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Personal Journaling: A Tool for the Spirit
Journal stress and diminish it. Here's a guide to journaling for
stress relief.
The fountain of personal wisdom may be as close as your nearest pen.
That’s because the single most essential instrument for nurturing your
spirit is a personal journal.
The word “journal” may mean 100 different things to 100 different
people. For a psychologist, it denotes a tool for a patient’s
self-analysis. For the writer, it may be a notebook of ideas and
ramblings. For most of us, the word denotes a day-to-day diary, a log of
action and reaction.
For me, a journal is a notebook of ideas and solutions that I have
discovered using my conscious and subconscious mind.
Journaling is a remarkable device for easing worry and obsession, for
identifying hopes and fears and for allowing your creative self to
expand, increasing your level of energy and confidence. It harnesses the
power to tap into successively deeper layers of your subconscious mind
while it zaps the nervous, passive energy that ties your stomach in
knots and leads to more guilt and worry.
Journals are tools to help you discover the wisdom you already possess.
Sometimes, this wisdom will surprise you. Other times, it will
challenge you. Always, it will come directly from you, empowering you to
trust yourself and to take action by giving you the deep-seated
knowledge that you know more than you think you do.
This feeling of power and self-trust will translate into a more
confident mother, wife, and spirit. You will already know where to turn
when faced with difficult decisions. You will have found the answers
within yourself, and you will return there for further instruction.
In addition to revealing your personal insight and wisdom, the
journaling process can help dispel feelings of loneliness and confusion
by helping you discover a unity within yourself. As your conscious and
subconscious mind work together to solve problems in black-and-white,
the ideas are validated and more easily applied, even if you never share
these ideas with a soul.
You might also enjoy:
Juicy Journaling with SARK
From journaling to poetry,
Juicy Journaling with SARK is a writing companion to help you discover and LOVE your writing AND and your life!
Personal Journaling: The Rules of the Game
The act of writing has tremendous potential to tap the subconscious and
to arrange conscious thoughts in a clear pattern as words flow from your
mind down your arm, into your hand and across the page.
Banish your internal editor. This is that voice that booms from the
darkest recesses of your brain: “You shouldn’t be writing that.”
Here are a few tricks to banish this frightening little voice.
Write quickly, allowing the words to freefall from your subconscious.
Keep writing. Don’t erase or cross-out any words. If you’re heading in a
direction you would rather avoid, start a new paragraph. These
accidental forays may be telltale signs for issues you need to address.
And erasing just takes more time that you could be using to focus on
you.
Date each entry in your journal. Note the time, place, and any details
regarding your mood and emotions that will be necessary for context when
you read back on your work.
After you have finished a journal entry, take a walk or get up for a
glass of water before you reread your entry, and remember to reread this
entry with compassion.
Then, write an Insight Line--a sentence or two about what you think the
piece is trying to tell you.
Sometimes this Insight is as plain as day. Other times, it will take a
little reading between the lines. If the subject is a delicate one,
there is nothing wrong with putting off re-reading it for a few hours,
days, even weeks. Some entries you may not read again at all. The
Insight comes from the act of writing itself, the Insight Line simply
helps you discover it.
Personal Journaling Techniques
There are as many journaling techniques as there are people who practice
the craft. The important thing is to explore the underlying layers of
your mind--using whatever conduit works for you.
Get creative with the techniques you use. We all have a subconscious
mind that communicates to us in a different way. If you are stuck and
have nothing to write, try recording snippets of conversations, facts,
feelings, fantasies, descriptions, impressions, quotes, images, and
ideas. Draw pictures. Make a collage from a magazine. Use the technique
that best suits the way in which you express yourself. You know your own
mind and how it best communicates with the world. I promise you’ll have
an even better sense of the way in which your mind works after the
completion of a few journal entries.
Clustering is one method that works well when the ideas don’t flow on
their own. Put the central idea in the center of the page and circle it.
Then, without pause, make associations, placing them in new bubbles and
tying them to the main idea. The result is a complex matrix of ideas,
many of which you didn’t even know you had. If you wish, compose these
thoughts later into a cohesive essay that says exactly what you want to
say. Or simply move on.
What you need
Paper. The only thing you need is a notebook so your ideas don’t get
lost. Some journal-writers swear by the loose-leaf notebooks so they can
insert pages, but I’m always afraid of losing some of the more personal
pages, and I don’t want anything to inhibit my ability to write freely
and honestly.
Other journal-writers opt for the expensive, hard-bound journals,
reasoning that the journal will be a keepsake. These work just fine, as
long as you are able to write freely in such a formal book. Some of the
things you will be writing will not be pretty. If you are afraid of
making mistakes or you feel inhibited with this kind of notebook, you’re
better off with a plain old spiral bound from Wal-Mart (my personal
favorite.) Some of you will be creating more drawings than essays. If
that’s you, consider a wire-bound sketch pad.
Pen. Treat yourself to just the right pen. One that makes you feel
important. Test some of the expensive pens. See how they feel in your
hand and how the ink rolls across the page. The best choice is one that
allows you to write quickly and smoothly. I personally love the
easy-flow fountain pens because the color comes out so bold that it
makes me feel more confident. And it practically glides itself across
the page.
Environment. Your journal should always be there when you need it.
Write on the bus, in the office, or late at night when insomnia strikes.
If you have the time, a regular writing ritual can be very soothing.
If you do wish to write in the same place and at the same time every
day, create the ideal writing space for you. Maybe you’re most
comfortable in a rocking chair surrounded by pillows and candles and
Schubert tunes. Or maybe you prefer silence and a cherry wood desk or a
gentle breeze and a rickety porch swing.
Whether you set a time for writing each day or you do it on the fly,
make sure the time you spend writing in your journal is time solely
devoted to you and your task. As you work to nurture your growing
family, your journal is designed to nurture you.
About the author:
Susie Michelle Cortright is the founder of Momscape.com, a website
devoted to helping women celebrate and embrace their diverse roles:
http://www.momscape.com
You might also enjoy:
Juicy Journaling with SARK
From journaling to poetry,
Juicy Journaling with SARK is a writing companion to help you discover and LOVE your writing AND and your life!
You might also enjoy these Momscape articles:
What if Someone Reads My Journal?
Some thoughts on journal privacy.
Personal Journaling for Kids
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