings to new places, whatever it looks like for you. It’s ok not to be happy all the time and it’s ok to have mixed feelings about things.
Below you’ll find several other techniques for journaling and making life more manageable. Read on for some of the tools I use frequently.
Free Writing, Expressive poetry.
Somethings aren’t said well in a direct concise way. Use poetry or descriptive narrative to help get it out.
To do lists
I literally wander through life without a plan for months on end flitting between activities and missing deadlines, if I don’t write out all the things going on in my head. I have found that sitting down before I start work and writing out all the things I need to get accomplished that day works wonders. I’ve kept a running list on evernote that I can access anywhere, and add to it as things come up. I have lists on paper that i write out things on. I’ve used a calendar to write things out in. I’ve found that I work better if I can see crossed out items on my list.
Once I have all my to dos written out, I set about the task in order of importance. What task/s will give me the most return on investment of time? What things are most urgent? And what things can wait or aren’t essential? Many times I have put off essential things for urgent things when I don’t take time to organize myself and keep up with my system. Which is so stressful. I’m working hard every day to be proactive and not reactive.
Journaling/Free Writing
Every once in a while, big emotions come up following big experiences and its too much for me to process in my head. So, I write. I write whatever I’m feeling, whatever I’m thinking, no self editing, no judgement, no real need to reread any of what I wrote. Sometimes, answers come, sometimes they don’t. But almost always I feel a lot better by the time I’m finished. Because it takes a big problem and big feelings and puts them on a page (or digital doc) where I can say, “that’s where you live for now while I deal with life. I’ll come back to you when I’m ready to process it”. And sometimes I write things out, so I remember them. That’s usually when my kids do something funny that I’ll want to share with them later.
Prompts
Sometimes with my journaling, I’ll give my self prompts to help guide my writing so I can solve a problem that’s been floating around for awhile. For example, What would this look like if it were easy? What would my older self tell me about this situation? What are my feelings about this situations? etc Asking good questions is often better than having good answers. Answers are limiting questions are expanding.
As with everything else, each of us thinks and processes things differently. So try several of these out, see how they work. Keep what’s good, change what’s not working, throw out what isn’t good for you.
