August 12, 2010 – 9:16 am
Is it time to embrace the habit of paying close attention to all your life experiences as opportunities to grow and change? Would you like to learn techniques to improve your life through intense noticing, and get to the learning by journaling about it? Join Joyce Chapman as she invites us to discover how Noticing and Journaling can truly change lives.
Joyce Chapman is a best-selling author, speaker, teacher, and coach. She is a leading expert in the field of journal keeping and coaching. Thousands have found through her: books, workshops, training programs, coaching sessions and newsletters; techniques for actualizing dreams and writing for personal growth and freedom!
Sign up for the IAJW members-only telechat with Joyce Chapman will be on Thursday, August 19th
at 8 PM Eastern | 7 PM Central | 6 PM Mountain | 5 PM Pacific.
Not a member of IAJW yet? Join now!
Meet best selling author Mark Matousek in a IAJW-members only interview tomorrow, Thursday, July 15th at 8 PM Eastern (5 PM Pacific) about When You’re Falling, Dive! : Writing to Save your Life During the Darkest Times.
Sign up for this IAJW members-only telechat now. (No cost!)
Not yet a member of the International Association for Journal Writing, sign up now!
Ruth Folit, producer of LifeJournal software and director of the International Association for Journal Writing, will ask questions of Mark Matousek about spiritual memoir and the art of self-inquiry. When we learn to tell the whole truth about experience, to discern our own soul’s odyssey, we come to understand the mythic dimension of our personal struggles, triumphs, confusions, longings, digressions, and so-called mistakes. By putting our feelings down on paper, and learning to shape life’s raw materials into art, we discover that our challenges are also our greatest sources of wisdom, and that even our darkest (or most unexpected) interludes carry within them the seeds of redemption. We investigate the mysterious connection between the person we believe ourselves to be and the internal witness who sees beyond the conscious mind into the secrets of our hearts. He brings 25 years experience as a memoirist and teacher to this fascinating conversation.
Recently I received a request from the brother of a man who had died during the past year. The brother wrote telling me that he had found on his deceased brother’s computer the LifeJournal program and that he wondered if I would help him decrypt the program and allow him to read his brother’s journal.
I gently declined and referenced a similar situation that occured several years ago. In that instance it was a sad story where the parents of a daughter who died tragically had found a copy of LifeJournal on her computer. The parents were interested in learning more about the daughter’s “last words.” I felt torn, of course wanting to help the parents resolve some of their grief over the loss of their daughter. Yet, I felt that my more compelling responsibility was to protect the daughter’s privacy.
I decided to write to Randy Cohen, the author of The Ethicist column in the New York Times, for his opinion. He agreed with me, and you may be interested in reading his entire explanation.
The bottom line: I am a firm believer in the privacy of journal keeping. Privacy helps you be as honest as you can possibly be with yourself. And privacy is part of the magic of writing in your journal: It’s a place to experiment with new ideas, to say things sotto voce about which you might otherwise be ridiculed, imprisoned, or ostracized if you said publicly.
I’ll do my best to protect the privacy of my journal, and yours, too.
Use LifeJournal to move you along on your journey of refining and improving your life. I capture the momentum of my own natural ups and downs. The Daily Pulse feature in LifeJournal is a way to observe some of my natural trends, which I might not otherwise notice.
For example, if I’m trying to lose a few pounds I include my weight as one of the Daily Pulse Scales. I keep an eye on my Daily Pulse graph every week or so. I notice that without working at it I’ve lost two pounds during the last several weeks. I know myself: I don’t usually do well on a strict diet. But I can make the most of my own natural weight fluctuations. When I see a trend occur effortlessly about which I’m trying to consciously continue, I put a little extra work into staying tuned into eating more moderately for the next week or more. That way I can lose the weight without a lot of effort.
