Today’s post will be the last one that comes out while I’m in the United States. Tomorrow at this time, hopefully, I’ll be in sunny Jamaica 🇯🇲. Margie and I are taking a well-deserved vacation.
Last night as we were packing up i grabbed a travel journal I always take with me. Except the one time we will get to later. As we packed and had a little snack, I read some of the entries out loud to Margie. It was amazing how many things we forgot that we enjoyed on vacation.
There was parades we watched. A very nice couple from Canada we hung out with. The gent and I even played a game and won on stage at the resort! How do you forget that? Still, had it not been written down, we would have.
This practice of taking time to write every day does several things for me. It forces you to show down and reflect. Sometimes that can be difficult for people used to being on the go all of the time. I speak from experience. It also helps you be present by asking, and remembering, details to write down later. In reading this journal there were names of people, dishes we ate and towns we traveled through.
Here is the thing, if this works well for vacation, imagine how this could work for your life. Journaling may feel like a long lost art, but if it helps us slow down and be more present, that could be life-changing! Hang on to all of those memories in any way you can. Life goes by quicker than we think.
Whatever form stress may take, there is one thing we can say about being stressed out – it sucks. Feeling overwhelmed or out of control of our own life never feels good. There are a lot of new tools to help us deal with this stress. There are meditation apps. I even saw an app where celebrities can read you bed time stories. These are great, but I believe there is a tool that has been around for centuries that can do a better job. In addition to helping us get a handle on our stress, it can do so much more. It can give us a greater sense of mental clarity. It can also give us a great insight into our thinking patterns, acting as a cheap and readily accessible therapist. That way when life is getting at you, or like our poor chap in the picture above, you get a bad phone call, you can use this tool and help avoid overwhelm and burn out.
You might think a tool that can do all of this would be expensive. You will be pleased to know you can get this tool as cheap as a couple of dollars. I wrote about this tool in my first book, A Happy Life for Busy People. I also wrote about it a total of three times on this blog in 2013. Oddly enough, we haven’t spoken about it since then. I think it is long overdue that we bring up the topic again. This amazing tool is the journal. Before you are tempted to dismiss this idea because of its simplicity, let me caution you against doing so.
I am going to share with you some of the reasons this tool is so effective. First of all, a handwritten journal forces us to slow down and record our thoughts. Second, we are…umm… well…recording our thoughts. Trying to keep all of our thoughts in our head can be equated to plugging more and more things into an outlet. Eventually, the circuit will blow. This could be a feeling of anxiety, a panic attack or a full-blown nervous breakdown. These are expensive physically, mentally and with the cost of healthcare, financially as well. The cost of a journal can be as cheap as a pen and a spiral notebook. This takes some of the load off that circuit. It also gives us a record to thoughts we have and what may trigger them. Often, when we write down how we are feeling and read it back later, we can feel a little foolish for how we may have reacted to a certain situation. It is good to have that record.
A journal can be a safe place to share our feelings, even if it is only with the paper. It can be a place of emotional release. A journal can be the cheapest therapist we can hire. Beautiful thing is, this therapist doesn’t have office hours and is always available. In order to keep life from becoming overwhelming for you, might I suggest picking up a journal and just begin recording your day. Getting things out will take the burden off of your mind and will help you from having a melt down, or just blowing a circuit. I would love to hear your stories about how journaling helped you. If you want to learn more about journaling, feel free to check out my book, A Happy Life for Busy People, available on Amazon or wherever fine books are sold. You can also go back and read the posts from 2013 or listen to the episode on my podcast at the link below. Whatever you choose, I would love your feedback!
There are often two great challenges in forming a more positive attitude and lifestyle. First, knowing what to change, much less how to change it. Second, keeping motivated in a negative world. A tool that goes a long way in addressing both of these concerns is a journal. If you kept a diary when you were younger you are familiar with the concept. A quick jot of your emotions on paper helps in so many ways. Not a fan of pen and paper? There are plenty of journaling software available. This idea was made popular by the TV show ‘sex in the city’. writing, or typing, your thoughts down helps in several ways. One, it helps with achieving clarity. Often when confused about what the right thing may be to do in a certain situation I journal about it. The answer doesn’t always jump out at me, but I usually leave knowing a little bit better where I stand. Two, it also helps see where negativity may be creeping in and what subjects you may not have the most pleasant outlook on. Being that your journal is only intended to be read by you, feel free to be completely honest and you may discover what is holding you back from living life in a more positively passionate way, and how best to move forward. Third, if you are a fan of going back and reading what you have written days, weeks, months or even years earlier it can be a great way to see how far you have come. I must confess this is not a practice I often do, but when I do it seems comical to see what I may have considered an impossible problem 6 months ago that I may have forgotten about already. It also helps me see how much more positive I have become or warns me that I may not be as positive as I should be. Trust me when I tell you a journal can be the kindest and cheapest therapist you will ever Love.
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 