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Have you ever journaled in a way that produced personal discoveries and shaped your path in life? Did you know that you have the power to do just that? Listen in to learn about freeing your mind and discover the eleven techniques that will help you set powerful intentions.
MM – 541 – Journal with Abandon, Journal with Intention
Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me!
It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat.
Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me.
Today’s focus is: Journal with Abandon, Journal with Intention
I went on a quest to come back from feeling flat, and if you’ve been following along here to see the steps I took to do that, you’ve realized that in doing this I reclaimed my passion.
I had been stretching and meditating and eating healthier, then I started journaling. But the type of journaling I did here was very different from the kind I had ever done in the past. In these journal entries I didn’t, typically, record life experiences unless I was trying to resolve or discover something. I was more searching for answers in these entries.
I just started journaling all of my thoughts on a specific topic and I kept it simple and old school. I dug out a one-subject, bright yellow notebook that I’d had in the cabinet for years and I labeled it “Free-Writing.” And I started journaling with the intention to make personal discoveries.
All you have to do to do this is relax. Just start rambling on about a topic that you want to know more about.
In light of this episode, I just revisited my very first journal, and I have to tell you, I’m feeling a little moved.
I didn’t know what to write about in this entry, so I started with gratitude. I wrote about how thankful I am for my husband and his support, specifically because I’ve grown and changed a lot through our 35 years together. In the first paragraph of my entry, I write: “I’ve learned and grown and changed so much through the years, and he has held on. Nothing is sexier, nothing shows me how much he loves me more than this.”
The entry goes on to discuss our struggles and challenges, and the idea that marriage teaches forgiveness, whether the marriage lasts a lifetime or it doesn’t. I talk about how people take too many things too seriously, and that if we could get an aerial view of life, we would see how we’re maneuvered in and out of people’s lives for different purposes. That our time here is just all a learning experience and that everything we experience is meant to be.
As I was writing this entry, as usually happens, one idea led to the next, led to the next. And here’s how my first journal entry ended: “I am growing to understand what it feels like when I am where I am supposed to be – just like when Kz was little – I am learning my Peace back!”
The phrase “Learning my Peace back” just flowed out of me. And in my journal the “P” is capitalized. This is not an idea I’d ever had before.
Something you should know, there has been an idea gnawing at my subconscious over this past year. I had the realization that the only time in my life where I felt like I was exactly where I needed to be was when I was raising my daughter. I never saw this as “Peace,” per se, but I never felt when we were drawing on the family room floor, or baking cookies in the kitchen, or strolling up and down the Seaside Heights Boardwalk that I should be doing something else. I just knew that what I was doing was enough. I was doing the most important job of my life: providing our daughter with new experiences, bolstering her creativity, just giving her a happy life.
Important to know: I had no idea about this sense of peace when it was occurring.
Similarly, all I knew the day she got her driver’s license was that the dots in my head that connected when I needed to pick her up and then deliver her someplace else, and how I would fit my errands in in between, disappeared. I didn’t know I had these dots either, until the day they left!
But over this past year, I began to understand that I have been restless. That for me, “learning my Peace back” means helping others engage in and be happy in their lives. And there it was on the very last line of the second page of my very first journal entry.
So remember, I had added into my life, a little at a time: stretching and meditating, eating healthier and journaling. From doing that, I felt a shift inside me – a shift that was visible to everyone, a shift that brought with it these personal discoveries. You can see the shift I’m talking about here in the first line of my 7th journal entry where I wrote, “I freaking love my life so hard right now.”
I remember where I was and how I felt when I wrote this first line. I felt euphoric. I was writing from our upstairs balcony, there was a bright sun, cool chill, hot cup of coffee, nightshirt and sweatshirt involved in this scene. I was beaming at John while this poor guy was trying to muster up energy to get back to his work day. Yes, I felt a little guilty about that, but I wasn’t allowing speedbumps in my progress. I was full steam ahead! I had made myself a priority, like I say in episode 534, and I felt insanely happy!
There is something else I wasn’t expecting from journaling that occurred: I went to find a new self and I re found my old self. If you’ve listened to any of the other seasons of Motivate Me!, you know that for three seasons I interviewed people about passion. I traveled the 50 states in 90 days interviewing people about passion, and I did all of this because I know that in order for people to enact change in their lives, it has to be their idea. That only you know what you need. That I can’t just tell you what to do… I have to expose you to other people who are doing it, so you can pull from their experience and create your own. I am all about show, don’t tell. I’m all about trying to find the right questions to ask that will inspire new insights and, in return, new action.
Helping people in this way has always been my passion, but I thought after everything I had been through: the 50-state trip, the editing of over 200 interviews, moving to a new state, the chaotic state of our country, quarantine, fear, sickness… that maybe I had lost that. So, I was very surprised when my love for all of this came rushing back to me, because I gave myself the freedom and opportunity to redesign myself, to start new again, to be anything. These are different times, I thought I might discover a new passion.
I understand now why this is not what happened. It’s because when you still the chatter in your mind and you create space to hear what your subconscious or true self has to say, you realize that this is your core. That this is what you are and that that it is unchanging.
I know that through the course of every role I have played in life: mom, Girl Scout Troop leader, teacher, karaoke host, writer, podcast host my passion has always been to empower others in a way that encourages them to take risks and be excited about life. What lights me up is to help others feel good about themselves. That feeling brings me so much joy. That is why I felt so much peace when I was raising my daughter.
You can find these answers, too, when you start journaling with intention and here are the guidelines I set for myself:
- Find a quiet place to write
- Like what you’re writing with and on
- Title and date the entry
- Select a topic (but don’t hold yourself to it)
- Do not write down any negative thoughts
- Write your feelings about specific topics
- Relax and allow thoughts to come from another place – no overthinking, no judgement
- Ask for guidance (from a higher power, the universe, the deceased)
- Record all thoughts, have no rules, be open-minded
- Seek personal discoveries and know that you will find the answer
- Journal as often as you can
The big take-away from this whole episode is that I went looking to reclaim my passion with intention and so can you! And, if we make the decision to, we can shift our energy, change our perspective, and change the course of our lives.
We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else.
I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: Abandoning the idea of keeping our thoughts restrained isn’t easy. It can be uncomfortable. Seeing these honest thoughts on paper is powerful and can also be uncomfortable. But getting out of our comfort zones to create change is why you are here listening to this show right now. So go for it… there is nothing to lose and so much to gain.
You Motivate Me!