Here’s another example: I’m working on being more productive, staying on task and efficiently finishing projects that I’m working on. Recently I was out of town, working alone in a setting that allowed me deep concentration and focus. I was very productive. My charting of Productivity on the Daily Pulse graph reflected that. Now, that I’m back at home with many more work interruptions and other obligations, I try to prolong the upside of the productivity cycle, remembering the feeling of full-focus, staying on the high productivity roll for as long as I can.
You can use the Daily Pulse not only to observe and understand your behavior, but also to influence it! It’s another way to use your journal to reach your goals.
by Nora Hooper, guest blogger
The black and white marbleized cover of my Composition Notebook would seem to stare at me with expectation, its virgin pages beckoning. It would not take long before I filled the sheets of pristine paper with every thought or event that was happening my life. For years I wrote in journals, was drawn to them, needed them and I still have the books. Some are tattered or coffee stained, others hold newspaper clippings, sketches and poems. When I have occasion to flip through the scribbled sentiment, dream records and relationship rants there is one journal in particular that stands out. It is the journal in which I began to actually ask for what I wanted. I filled an entire notebook with sentences that started with “I want” —and I allowed myself to want the moon. It was liberating. “I want to be a healer.” “I want to be an instrument of peace.” “I want a new car.” “I want to do readings.” “I want to lose 10 pounds.” For a good Catholic girl the sentences smacked of selfishness but I was like a kid in a candy store. Once I got going I could not stop. It wasn’t exactly vocalizing my dreams and desires into the world but it was as close as I had ever come. Once the words were written it was as though they did have a voice and a presence. They began to expand, coming alive, forming my reality. Some desires were fulfilled faster than others, I still struggle with those 10 pounds, but most eventually came to fruition.
Journaling evolves my soul and spirit. To have a place in life where we are safe to ask, to design and to desire seems to me to be a basic need. Now my journaling has taken a new form and the entries seem to serve a slightly different purpose. They call me back to my Self. The written words remind me of what I need to remember. They urge me to rest, to create, to love, to let go and they are as precious and vital to me as they have ever been. They hold my life music, they are my unique song, they are the most trusted intimate friend guarding the timeline of my struggles and successes with precious loyalty.
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Nora Hooper is an intuitive reader who works with her clients in order to discover new avenues of freedom and expression. For over 15 years her sessions have helped people more fully realize their unique gifts and talents. She has worked with people all over the globe aiding in them in releasing the past, opening to receive and healing on mulitple levels. You can visit her website at www.norahooper.com or read her blog at www.norahooper.blogspot.com.
What if the primary text of the world was the world itself? What if every lichen-covered stone and caroling creek could help you to understand who you are how to live? Join Mary Reynolds Thompson as she guides us on a journey in search of nature’s wisdom as we deepen our relationship with our inner nature through writing from the natural world.
Mary Reynolds Thompson, author, certified journal and poet therapist, will be the featured guest in our next IAJW (International Association for Journal Writing) Telecast series. Come join Mary Reynolds and IAJW director Ruth Folit on Wednesday, April 7, 2010 us for an hour of conversation on the topic: Writing from the Natural World: Accessing Nature’s Wisdom Through Journaling
This is an IAJW membership benefit and free to all our IAJW members. IAJW members click here to sign up. (Not a member of IAJW yet? Join NOW!)
Guest post by Dr. Carla McElhaney
As a pianist, teacher and coach, I’m in the business of making magic happen. I’m an alchemist of sorts, applying energy and devotion to whatever raw materials the day brings in order to transform what is into what could be. My work, whether it be on stage with fellow musicians, in the studio with a student, or on the phone with a client, is about creating something special, gaining insight, and revealing truth. To do it right I have to invite change rather than run from it, which means rolling up my sleeves, dropping my defenses and offering up my own sense of safety and security in exchange for the mere chance that something meaningful might take place, and everyone involved needs to be willing to do the same. It’s risky business.
