Journaling

Beyond the Page

Do you journal or keep a diary? How do you do it? Text? Audio? Video? I’m curious because I’ve always been terrible at keeping a diary.

This week’s Beyond the Page is about how I journal today, which is very different from all the many attempts from when I was younger. Back then, I must have tried a dozen or more times to get into the dear diary concept they always had on the screen (with the voiceover), which always looked so cool.

Not my Favourite Thing

It wasn’t when I wrote and tried to put my feelings on the page while recapping the day. Some days, I also had very little to say, which made it tedious to write (which I will rarely say), and other times, it wasn’t very comfortable for me to put what I did in words (while I was writing it… so, yeah, my relationship with journaling has always been odd. As much as I love to write about my characters and their adventures, putting myself into the text feels awkward.

I rather enjoyed one form of journaling as a teenager – songwriting. I used to write songs about how I felt. These songs were more mini stories in song form (absolutely against any and all poetry rules taught to us in primary school), and it was an excellent way for me to get my feelings out.

Wins and Gratitude

In the most recent years, I’ve learned of a brand new way of journaling to lift you up.

Simple enough – write your daily wins and gratitude.

The point of this long-term exercise is about how we talk to ourselves. Most people’s thoughts are very harmful, putting ourselves down. Honestly, I suffered from this a lot for most of my life. In one of those fantastic lectures, I kept hearing, “If you wouldn’t talk to your best friend like that, then why do you treat yourself so bad?”. Because it’s true, I am my best friend, and how I talk to myself is crucial. The journaling method is simple.

WINS:

• Slept for 7 hours
• Finished my first college paper due Monday
• Drank 2,5 L of water yesterday
• Made my weekend schedule
• Applied for a committee at college
• Kept with my blog posts & art for social media all week despite the workload
• Didn’t stay up after coming home from work (it was a late one)
• Had water before coffee this morning

GRATITUDE:

• I’m grateful to be alive today and have woken up this morning.
• I’m grateful for the three loves in my life and my family in Croatia
• I’m grateful for my courage to make the leap and for my talents to get me there.
• I’m grateful for staying consistent and following the plan.
• I’m grateful for the way I talk to myself.
• I’m grateful for having a vision of what my life will be

Try it Yourself

Somebody might look at this and think it’s daft. But take a week and write down how you talk to yourself. When I began this exercise, I noticed a lot of my self-talk was “shut up”, “nobody’s going to like that”, “you need to lose weight”, etc. It was about realizing how negative I am inside my head and how much this influences everything I do. Remember, you’re your own best friend. If I said anything to my best friends, we wouldn’t be best friends, and I’d probably be dead. 😉

Try it. You’ll be surprised by what goes through your head without realizing it. After everything I’ve learned in this personal journey, is that everything starts in your head. As T. Harv Eker puts it: “your inner world creates your outer world”, which is what this is all about. Recognize how you talk to yourself and what’s been keeping you back. Then flip it on its head by writing down your wins and what you’re grateful for. It may seem weird in the beginning and you may not know what to put down. The trick is to just track your big and small wins. Did you drink your water? Did you go for a short walk (even if it’s 10-15 minutes)? Did you do the dishes? It’s about recognizing that the good things you do (and that happened to you). It’s about celebrating you.

Be sure to comment, like & subscribe. I would love to hear your opinions on this topic.

Until the next one…

~Love, L.V.