Journal Writing Is an Important Tool for Growing

Over the past 30 plus years at various times I’ve used journal writing as an addition or support to my personal growth.

I have that almost ancient journal sitting right in front of me so I scanned the very first page. It’s one of my journal entry examples. Of course you can’t read it, so I’ll put some other examples down the page. However that page marks the real beginning of my journey of transformation. It’s so amazing to have this history of my evolving self to refer back to. I’m so glad in my zillion moves, from California to Dallas to two different places in N. California to Las Vegas and back again I always saved this book. I can see who I used to be – what was blocking me (many, many things) and how I started learning from others and growing. Now, with online journaling on our site, I have many, many journal entry examples and I can access them from anywhere – even on vacation. For goodness sakes, even on my smart phone.

I just heard from a former client who is also a coach and she said, like me, sometimes she feels really motivated to journal and sometimes her self exploration is happening in other ways. Now I spend more time looking and commenting on other people’s online journal writing then I do writing my own. But I still do it when I need some kind of clarity that I can find no other way. I never stop using tools that work and journal writing is right up there with the biggees!

Following is one of my journal entry examples from a couple of weeks ago:

I feel like calling this “The Dilemma of the Professional Parent and Their Adult Children” because my daughter called last night with her own relationship anxiety issues and I can’t help her. At least I can’t help her the way I help people in my profession because

A) she is my daughter and doesn’t come to me in the same way
B) she does not believe much of what I believe spiritually

I hate not feeling more useful to her. I hate not being able to solve her problems. Of course she is 38 and quite capable of solving her own problems but I’m her mom and I want her to be happy and fulfilled every minute. A little unrealistic so I guess I just get to be grateful that my kids still call me and want my ear – if not my solutions.

Sometimes my journal entry examples might be about my recent flu or something I became aware of about myself. Everyone’s journals will be different and different each day. Do you have any journal entry examples yourself? If not, why not join us on our online journaling community and start now.

Social Networking as a Creator of Miracles

I’ve had many really cool experiences because I am online and because I do social networking on Twitter and a bit on Facebook. I have attracted clients through theses sources. I’ve been told more than once that people love my picture and it makes them trust me or they read my site and feel that way too. However, I have two really extraordinary experiences that sound like miracle to me:

• I have a current client who lives in England who saw me on Twitter and read some of my tweets and thought, “Cool.” She then went away but somehow she just kept on seeing me and finally decided she had to call me. I am now her coach and she feels (and I agree) that she and are clones!
• The navigation button all the way to the right on my website says “Ask a Coach Forum”. If you click on it you will find the social networking, self-guided journaling portion of my site. If you look at the members, you will see a young man from India. Here’s how he found me: I did a BlogTalkRadio interview in February with a woman in Ontario who found me and asked me to be her guest. Well, this young man from India found that interview on his Blackberry while listening in Kolkata, India! And he emailed me. And he joined my online Community!

If these things aren’t miracles, I don’t know what is!

Insight For Living

On this site I talk about blocks to personal/spiritual growth and uncovering them so we are able to have an insight for living. Well, I’ve discovered a big core block for myself. Here’s how the discovery of it went:

In the coaching group I’m leading, at the end of the call when it was her turn to share what she got out of the call, one of the members said that she see’s the little girl in each of us (5 women including me).

Then I said, “You want to know what kind of little girl I was? I loved skirts that twirl. I put on shows in the neighborhood organizing the kids a little younger then I. We made and sold tickets. My mother hung an old bedspread on the clothesline and we put on some kind of show. I don’t remember the show but I do remember that I told fortunes from an upside down fishbowl.

I organized several of these shows  between the ages of 5 and 6. I  stopped when I started school. But no matter what I said, my mother would not let me keep the money. I had to give it to charity.

So now I find a place inside me where I made up that I’m not supposed to make money from what I love to do and what I’m good at. So I’ve been a coach for years. I’ve been on the internet for years. And I’m still working on money as a block!

Well, there it is. Probably my main block to financial abundance.

What will I do now? I guess I’ll do some work around my mother and keep watching for those thoughts. Keep an insight for living. BTW, my mother wasn’t even trying to teach me about charity, she didn’t want the neighbors to think we didn’t have enough money  (which we didn’t.)

I am confident that my block to abundance is leaving as I write.

Are men from Mars & women from Venus here too?

I realize that I am more inclined to coach women.  I have recently become aware that, although I have two sons and a great husband all of whom I have close and cherished relationships with, I am not in a man’s life or a man’s body or brain. I cannot view the world from their perspective and experience.

