Thomas / MSc The Journal Writer's Companion

Achieve Your Goals . Express Your Creativity . Realize your Potential
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-77559-419-2
Verlag: Exisle Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

This is a clear, practical guide to using journaling to help you succeed personally and professionally. It explains how the different types of journaling techniques - from gratitude journals to bullet journals - can be adapted and combined in innovative ways to create a unique, personalized method that works for your life and your goals.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Thomas, MSc

Thomas, Alyss

MSc,

Leseproben

I’ve kept a journal all my life, as far back as I can remember. I was always excited by the potential of the fresh new journal pages, waiting for my life to open up in front of me.

Preface

As a writer and a lifelong eager student of writing, psychology and the social sciences, I’ve kept a journal all my life, as far back as I can remember. I was always excited by the potential of the fresh new journal pages, waiting for my life to open up in front of me. In my journal, my writing voice and sense of identity had a space where they could be understood and appreciated. My journal was the one who listened to my active mind, who could reflect and give back to me the truth of who I was. These books were my place to organize my thoughts, and my safe place to explore the edges of all that I was learning and coming to understand.

I kept a few of those journals and when I was reading over them recently I was disappointed by them. It was as if I had no belief in my future self. My early journals had no structure, no organization and no consideration that in the future I would want to read them. The words filled the entire page with no margins or white space, as if I was really short of paper. There were no subject headings, and only occasional dates, and all kinds of material were mixed up together, such as ideas for stories or anecdotes or fragments of dreams. There are two time focuses in a journal — the time when you write and the time when you return to read or review what you have written and take it forward — and I did not take this into account.

WHY I BELIEVE IN MODERN JOURNALLING

I believe everyone has original, unique, quirky, special and unusual ideas, and some special thoughts, experiences or understandings that belong only to them. If you do not express them, then no one else ever will. There are things you have known or loved or understood in your own special way since you were a young child, and these will have been amplified in certain unique ways by your life experience. I also believe we tend towards social conformity, and we have a kind of herd instinct to fit in rather than stand out, like the wildebeest on the plains. If they all run like crazy at the same time in the same direction across the same crossing point on the river, only a few, the unlucky ones, get eaten by crocodiles or big cats. This conformity prevents a lot of us from freely expressing our weirdest and most private thoughts. If you watch a film of the wildebeest doing this, don’t you just want to urge them on? And you get anxious about any straggler who’s sniffing out what might be a better and safer crossing point, but she’s hesitating because all the others are getting in the water and it’s safer to go with the herd. Part of our social brain still behaves like this, and this stifles our creativity. Why?

The direct enemies of your weird, original creative ideas are intolerance, criticism, judgment, fear of ridicule and fear of being unusual and standing out. You are just as likely to reap this from your nearest and dearest, who might gently humiliate or laugh at you or make your ideas sound silly or pointless, as from vicious internet trolls or terrible reviews. We dread exposure that brings the risk of criticism or being humiliated or banished. Yet if you don’t have the opportunity to develop your own quirky ideas, so much potential is lost. At the very same time, we are constantly being encouraged to market ourselves, put our ideas out there, promote ourselves, network and be connected and share and monetize our ideas in public — quite a contradiction. This is where the need for a journal arises. Instead of exhorting you to get out there and network, I am suggesting you stay in more and give yourself complete and total permission to discover the ‘book’ that is your self, the one that you will write as you give yourself the attention, focus, structure, time and space in the special private room of your own that you can create in your journal.

Original creative ideas are not created in public, as this is not a safe space for them and it never was. Look at anyone who has had brilliant ideas and changed the course of history, and you will see they had private incubation space for their ideas. Often they had to ward off disapproval and criticism. They had a room of their own, and in that room they sat and wrote or drew or doodled about thoughts and ideas that anyone else would have judged as preposterous or even heresy. Look at Einstein, who referred to his private space as his ‘inner cloister’. If you ever see a photo of his room or his journals, you can see how messy they are because he liked to include lots of different ideas and materials all at once. Virginia Woolf’s little book was written in 1929 but it is just as relevant today. She insists that in order to develop a mind and thoughts of your own, you need privacy, and you may need to assert your right to this. Samuel Morse, who actually invented the telegraph, developed his ideas in his private art studio, and he was mortified about having to reveal them to anyone. He knew his idea could completely change the world of communications, but the idea he created was such a big paradigm shift that he was afraid it would be mocked or rejected.

It’s helpful to look at people who became famous for their ideas, as the process worked just the same for them as it does for us. People who succeed in bringing ideas out into the world need courage and self-belief, but this is something that takes time to develop as you work on and strengthen your focus. You have to believe in your early prototypes or vague ideas long before anyone else will, and you must persist in believing in them, just as a mother does with a child. You need a completely private space in which to bring this together, a hidden, internal space protected from opinions, criticisms, judgments or even just casual encouraging comments. If you share your ideas too soon, and expose them before you are ready, they can be lost or lose their potency.

A journal is the private space where you believe in your ideas and your unformed, unknown thoughts. Your journal is where you can be the best version of you that is still in the process of being discovered, where you know you’re going to be the best at what you do, and where you are prepared to work away until your projects, your ideas, or your newly minted sense of yourself, are robust enough to be seen in public.

Find your unique passion three journal prompts

Here are some questions to take away to explore in your journal.

•What is a secret thing that intrigues you?

•What is something that you loved when you were around seven or eight years old? Go back to that age now and ask your young self to predict their future life, based on the things they loved to do. What does he or she say?

•Reflect on the unusual or distinctive combinations of things you know about. What are the unique combinations of understanding, experience or knowledge that only you know about? In what specific life situations do you have experience and expertise? Write them all down, because you have probably never seen them written before.

A UNIQUE, COMPREHENSIVE HANDBOOK TO SUPPORT YOUR SUCCESS

There are lots of books about journalling, although many of them are mainly about the writer and a specific approach or method of journalling. This book is different in that it is all about you and your journal writing, starting where you are now. The book covers many different journalling approaches, it gets to the point, and there are lots of ideas and techniques you can find easily and apply instantly. I explore a big 360-degree vision of all that modern journalling can be — as a resource that is instantly available to you but is always fresh and innovative. You can use journalling in many different ways, and in the process become your own coach, mentor, supervisor and creative thinker. The book is neither academic and full of references, nor chatty and full of stories. It is a book of ideas, techniques, suggestions, and a comprehensive reference source to many different styles of modern journalling. It’s a creative catalyst, and even if you’ve journalled for years you’ll find new ideas here. You don’t need to read from beginning to end, but dip in and try something — see page 11 to get you started. You will discover for yourself new ways to open the door into whatever aspects of your being and your life are calling you. It never tells you what to write about, as this already lives within you, but encourages you to find out for yourself what has been waiting for you all along. However, there are plenty of prompts to get you started and to take you far beyond any initial doubt or uncertainty you may feel about the blank white pages that await you.

From the experience of reviewing my past journals, I learned the importance of structuring your writing so that it is a properly organized, positive developmental process that can carry you through all the phases of your life, learning and development. There needs to be an emphasis on courage, structure, positivity and persistence. I have learned a great deal from developing potent new journalling approaches. I have also learned from teaching hundreds of clients, students and coaches to use a journal to support their goals, clarify their thinking and attain results much more quickly. This is the book I always needed as a journal writer but could never find, and the book I have always wanted to give to clients, colleagues and students that will...