Off to get my second Covid Vaccine, today. The world is still waiting for me.  I am getting ready to travel again, to explore a new version of an old world … a post covid world.  Should be interesting.

I pulled this blog from 2008.  It is about journaling as a way to record and inform learning.  Studying PULSE requires sensitivity to the tense that someone is speaking.  Journaling and then going back to notice the tense that you use more frequently can help you tune in to the tenses in a conversation which can be used to guide participants to common ground and resolution. 

Journaling is more than that for me.  I know that there have been times in my life where my journal has helped me focus, helped me see things as they were, not as the horrible mess I had created in my imagination. Journaling allowed me to appreciate who I was, what I had and what I was doing and gave me the courage to do more, think more and feel more about the good things in my life.  I came to realize that I can create a better life for myself by imagining a better life for myself and moving toward it. 

Journaling is more than a record of the past.  It becomes a record of the future you are creating with your intentions. Have a good one.  It is a choice you can make. Take Care.

Journals – Creating Reality July 2008

Journaling has been an important part of my life for the past 20 years.  I don’t write every day and I don’t beat myself up if I forget or get too busy and miss a day or a week of entries.  I do not use my journal as a record of my everyday life but as a record of the thoughts that just won’t go away until I see them on paper.  Writing is powerful.  It makes things real and somehow solvable.  Writing about something that is on my mind takes it off of my mind and puts it on a piece of paper somewhere that I can refer to later if I choose to … or not.  At least it is not rolling around in my mind driving me crazy.

Journaling truly keeps me sane.  It also allows me to formulate new ideas and synthesize issues and look at things in a different way.  When we have participants Journal at PULSE we ask them to write.  It doesn’t matter what they write, just write.  Once they have written we ask them to read it over and then notice whether they have written about thoughts, actions or feelings.  We ask them to use coloured dots to categorize their journal by placing red dots by feelings, yellow dots by actions and green dots by thoughts.  It is also possible to use the red for past, yellow for present and green for future categories.  When people do this, they begin to see patterns in their writing that begins to help them understand more about their own predispositions and maybe even Enneagram types.  Are they in the Head Triad thinking about the future, Heart Triad feeling about the past or Body Triad acting in the present?

Journals can be quite revealing and you may even find out more about yourself then you really wanted to face.  A journal is a friend and, like good friend, it doesn’t judge. It only allows you to observe yourself in a reflective safe environment.  Write what you are feeling, doing and or thinking and notice which is more comfortable to write about.  Have fun!!