Ways to Reflect: Journaling For Support & Joy

March 10, 2023 Retreat
When we feel stressed, or stuck in the minds negativity bias, how can journaling help?

How To Support Yourself: A 5 minute journaling practice

1. Find a quiet space to sit. Open your journal. Take three conscious breaths and set a timer of 5 minutes.

2. Tune in. Close your eyes or soften your gaze. Allow yourself to surrender and bear witness to the Ego’s excellent marketing department that sells judgement, criticism, regrets and missed opportunities? Has it hooked you? Can you decide to name it, take your power back and release it? Can you allow the negativity bias to dissipate like a cloud or steam off a tea cup?

3. At the top of a fresh journal page, write: Dear __________ (your name),

How can I support you? What do you need to say?

Write spontaneously, answering that question for five minutes. Then read what you wrote. Underline the truth and courage in your journal. What can you decide to give yourself? Or what courageous action can you take?

 

We need not live in isolation in our heads (negativity bias or escape).  We can name our feelings by writing and allowing our truth and wisdom.

The poet Mary Oliver writes in her poem Wild Geese “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

 

In meditation and journaling, we learn to release the negativity bias and allowing our beingness, creativity, truth, and love to lead the way.

Is this helpful? Leave a comment below.

Thank you,
Jennifer Schelter
PS. This is my cat, Oscar, when he was a kitten. He still loves to sit on the desk beside me or on my journal as I write.