Drowned: Journaling yourself out of Anything!
I remember good days like a vague outline of the bridge which I enter on the days, dark like night sky.
It affects my writing. It affects me. It affects people, I care about. And even though there is no way to dispel clouds from life once and for all, there is still a way to help yourself stay on both feet in the storm of dark days.
Journaling yourself out of anything!
I was 10 years old when I first met people involved in business, self-development, mental/physical health and all of them in one voice were telling about the power of journaling. I was so wired up with their energy and even though I was just a ten years old girl and hardly could tell if I needed to journal myself out of anything (I was writing in my diary sometimes, but most of the times, I just mopped around, chewing on childish worries that with years were growing up with me), I begged my mom to buy me a fancy notebook and next morning, I took my first step into journaling.
As you can guess, it did not go too far. Mainly, because I liked to write stories more than write about feelings I did not understand and thoughts I did not bother to notice.
But almost ten years later, I found myself back into journaling and this time it all worked differently. This time I knew what I was doing and even though, first few weeks it seemed not working any miracles, I still could not ignore the positive shift somewhere inside of me.
In this post, I want to share a few tips on how to journal yourself out of anything and keep going even when your feet refuse to move.
1. Your thoughts don’t have to make sense
As a writer, I am obsessed with overthinking possible meanings for the words which sometimes pushes me off mental cliff and I start doubting rationality and weight of words I use. But journaling is not writing a book and your thoughts don’t have to make sense. More so, your grammar, your style, your messy handwriting does not matter. What matters is your willingness to take 10 minutes and stay in the cloud of your thoughts and emotions pouring them out in any form you want.
2. Your journal can take any truth
I personally struggled with numbing feeling of being afraid to share true feelings, even if it was just writing them down. Again, I overanalyzed anything, constantly questioning if it was a true feeling or was I lying to myself? I was also worried that I would not feel the same tomorrow so I thought I had to maybe wait till tomorrow to know for sure if what I felt was true and worth of being in my journal.
But your journal can take any truth, even if it is a lie - F J Haddley.
3. Ten minutes a day is not a burden
I noticed many people, myself included, feel time ahead of time, which means our brain, in never stopping rush of thoughts, thinks ten minutes are the same like ten hours. But it is not. Ten minutes a day will not spoil your plans, will not take half of your day, will not feel like eternity if you take a breath and allow yourself to be in those ten minutes. I would not journal more than that because it would drain me mentally, but ten minutes are just enough to dive it, grasp some thoughts and pull them out, freeing yourself of them.
4. Monologue – power of wise
Life is not as lonely as death and yet, even in crowd we find ourselves in the arms of loneliness. But we have to move, to keep going through life and one of the best things I discovered in journaling is Monologue. As long as you keep holding your ideas in the vacuum of ephemeral thoughts, nothing is going to happen in real world. Nothing, I checked! So a good way to force changes in your life is by having long monologues with the only person in the world who cares about what will happen to you in this lifetime – YOU!
I can keep talking about journaling forever, and more likely I will be back on this subject again in future as I walk farther with journaling and discover more and more of new things on my way. But for now, these four tips are the ones that helped me to journal myself out of darkest and hardest and vaguest days of my life and I believe that some of these tips (if not all of them) may be helpful to you as well.
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