33 ways to use your journal for self-discovery and self-expression
As a therapist, I often suggest to clients that they explore their feelings and thoughts by keeping a journal. I recommend choosing something that you’ll enjoy using and that you’ll stick to: a beautiful notebook, small enough to carry with you will make it easy to write whenever the inspiration hits you.
Alternatively, you could also use any of the free online journals out there (www.inboxjournal.com, www.my-diary.org) or free blogs (www.blogger.com, www.wordpress.org) - just be sure to set your entries to “private” so the whole world doesn’t see what you’ve written! The online diaries also send email reminders to write in them - I love built-in nagging!
The trick to making a journal work for you is knowing what to write in it. Sometimes clients ask for a bit of direction with this process. Here are some journaling ideas if you’re not sure where to start:
1. Write down what happened today and how you felt about it.
2. Write a letter to a person you are angry with. Say everything you are feeling and wish you had the nerve to say.
3. Draw a picture of the person you wrote the letter to in #2.
4. Make a list of all the things you are grateful for. List all the big things, all the small things, and everything in between that you can think of.
5. Circle the three most important things on the list you made in #4. Write a paragraph for each, expressing your appreciation to the person who had the most influence over it. If possible, turn this into an actual letter and send it.
6. Make a list of the things that you feel upset about right now. Write down as many as you can think of until you can’t think of any more. Then choose the top five.
7. For each of the top five things you identified in #6, list 10 things you can do to gain control of the situation. Circle the top three from each list.
8. Make a timeline that represents your life. Fill it in with the most significant events that have shaped you: your early years, your teen years, and each decade that has followed. Draw pictures or icons next to the most important events. Use crayons or markers if you wish.
9. Write a few pages about your feelings about the timeline.
10. Describe how your life would be different if _____________ had or had not happened.
Here are some examples:
a. If your parents had divorced
b. If your parents had remained married
c. If your parents had been married
d. If your mother hadn’t passed away
e. If you hadn’t moved to
f. If you had gone to college
g. If you hadn’t gone to college
h. If you had gone to _______ college
i. If you had never met __________
j. If you hadn’t broken up with __________
11. Make a list of all the things you wish you could do before your life is over.
12. Make a list of the things no one knows about you.
13. Write about your first year in high school.
14. Write about what life was like before you became a parent.
15. Write about what you wish you had known before you became a parent.
16. Make a list of the things you still want to learn about being a parent.
17. Describe what it was like when you first met your partner.
18. Write about what you wish you had known about your partner before you married him/her.
19. Write about what you wish your partner had known about you before (s)he married you.
20. Write a letter to yourself as you were at age 10. Tell yourself:
a. What your life is like now
b. What you have learned since you were 10
c. What you want him or her to know
d. What you want him or her to beware of
e. What you want him or her to enjoy every moment of
21. Write a letter to your own parents. Tell them what your life is like now.
22. Write a letter to someone from your childhood or adolescence who didn’t appreciate you or who misunderstood you. Tell the person what you want them to know and how you feel about the lack of connection between you.
23. Think of someone you never acknowledged for something important. Write that person a letter and acknowledge him or her.
24. Think of someone who never acknowledged you for something important. Write them a letter and tell them what you want them to know.
25. Make a list of five miracles you want to happen in the coming year. Write a paragraph or two describing each one and how your life will be better if it happens.
26. For each of the five miracles, make a list of:
a. Five barriers or forces that block or prevent it from happening
b. Five positive influences, things that encourage or support its happening
c. Five things you can do to reduce the barriers and strengthen the positive influences
27. Write about the five things you most like to do.
28. Write about the five things you most dislike doing.
29. Make a list of five places you’d like to visit. Describe what you imagine them to be like.
30. Write about three things you most regret doing or not doing. Describe what happened and how you feel about it.
31. Write a letter to your children or grandchildren, even if they have not yet been born. Tell them what you want them to know about you.
32. Write a letter to your descendants one hundred years from now. Describe what your life is like today.
33. And for those of you who struggle with emotional eating, write about what life would be like if you weren’t addicted to food, where this need to eat comes from, what you learned about food and eating while you were growing up.
34. Add your own ideas here:
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
That should be enough to get you started! Keep it up on a regular basis, and you might be surprised at what you learn about yourself.
