Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Journaling

Tags

blog, Book, Communicating, crystallize, Dream Journal, Imagination, journal, Story, Writing

Some days I open up this window of my life and have absolutely nothing to say. I’m a blank slate. I stare at the whiteness of the background, waiting for something to come and it doesn’t. Some would call this “writer’s block.” Perhaps it is.

There is always something to write about, however. Some writers I’ve learned from suggest that you just free-write about anything. Others recommend working on a different writing project. Still others recommend a walk or some other activity.

If you’re a fiction writer, you know that stories unfold. It is rare that you will write out something as complicated as a novel without taking breaks or working on different aspects of a plot. It is the same for any writing project. The work begins as an idea, translated to the page, then alters itself as the author refines the story and crystallizes the pictures to the page.

The dream journal is a writing project. It brings your dreams to the page. Unlike other writing projects, your dream journal or personal journal is “for your eyes only”. Subsequently, you just write in it. Grammar doesn’t matter, spelling doesn’t matter, nothing matters but getting the things in your head onto paper or a digital document.

The more you journal, the more you can get out of your head. You can settle things with yourself. You can iron out past mistakes, relationships that didn’t work, failures, successes. Whatever you bring to your journal is something you needed to get out of your head.

Journaling is a way to talk to future generations. When you’ve left this life, your journal will be left behind. Can you imagine what wisdom is embedded in those pages for future generations. Do you think Marcus Aurelius ever thought someone would publish his journals? What about Seneca, Epictetus, Virginia Wolfe?

Writing is your way to communicate. It is a way of making the imagination come alive and join our world. Have a great Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursday – Gratitude Journaling Changes Your Brain

Tags

Gratitude, Gratitude Journal, Gratitude Journaling Study, journal, Thankful, Thanks, Writing Prompts

Did you know you can stimulate a part of your brain when you write about the things you are grateful for? Read the article below, if you’d like to read about a study that explains how we can become more altruistic by being grateful for what we have.

How can you start a gratitude journaling practice? It’s simple. Start today with writing down three things you are grateful for in the morning when you first wake up and a few minutes before you go to bed at night. If you don’t know what to write about, here are some gratitude journaling prompts:

Your significant other

• Your pet
• Your family
• Your friends
• Your talents
• Your experiences
• A book you just read
• A song you just heard
• A technology device you enjoy
• God
• A religious tome
• Your dreams and inner experiences
• Your friends

When I do my journaling, I tend to hit on many areas that I am grateful for because the more I write about in my gratitude journal the stronger the feeling of gratitude grows. When you achieve a state of mind that knows you have all you need, you are more giving, more motivated to contribute, more willing to give of your time. Imagine waking up one day and realizing how great your life is, right now. It is a great place to be, which is why I start my day with my gratitude journal without fail. I like tackling my day feeling good myself and my life. It is a great place to be.

What can I use for my gratitude journal?

That’s the easy part. You can use anything. If you are digitally minded, you can use Evernote, Microsoft One Note, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or any number of paper journals or digital journaling apps. I try to stay in the digital realm because my penmanship is so bad I cannot read my own writing. I also like having my journal available anywhere I go.

Do you journal? If not, why not? My gratitude journaling takes about 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening. If all of these benefits are available, why not take a chance and start your own gratitude journaling practice?

If you do journal, share what you use for your journal. I’m curious about how many people in my readership actually have a gratitude journal and gain the same benefits I do.

As a reminder, the article is linked below. It’s a short read, but will show you how the people in this study benefited neurologically from this simple, but powerful addition to their day.

Have a great Thursday!

Until next time…

Dave

 

Reference

Barlow, J. (2019). Writing a daily diary can literally change your brain. Retrieved from: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/writing-a-daily-diary-can-literally-change-your-brain/

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – How to be wiser

Tags

Brainstorming, Changing Viewpoints, decisions, Disassociate, family, Friends, journal, Learning from the past, wisdom

How to Be Wiser

Today’s Wisdom Wednesday post was inspired by an article I read over the weekend. It discusses how all of us can become wiser. Interestingly, it involves a few mind games you can utilize to invoke your inner wisdom.

The first step is to imagine you are advising a friend. Think about that. It is always easier for us to tell a friend what they should do if they ask us for advice. Why? Because we aren’t directly involved.

Another tactic you can use is imagine you are staring down at yourself from above. At the ground level you are blinded, you can only see what you see in front of you and behind you. You can’t see far enough ahead to see if something will actually deliver the best results when you make a decision. Now, imagine you are on top of a mountain and you can see what lies ahead. In this elevated position you can see what is up ahead.

You can also disassociate from yourself and make believe you are a friend giving you advice. When you are giving a friend advice, it is always easier and you will always provide them with better advice, then they could come up with on their own, because you can see their blind spots.

One technique I use is my journal. If you take the time to document what you are thinking about, including the decisions you make, you will find that you will see where you went wrong in the past. You can see the mistakes you made and avoid them in the future. By keeping a journal, you can review what went wrong and think about other solutions that were available at the time. You can ask questions like, why didn’t I do this instead? Or, you could see the options you were weighing at the time and see a better solution you can use in the future.

When you go back and review your journal, it mimics the suggestions in the article, How to be wiser (Hammond, 2017). When you are reviewing your journal, you can separate from yourself and become more objective.

Finally, you can brainstorm when you are tackling a new problem. You can write down all the potential solutions to a problem you have and weigh each one against the other. You can game out potential results with each solution you come up with. If you’re still stuck, you can take all of your brainstormed ideas and bounce them off a trusted friend or family member. In some cases, they may have already experienced what you have and may have a solution that worked for them.

Wisdom is gained over a lifetime. We can increase our wisdom by separating ourselves from our problems and attempt to view them from a higher vantage point. We can seek out advice from our friends and family. We can review our journal for previous problems we have faced and use the learning gained in our past and apply it to our present difficulties. Each of us has the ability to become wise and make better choices. We just have to become more aware of our circumstances and use all the tools that are available to us to make the best decision we can make with all the information at hand.

I hope all of you have a great Wednesday!

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Hammond, C. (2017). How to be wiser. Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170124-how-to-be-wiser

Daily Ramblings – Journal Series

Tags

journal, journaling, New series, types of journals

Hello, Readers!

I’m going to start a new series of postings along my quotes and workout logs, discussing journaling. It’ll take a few days to organize and plan out, but I will get my first posting up in the upcoming week.

Hope this helps some folks who are looking to begin journaling but don’t know where to start, the various types of journals that are out there, or what to track in their lives.

Hope you all enjoy it!