Where is your favorite place?

When we are in a situation that makes us feel anxious, we need to find a way to take our mind on a trip to our favorite place: a vibrant city, a lounge chair, a beautiful vista, a white sandy beach, etc.

Just one place should come instantly to mind; if not, then take out your journal now and spend 5 minutes writing about where is the place that you enjoy going to so much. Makes sure you decide upon a distinctive name for this place that you can easily remember– one only.
Now, when you know your favorite place and you need to think clearly about a confusing issue, then:
• Exhale and virtually put that troubling idea, a recurring worry, a new crisis, or even a nagging doubt into a pretend box, a safe, a file cabinet, a computer folder, etc. Store it away in the far reaches of your mind. Or even write it on a file card journal and get it out in the open for you to see. Either way works.
• Now, inhale and get some fresh air into all parts of your body so you are ready for your virtual trip to your favorite place. Remember not to pack your box for the trip.
• Take the trip and travel to your favorite place; enjoy the release of all tension in your body, from head to toes. Journal about how wonderful it is so you can read the travel-log at a later time.
• Now come back, feeling refreshed; open the box and deal calmly with the situation.

Read your journal entries when you have a new crisis and “Take a Trip Again.”

Open the door into your heart for your passion.

Where do you get your excitement, enthusiasm, desire, zest, zeal, fervor, ardor and intensity? What sets (and keeps) you on fire, hungry, thirsty and with a continual appetite? What gives you an eagerness, determination, willingness to change and do something you dearly love to do?

PASSION

Passion is a feeling, an emotion that drives you from morning to night to be the best that you can be at _____(You fill in the blank). Passion is sometimes difficult to find and maintain; we sometimes burn-out and are “adrift” in a hallway of nameless doors leading to paths we could choose to take.

How then to reconnect with your passion and discern the door to open to travel down that path of thrilling desire? James Maxwell says, “Through you cannot go back and make a brand new start my friend, anyone can start from now and make a brand new end.”

Purchase a small journal and label it “My Passion Journal.” Carry it with you all day and begin recording the meaning of your sources of inspiration and insights about your passion, before they slip away into the ether:

1. Write down what has moved you and what you have loved doing during the last period,
2. When the time period has been all nose-to-the-grindstone, visualize a flashback to an earliert time and write about memories from that passionate time.
3. Or, imagine new ways to employ your passion and meet new goals of your passion – write them down in your journal.

These three actions can be done in 5-10 minutes during your lunch period or before you commute home. As you commit to documenting your passion, it will become a habit and you will notice how people you meet express their passion.

As you discover clues in your journaling about your passion, develop a way to index them, with a title word or in separate sections of your journal. And celebrate your devotion and creativity in expressing your passion in a new and enlightening way.

Your journal is like a field where plants can grow and flourish.

Everyone’s field is different than every other. And even your field/journal is different at different times of the year: like winter when it’s bleak outside (in North America) or spring when sprouts shoot up and blooms appear, et. So your journal has different plants and crops like themes and threads, patterns and even maybe a few weeds. Especially prevalent, I’m sure, are fruits and vegetables that you can savor as you “pick-them” from a later harvesting of your writing.

Sometimes a field rests when no seed is planted; like your journal when busyness takes over or depression comes forth. Sometimes the words are like old seeds – they won’t sprout or there are plants that refuse to bloom. But every field/journal has unique soil and regular writing/watering and new seeds/prompts will renew and produce a new crop of words/plants.

Then, with daily tending/writing, the field/journal will continue working to accompany you on your journey of life, from season to season.

Good growing in your journal and in your field.

I was thinking of Tom Sawyer’s picket fence, white-washed by the boys who came by with their “treasures” that Tom talked into giving to him for the privilege of painting the fence. This is like our days, pickets (events and happenings) that we give our time and attention to, in order to get a “treasure” of some sort.

But in Tom Sawyer, we never read about the yard or whatever was behind the fence, viewable in the spaces between the pickets. This is also like our days where the moments between our pickets are the spaces of time and place that would allow us to see beyond our current location if we would just focus.

And the spaces, the moments, should be a prime concentration of our journaling. We should be capturing the glimpses of our journey that are visible in those seemingly silent and empty yet marvelous pauses in our day. To record those moments, I have begun carrying ½ file cards, 2 ½ X 3, which are great for “short takes”; I call it “micro” journaling. It’s easy to jot down the scene, the sound, the thought and the future plan in bullets and phrases. During my next regular journaling, I sometimes tape them in my journal or I copy the essence into my journal entry.