Sex and the City and emotional eating
I finally got around to seeing the “Sex and the City” movie this weekend. And believe it or not, among those unrealistically thin bodies was a segment on emotional eating!
Turns out Samantha had been using food to avoid cheating on her boyfriend with her hot next-door neighbour; in her words, “I eat so I don’t cheat.” Although it was really just a caricature of emotional eating (the “fat” she gained was the most microscopic of bulges in her tummy), I was pleased to see that this topic is gaining mainstream attention.
This scene got me thinking, though. Often people emotionally eat to avoid emotions, but what kinds of behaviours might people be avoiding by eating? In this case, it was doing something that was in her nature, but given her relationship status, would have been wrong.
Are there things you wish you could be doing that you feel are somehow wrong given your situation? Do you fantasize about running away and starting a new life without all your current obligations and responsibilities? Do you wish you could be living someone else’s life?
It’s worth asking yourself these questions, and answering them honestly. Even if you can’t do what it is you really want to be doing (in Samantha’s case, leave her boyfriend so she could go back to her free agent ways), just admitting to yourself that you’re not that happy might do the trick. Finding a way to change the situation, compromising it, or accepting things as they are could be the ticket to reducing your emotional eating patterns.
The power of positive affirmations
Although some of you may have heard of positive affirmations, you may not be sure exactly what they are or what they can do for you. In a nutshell, they can be an extremely powerful tool to challenge and overcome the negative beliefs that hold you back. In this article, I explain what positive affirmations are, why they can help you, and how to implement them in a simple 3-step plan.
How Negative Beliefs Limit You
I’d like you think about an area in your life that you are struggling with. Perhaps you’ve been unable to progress in your career, or have been trying to lose the same 10 pounds (or more) for the last several years. It is very likely that part of what’s holding you back is a belief system that limits you. For example, perhaps deeps down inside you believe that you don’t deserve that promotion, or that you deserve to be thinner.
The tricky thing with negative beliefs is that we are often unaware that we have them. And because they are outside of our conscious awareness, they become all the more dangerous, sneaking their way into our thoughts. If you truly believe that you do not deserve to be happy or healthy, then you will unwittingly sabotage yourself each time you are faced with a new opportunity for growth. Those who have tried to diet and failed many times over know how true this can be; each new attempt to lose weight results in frustration and hopelessness.
Negative beliefs work their dark magic in three ways. First, they do not allow you to progress beyond their upper limits. You can only be as happy or healthy as your beliefs will allow you, not more. Second, they attract people and situations that confirm them. If you believe that you have no control over food, then each time you overeat will simply be a confirmation of that truth. You will also attract people who reinforce your identity as an overweight person. Third, they lead you to discount situations or behaviours that are incompatible with the negative belief. If you manage to lose five pounds, you’ll tell yourself it’s only a matter of time until you gain them back.
The beliefs that we hold create our realities. Therefore, to change your reality you must change your beliefs. Positive affirmations help us to just that.
How Positive Affirmations Work
A positive affirmation is an expression of your deepest desire. It is oriented towards producing an external reality that reflects your dreams, wishes and goals. They are designed to challenge the beliefs that limit you.
Remember having to write lines on the blackboard in elementary school when you got in trouble? (I, of course, was a perfectly behaved child so I know nothing of this.) That’s exactly how positive affirmations work. It’s likely that your negative beliefs, wherever they came from (messages given to us by others, hard lessons we learned in life, etc.), have been repeated unconsciously over and over for years. And to replace them, new beliefs must be repeated over and over until they become just as deeply rooted.
The beauty of positive affirmations is that they can help you uncover negative beliefs you didn’t even know you had. And until they become conscious, you can’t challenge and overcome them. You’ll see what I mean in Step 2 below.
Putting Positive Affirmations Into Action*
Be sure to put aside at least 15 minutes for this exercise. Go somewhere quiet where you won’t be disturbed. You’ll need to be able to concentrate fully.
1. The first step in your positive affirmation exercise is to create the affirmation itself. The affirmation should be about the one thing that you need in your life that you are struggling to achieve. Some examples:
* “I am the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been.”
* “I am bounding with energy to achieve the goals I have set for myself.”
* “I have the skills and the motivation to move up in my career.”
* “I create a relationship that fulfills and nourishes me.”