Journaling is risky business, too. Any practice that will cause us to come into contact with our very core the way journaling does is transformative, and transformation requires us to risk change. How reluctant we are to change! How vulnerable change can make us feel! But, how liberating, too, to bear witness to our own growth, our own truth, and our own authentic beauty emerging. And how meaningful to participate in our own creative transformation, to have a hand in the process that moves us from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. Make no mistake about it––journaling will change you, moving you from today’s reality to tomorrow’s possibility. What an exciting and important risk to take.
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Dr. Carla McElhaney is an acclaimed pianist, an Eric Maisel Trained Meaning Coach and an avid journal writer. She uses journaling in her PASSION IN ACTION coaching practice and workshops as a tool to help clients bring more passion and authenticity into their lives. She is the pianist, co-founder and Executive/Artistic Director for REVEL, Austin’s “classical band,” and currently serves on the piano faculty at Texas Lutheran University. Visit her website at www.carlamcelhaney.com.
March 31, 2010 – 10:34 am
Do you sometimes feel that you’re just going through the motions with your journal writing? Do you wish you could experience breakthroughs at every writing session? Dr. Carla McElhaney, avid journal writer, pianist, and coach (www.carlamcelhaney.com) offers this advice about how surrendering to the writing process helps bring creative and passionate power to your journal writing:
Give yourself over to the process of writing your heart out. Let your feelings flow without judgment, without censorship. Give yourself fully to the process of showing up, of writing, of listening, of going deeper, of continually questioning in search of the answers to your most profound questions. Forget about an arrival point; simply surrender to the act of writing. Let yourself be swept away and go wherever your writing leads you.
Open your journal and give it a try: Surrender to the writing process.
Many of us skim the headlines and the first few paragraphs of a news article to stay up to date with the current events. But we often turn to the op-ed page to learn from people who we consider more knowledgeable than we are and whose values are aligned with ours: Frank Rich, Peggy Noonan, Paul Krugman, George Will, Thomas Friedman, Kathleen Parker, Bob Herbert, or Ellen Goodman. We’re looking for a perspective from someone who knows more about the history, the context, and the details of the political issue and so can help interpret it.
There are parallels between newspaper articles and your journal. Some days we just write the news—the details of an event or activity that just include the facts. Perhaps—and it’s valuable information to include—you also include some discussion of your emotions as well. (Emotions are part of our interior weather, so consider inclusion of your emotions of you journal entry as your internal weather report.)
However, if you want to write a journal entry that has insight and will offer you some new perspective, approach the entry as an op-ed article. You are the most knowledgeable about yourself, and when you write you are the expert: You know your history, you know the background of the situation, you know the people who are involved, you know the larger context within which to see the story. So, think of yourself as the [fill in the name of your favorite op-ed writer] of your world.
Interpret. Bring in hidden but important information about the story. Write about the issue from different points of view. Engage. Think of the larger context of the situation. Ask good questions. Interview yourself. Dialog with the different characters. Offer some solutions or suggestions for the future. You’ll find your journal entries will be much more insightful!
February 22, 2010 – 4:33 pm
My 86 year old mother and I flew up to New York City to attend the funeral of her best friend, Judy. Not only was Judy my mother’s best friend, but she was also my second mother from the time that I was three years old.
My siblings and I all attended and we spent the day with Judy’s seven daughters and their families and friends. Of course, we did a lot of reminiscing, each story told triggering the memory of another vignette. During the day we visited Judy’s house, the same home were I spent days upon days in the basement playing with her kids, eating dinner at their large family dinner table, hopscotching on their front sidewalk, and giggling hysterically while reading the newest “Mad Magazine.” A whole new flood of memories bubbled up.
I have been creating a list of those stories so that I can write more about them in the future. I recommend whenever there’s a milestone event in your life–a funeral, a wedding, a birth, a big birthday or anniversary celebration–that you take some time to write not only about the event, but all the images and stories that bubble up and swirl around.
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