So you too can get “treasures” from the picket fence, only this time without white-washing it – the way is to harvest the spaces.

I was preparing a chart for a workshop; a chart about the benefits of journaling. I found statements that it improves cognitive functioning and strengthens the immune system but then I found something from the AMA Journal:

“Writing about stressful life events helped reduce symptoms of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis in patients with these chronic illnesses. The effects of the writing exercise were still evident four months later and resulted in clinically meaningful improvements in patient symptoms.
The new findings add to a growing body of evidence linking mental health to physical well-being. Although researchers are not sure how this technique — called “expressive writing” — can lead to improvements in health, they speculate that it may help people better cope with stress, which can take a deleterious toll on health.
On average, asthma patients who wrote about their most stressful life event showed a 19% improvement in a specific measure of lung function, while control asthma patients showed no change, the researchers report. Rheumatoid arthritis patients were found to have a 28% reduction in symptoms, whereas control arthritis patients did not improve.
Ventilation of negative emotion, even just to an unknown reader, seems to have helped these patients acknowledge, bear, and put into perspective their distress. In this and a growing number of studies, it is not simply mind over matter, but it is clear that mind matters.
The Journal of the American Medical Association April 14, 1999;281:1304-1309, 1328-1329″

Everybody tells us to relax, to chill out, to slow down, to take a load off, do deep breathing exercises, yoga, etc. but journaling is a practice that requires little extra tools that are inexpensive.
Try some during the busyness of the Holidays when there just seems to be more of more.

A friend just came through a bad day:

1. Her car broke down with a water leak.
2. It had to be towed to the garage.
3. The repair bill is estimated at $600.
4. She missed her hair appointment.
5. The people who looked at her Elyptical Excercise Machine and loved it, called and said they changed their mind.
6. The furniture she put into a weekend special furniture sale had to be moved back – none of it sold.
7. The electrician who was doing work in the house left dry wall scraps/dust all over his work area.
8. She has to clean it all up for a house showing tomorrow morning.
9. Ants are all over the downstairs; the exteminators only looked upstairs yesterday.

I think you would agree, “This is a really lousy day.” Gretchen Rubin, author of “The Happiness Project” and a happiness blog, has identified 13 tips to counteract this kind of day but I want to call your attention to one:

#11. Write It Down.
The feelings of desperation and utter exaustion can be alleviated by writing all of those feelings down; take out a 3X5 file card and sit down and journal. This is the kind of “spur-of-the-moment” journaling that all of us are capable of doing even though we may not be able to consistently take time out in the morning/evening to write in a daily journal. By releasing those feelings, we can then proceed on to “carpe diem.”

A couple of weeks ago I led a nature retreat for a Spiritual Direction class. An important and essential element of that retreat was journaling and I’d like to share that with you.
First, the attendees silently walked in the woods reflecting on their visions of the Holy Spirit in nature.They journaled their understands and descriptions of the current experience as well as their past instances of similar experiences.
Second, the attendees silently walked and looked for a tree, brance, shrub, leaf that reminded them of something they could relate to. This effort is much like looking at scattered cumulus clouds as they form up and become recognizable images, at least to us: faces, animals, birds, etc. They sketched that “found object” in their journal constructing a nature journal entry including date, observer, time place, weather, wind, etc. They could use pencil, colored pencil, crayon and colored markers to express themselves more fully. I call this 2 D Journaling words are a 1 D Journaling.
Yes, there is a 3 D Journaling technique that I’ll tell you about at a later time. But try adding sketches of nature to your journals; they will creat a visual addendum to liven them up.

Spiritual Discernment is not an inbred practice; rather it is a discipline acquired and refined over time, during our spiritual journey. We need His help along the way and journaling helps us to dialogue with Him about our travels down the path. An old Cherokee saying is very appropriate: “Every step IS the journey.”
Use your journal daily to prepare for an upcoming discernment, as spiritual Director George Murphy suggested:
• Write a request for Him to look at your day with you.
• Contemplate your day.
• Record what He shows you about your day.
• Read and reflect on you recording.
• Underline those points which were important to Him.
• Journal a dialogue with Him about your findings.
This spiritual practice is a contemporary version of the examen recommended by Ignatius of Loyola in the sixteenth-century. He counseled that incorporating it into your daily life will not only result in better discernment but also in growth of your spiritual life. Journaling the practice improves your growth by making the practice observable, like way-signs along the path.

More later.