Here are some guidelines to help you create an effective affirmation:
* Use positive language ("I am slim,” not “I’m not fat")
* Use the present tense ("I am slim” not “I will be slim")
* Focus on changes in yourself, not others
* It should force you out of your comfort zone, and be slightly on the unbelievable side ("I am bounding with energy” not “I have enough energy")
* Keep it short
2. Next, pull out a piece of paper and divide it into two columns. On the left hand side, write out your positive affirmation over and over, line by line. Concentrate fully on what you are doing. Start listening very carefully to the little voices that pop up. At first, you may not notice them, but you might be surprised at what comes up. They’ll usually be saying something like, “I can’t,” “I don’t want to,” “I’ll never,” “Yes, but.” Don’t react to these voices, just observe them and write them down in the right hand column as they come up. Continue writing out your affirmation until the page is full.
3. The third step involves challenging your negative beliefs. Turn your page over and again, divide it in two. One by one, write out the negative beliefs that came up and deal with them using the 3 R’s:
* Refute them: be objective and try to find evidence that is counter to the belief. For example, if “I’m too lazy to lose weight” comes up, look for other goals in your life that you aren’t too lazy to achieve.
* Replace them: write out the opposite, positive statement. For example, “I don’t deserve to be thin” becomes “I, just like everyone else, deserve to be thin.”
* Run through them: by repeating the positive affirmation over and over, eventually your mind will get tired of protesting.
Do this exercise daily for 30 days and watch what happens. You might start noticing changes almost immediately, but to get the full effect, you must give it time and be consistent. This really does work, but if you find it difficult to get in touch with your limiting beliefs or uncover beliefs that are disturbing to you, you may want to consider reaching out to someone that can help.
* This exercise has been adapted from Lynne Grodzki’s “Building Your Ideal Private Practice.”
What a diet really is
In my book, a diet is anything that tells you what, when or how much to eat, no matter how sensible. It is based on something external. It is not based on what your body is telling you it wants or needs. Don’t be fooled by weight loss programs that claim not to be diets - if it tells you to do anything other than trust your instincts, it’s a diet.
If I lose the weight, I’ll be happy
I read a nice little post today by Oprah’s personal trainer, Bob Greene: http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/200708/omag_200708_worry_101.jhtml
In it, he describes the familiar pattern that a lot of people who struggle with their weight get sucked into: “If only I could lose X pounds, I’d be happier.” Think about whether you’ve ever had this thought, consciously or subconsciously. If so, does it help motivate you? Or does the fear of actually losing the weight and then not being happy hold you back? What can you do today to actually be happier, whether or not you actually lose the weight?
“Diet” is a four-letter word
I recently started reading “Intuitive Eating”
This reminded me of another book I read recently, “French Women Don’t Get Fat”
Next time you’re out with friends or family I dare you to completely refuse to talk about dieting, the “evils” of food, your body, or your exercise routine (or lack thereof). Don’t say anything self-deprecating (I look terrible in these jeans!), don’t comment on your conflicted feelings about your food (I shouldn’t be eating this but it tastes so good!) or how full you feel. And if anyone else gets started, politely excuse yourself from engaging in the conversation by saying something along the lines of, “I would prefer to discuss something else if you don’t mind.” They’ll get the hint.
The real definition of conscious eating
There’s a lot of buzz these days about conscious (or mindful) eating. This usually refers to being fully present and conscious while you are eating, paying attention to the taste and texture, as well to your body’s fullness signals. A very important part of having a healthy relationship with food.
But how conscious are we really of what we’re eating? My mom sent me an email today warning against buying chicken from China (http://www.snopes.com/photos/food/chinachicken.asp), and while the jury is still out on the validity of these claims, it does raise some interesting questions.
When picking out your produce or animal protein, do you ever ask yourself:
* What were the conditions in which the animal lived?
* How was the animal killed, and under what kind of conditions?
* What kinds of chemicals was the food exposed to (fertilizers, pesticides, hormones, toxins in the earth/ocean/food chain)?
* Where was this food grown?
* Were there enough nutrients in the soil in which the food was grown?
* How was the food harvested?
* Was it ripe when it was harvested?
* How far did the food have to travel before getting to your supermarket, and under what conditions?
Food for thought, indeed.
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