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How to Start Journaling?
Writing in a journal each day allows you to direct your focus to what you accomplished, what you're grateful for and what you're committed to doing better tomorrow. Thus, you more deeply enjoy your journey each day. - Hal Elrod
Most people I talk to say kind of the same thing, they want to journal, but don't really know how to start. The whole "Dear Journal" doesn't cut anymore after we turn 14 year old or so.
- First of all, why do I think journaling is so important?
We are so used to thinking by default, and we don't really realize what we are thinking. Some people actually believe they don't have thoughts, and others don't think they have any control over their thoughts.
To be fair, I don't think we have a lot of control over the thoughts that come automatically, but that been said, we do have 100% of control if we want to believe in these thoughts or not.
The thoughts come into our minds because of many many things that we have seen or experienced throughout our lives, conscious and unconsciously. But we can choose to keep these thoughts or not...
And that's why I believe journaling is so important. With journaling, we understand better what we are thinking and believing, and then make a conscious decision whether to keep these thoughts and beliefs or not, because now we can see if this thought/believe is serving us.
When we write things by hand, our brain process it better and commits it to memory. Since in coaching we are working towards new beliefs and new mindsets, we want to help our brain remember these new neural-pathways that we are working to form and develop.
Also, journaling helps us to focus on a particular idea or thought. When we keep the coaching work purely mental, we still see results, but it takes a little longer to really sink in and make it a new part of our lives. When we are writing about a specific thing that we are working on, we focus on it and the brain works harder to keep it in memory.
It makes it easier for you to see your progress and the things that you want to work towards when you are writing down the things that we have talked about. Also, when we just write down our thoughts, we are able to see what is hidden inside of our brain, things that we fully believe without noticing, and when it's out of the brain you can make a better decision if you'd like to keep these beliefs or not.
Again, there's nothing wrong with whatever you are thinking. The only thing that I want to make sure you do is to accept these thoughts deliberately, so you don't keep thinking and believing in things and therefore creating your life by default.
- What do I need?
Journaling with me is a little different than what you probably heard in the past. I don't tell you to necessarily keep track of what you did during the day (although this might be an exercise I can ask you to do, if it's fitting to what we are working on, but the regular daily journal doesn't need to include it).
It's always nice to start with a brand new notebook that you love, and maybe even make it some kind of "ritual" to go buy it and send some good energy towards this new notebook, that you will be writing things that will change your life. I love working with the idea that you can transmit energy to the objects that you touch. If this is too "woo-woo" to you, just ignore it. But we are energy beings and we are surrounded by energy. Just start yelling at your kids or partner, and you will feel all the negative energy all around you!!
Anyways, get a new notebook and set the intention that this is the start of a new beginning, and you are now giving your all to this new person that you will become.
Setting an intention and energy helps you reset yourself, and start seeing that this is something new that you want, and you can achieve whatever you want.
- What to write?
We call it a Brain Dump or a Thought Download.
You want to take all these thoughts out of your brain into a paper, so we can examine and understand why you have the emotions you are feeling at this moment.
This is a moment for you to dump it all out. No judgement allowed. You just want to put it out on paper, no matter how wrong you think these thoughts are. Remember, no one will read it, and you can even burn the pages later.
This is NOT the kind of journal you want to leave to your posterity, this is a journal that will help you learn more about yourself and start choosing your life deliberately.
Brene Brown calls it "the story I'm making up".
Whatever happens in our lives, the circumstances are always neutral, and it means absolutely nothing until we put a meaning on it with our thoughts. What Brene Brown meant is that, whatever happens in your life, there's a story that we are making it up in our minds and this story is what causes us to feel in a certain way.
The thought download or brain dump is a way for you to explain to yourself what is exactly the "story that you are making up".
When I start writing my own thought download, I explained to my husband this concept, and told him that if he wants to be curious and snoop in my journal, he will only see a little bit of the messy brain I have, but know that none of these things are the absolutely truth, they are just the stories that I am making up as I am discovering who I am and who I want to become. Thank goodness my husband has 0 interest in reading my journals... He kind of already knows it can get quite messy inside of my brain!!
- Journaling to Process your Emotions
One last reason I absolutely love journaling is because it can really help you process your emotions. We don't really learn how to process emotions, therefore we are afraid of any kind of negative emotions.
Because of this fear of feeling negative emotions, most people either hide the emotion and not think about it, burying it by the hopes that it will eventually go away, or we will suppress the emotions. When we suppress an emotion, it's like when we have a beach ball and we keep trying to keep it under water. We can do it for a while, but whenever we stop pushing it down, the ball (or our emotions) will come back up with a lot more strength than before.
That can be even more painful than the original "negative emotion" that we were trying to hide from anyways. Now we have to deal with many more layers of emotions that have been added while trying to hide it.
Since we have never learn how to process the emotion, we typically don't have a good vocabulary to describe what we are feeling. The most common words are: Happy, Sad, Angry and Upset. There are hundreds more words to describe how we feel, and it's important to name the emotion because when we know what we are feeling, we can see/write more powerfully what these emotions are driving us to do, the actions we are taking and therefore the results we have in our lives.
- How to do it?
When you start writing, you can even use a timer for 3-5 minutes and just write whatever comes up to mind.
If you have one specific problem that you are going through, just write the first thought that comes to mind, and then write as much as you can with the question in mind: "Why is this bothering me".
Think (and write) about anything that's going on with you right now. Just write it all down.
When you are done with the whole story you are writing about (all the thoughts, emotions you are having, why you are so
angry/upset/frustrated you can understand a little better why we feel the way we do. Sometimes there's not much more that you have to do, it's just organizing your thoughts so you can see how you are responsible for your own emotions. When we read back these thoughts we wrote down, we can see that many thoughts are not even true... but now it's not hidden under a lot of other beliefs. When we bring these beliefs to light, we can see that some of them we don't believe anyways, or we can find beliefs that we didn't know it existed, and therefore we are able to work on it during our coaching sessions.
If you are familiar with the Self Coaching Model, you can choose a couple of thoughts that you can see how it's harmful or hurtful, and apply the model to see what you are creating. If not, just bring it to a coaching session with me and we will talk about what's happening in your mind.
To finish, just remember that when we take responsibility for our emotions and actions, we become empowered to create whatever life we want.
- Journaling and Coaching Session
During the coaching session I also ask that you have your journal with you. It's beneficial because we will be talking about your actual mindset and what these thoughts are creating for you, and also new ideas of thoughts and beliefs that you want to cultivate. As you write down some insights that you have during the session, you will become more aware of these things during the week, and also practice the new beliefs during your morning or evening routine, whenever you decide to write. I suggest you spend a few minutes in the morning, right after you wake up, and do your thought download then. This is the time of the day that you feel the most fresh, before the real world start attacking you from every side. I have 3 kids, I start getting "attacked" pretty early in the morning.
Use the best time that works for you, and do your very best to make it a habit. I promise you you will start seeing the benefits of writing your thoughts into paper very quickly.
Much Love,
Thais Glenn
08. Thinking About Your Thoughts
07. Five-Steps to Process Overwhelm