Because I have no brothers, a struggling first marriage and am sometimes very surprised by a male perspective on things, when  my husband and I were first together, I often “interview” my husband about a man’s perspective on things so I could learn.

That being said, I notice that most women – including me, are more emotional and more easily connected to spirit or a spiritual perspective. I have a different experience of the world just because I have different cultural biases, a different functioning body, I use makeup, I wear dresses and skirts not just pants, the media sees me differently, etc. I think it’s safe to say there are some gender differences even if they are culturally stimulated.

So I tend to have female clients with some notable exceptions like a single parent father with a child and a female ex- to deal with. I know that I am more drawn to talk about certain things with women – sex, feelings, even business perspectives.

I am not saying one is better than the other for a woman. Just different. I often have had some great short-term coaching from my husband and occasionally some other male coaches but most likely I’d never hire a male coach for an on-going experience. I need a women’s coach.

But that’s me. What about you?

Living in the Present

You know the phrase, “We teach what we have to learn”? Well, I should never be surprised that I spend a good deal of my days teaching, coaching, reminding clients about the very things I need to be reminded of. Some days I find I’ve done such a great job that my clients say exactly what I need to hear! Today was such a day.  I needed to hear that I should be living in the now and that’s what happened.

My client started describing how she believes she is overcoming her anxiety. Besides being vigilant about what thoughts she’s thinking and giving up complaining, she realized that when she consciously was living in the now situation (whatever situation or task it is she’s involved in), her experience this past week has been – way less anxiety.

Just the reminder I need. I’m not having a problem with anxiety but I sometimes have a problem of feeling emotionally flat. I believe that habit comes from my childhood when the negative feelings and sense of powerlessness was so acute for me that I had to numb out so that I could survive my childhood. And that habit has survived to some extent all these years later. But when I am living in the now, I feel myself and feel my lively, juicy interior self.

You might be wondering how you are in the now or not even know what I mean.  I’ll do it right in this moment and stop and explain the experience.

1. I stop and notice whether my full attention is on what I’m involved in. Right now I’m writing on the computer and because I write often and fairly easily, I notice that part of me is a little absent which means I am not in the present.
2. Now I come out from behind what feels like an inner door and be here with all of my attention focused on this very moment.
3. Now I’m trying to type and stay present with what I am doing – notice my fingers on the keys, my eyes following the type on the screen.

I knew even as I wrote the above that it isn’t the best description in the world but, hopefully, you know what I mean, will practice a bit and can duplicate my experience of living in the now.

Starting Inner Peace

I recently ran across this headline:

An Open Letter To Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari From A Saudi Friend

Our world leaders can teach us all how to forgive. As a matter of fact, if they don’t start learning how to do it and find inner peace, they will likely blow us all up!

When asked if he held anger for those who imprisoned him, Nelson Mandela responded “that South Africa was too important for him to feel anger. Imagine what would have happened if Mandela had taken the road of personal revenge”.

We must find inner peace if we want to spread it to our leaders.  The path to inner peace is paved in forgiveness. There are many tools and techniques that some coaches can teach you to learn how to forgive. There are many more on the internet and in the zillion self-help books that abound everywhere. You can go to a therapist for help. But I firmly believe that we will have to be the leaders and teach our leaders how to do it. Mandela is a man amongst many with a vision that realizes forgiveness is for yourself. It is you who have anger and hurt living in you and hurting you emotionally, physically and spiritually. And if you realize the consequences to your life in light of Law of Attraction which states like attracts like, you will understand that when you don’t forgive, you attract more into your life at the low vibration of those feelings. When you forgive, you attract love and inner peace.

Exercise!

Well, when your reputation is staked on being able to find the good and learning from everything, you can’t just start becoming a victim of either your aging body or any beliefs about what aging means. So my adventure here on Planet Earth at age 67 is like this and this is what I’m learning:

An aging body will sure teach you to take care of your body. The results of not doing it can be felt almost immediately. I pretty much got through my life doing a very minimum of exercise still looking OK and being able to move rather automatically.

Can’t get away with that any more. It doesn’t matter whether I have issues and want to take my time getting over this, it will not cooperate. If I don’t exercise frequently – like daily – I feel not great in my body and my balance and strength dwindles perceptibly even though I eat very, very healthy and have done so for years.

OK. I WILL LOVE MYSELF ENOUGH TO TAKE COMPLETE CARE OF MY BODY. NO EXCUSES!