Self-awareness and the Power of Journaling

 

Week 3 of Gratitude Mojo, which is a hybrid journal/workbook with a gratitude foundation, opens with Clark Kegley’s thought:

"Journaling is (in my opinion) the number one thing 

you can do to shift into the higher version of yourself.” 

Google “journaling” and 59 million responses will pop up. Journaling is an “in thing, primarily because it is a powerful path into your inner world of emotions and thoughts. The urge to capture our life in words and images seems to be embedded in human nature, going back perhaps even to early cave paintings which may have been a form of recording life and dreams … i.e. journaling. In more modern times, journals began documenting accounting and public records, with the first known, truly modern diary being written by Samuel Pepys in 1660, when he recorded details of his life in London, including grand scenes from historic events like the Great Fire of 1666 and more intimate scenes such as quarrels with his wife.

Diary of Samuel Pepys

The therapeutic potential of reflective writing didn’t come into public awareness until the 1960s, when Dr. Ira Progoff, a psychologist in New York City, began offering workshops and classes in the use of what he called the Intensive Journal method. However, the latest boost in journaling popularity comes from neuroscience which continues to discover benefits of the process of building self-awareness through writing about our lives. As we write about our lives, our relationships, successes, failures, and fascinations, we are pulling back the curtain to see our inner world as it unfolds. 

Journaling gives us deeper insights into our thoughts, feelings, behavior and beliefs and can act as a brake on our reactions to those emotions and thoughts. Self-awareness of our inner world is considered a first step to change and growth. 

The education reformer John Dewey hits the nail on the head when he says;

"We do not learn from experience…

we learn from reflecting on experience.”

Journaling is a way to learn from our own life.

Travel Journal Dina Brodsky, New York City

No Rules ... But a few principles

A great aspect of journaling is that there is no such thing as “wrong." Few of us will ever be a Pepys or Da Vinci when it comes to journaling. And, as beautiful as art and travel journals are, that’s not what we’re talking about here.

Effectively journaling for self-exploration and discovery has no “rules”; however, it does have a few simple principles:

Tell the Truth: The purpose is to reveal your deeper truths. Strive to be as honest as possible about all your thoughts and feelings, positive and negative.

Be Brief: This is not a memoir for someone else. Capture the high points of an event or memory but push into what it reveals about yourself, why it happened, and what you can take forward.

Ask Questions: Questions open up space, and if you give yourself some time with your journal, sometimes you will get amazing answers. 

Trust First Responses: Sometimes you’ll write something that makes no sense. Stay with it; write around it; let your mind flit about and see where it lands. Often it will surprise you with new wisdom.

Journaling is a way of taking your life seriously, capturing insights, preserving memories, exploring why things happen the way they do. That does not mean that journaling has to be a deadly serious chore ... have fun with it ... doodle, color outside the lines, brighten it up with stickers, photographs, images torn out of magazines ... make it YOURS!

More about journaling.

The Art of Journaling: How To Start Journaling, Benefits of Journaling, and More

History of Journaling

4 Neuroscience-Backed Reasons to Start Journaling

Writing Can Improve Mental Health

How Journaling Can Help You in Hard Times

Self-Awareness: The Key to Taking Care of Your Mental Health and Wellbeing

This Artist’s Dazzling Travel Journals Will Inspire Your Next Trip

How is Gratitude Mojo different?

In this 26-week guided journey, you will experience

- a gratitude-focused mindfulness practice that takes about 5-minutes per day,

 - inspiring ancient wisdom and current neuroscience with inspiration and thoughts from over 200 experts,

 - the joy of self-discovery in this spiral bound workbook, printed on 8 1/2" x 11” high quality paper with over 200 pages,

- a simple progression toward your authentic self through exercises, daily gratitudes, weekly reflections, recognition of emotions, and habit creation.

 Order now ... but only if you're ready to explore 

the amazing possibilities of your own life:

Email your contact info (name, email, address) to

info@gratitudemojo.com

and we will send you a PayPal.me link  

for $59 plus $11 shipping for a total of $70.

You will be able to pay by PayPal or credit card.

(Unfortunately, this offer is only valid in the US right now.)

We believe practicing gratitude with a buddy or group

is more fun and more effective ... we'd love to design 

a group practice process for your group,

Contact us at:

 info@gratitudemojo.com

Safety guarantee:

we will never sell or release your information to anyone else.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store.

How many times have I made that trip to the store without stopping to think about what it took to make that simple event possible? If I unpack it, I find:

- Gratitude for my amazing physical health which is not to be taken for granted during this pandemic period. I can see, hear, and use all my other senses. I can walk to the car, drive 45 minutes to the store, shop for 30 minutes, carry all the groceries back home and put them away. Not everyone is so fortunate.

I spent two weeks in Russia in 1990. Stores were empty. Not just missing toilet paper and a few other staples empty. Empty-empty. Barren shelves empty. People spent hours standing in bread lines for a loaf of bread.

- Gratitude for financial stability. I am on Social Security, so while I’m not wealthy, I have a warm place to live and money to buy food and gas and the other necessities of life. However, I have to stop and thank the myriad of folks eighty years ago who decided a country is a community which should care for its weakest members. Also thanks to every clerk, every brainiac and computer jock who makes the system run, every mail delivery person and every bank person responsible for making those lovely numbers appear in my bank account every month. Every bite of food reminds me of how grateful I am.

- Gratitude for transportation. My car always starts thanks to an entire industry that makes and repairs engines, tires, bodies, brakes, and airbags, as well as another industry that conveniently dots gas stations along a paved highway that allows me to wind through the hills to the place where my groceries await. (While I hope to one day to replace gas pumps with charging stations, for me, that day still rests in the future.)

- Gratitude to farmers, farm workers, food processing workers, people who make packaging, truckers who deliver the goods, store cashiers and stockers, strong young people who push all those convenience carts back to the store, often wiping them down to help prevent the spread of a virus threatening so many of us.

- Gratitude to teachers who taught us to read and write and do basic math so the whole supply chain can contribute to the flow of plums from trees to a creatively  labeled bottle on the shelf in front of me that I can see is jelly.

- Gratitude to nurses and doctors, dentists and acupuncturists, janitors and virus researchers, accountants and receptionists who create a healthcare system that supports the health we need to drive to the store to buy our groceries.

- Gratitude to the electricians, pole workers, scientists and fix-it-folks, as well as the propane delivery drivers who fill my tank so I can refrigerate or cook the groceries I brought home.

I look around and realize I’ve barely begun and neglected so many. I still haven’t thanked the people who made the dishes I use, the chair I sit on, the blankets which keep me warm at night, the trees that give me oxygen to breathe, the bees that make the wax my candle is burning, or the sun which makes the food I will eat possible in the first place.

I could sit here until tomorrow thanking all the elements of my trip to the grocery store, but it’s time to make breakfast and I haven’t even mentioned salt and pepper, the chickens that lay the eggs, or the people who milked the cows and made the butter I just plopped into the skillet.

When I think of all the things that have to be in place and go right just for me to make a simple trip to the grocery store, all I can do is say, “Thank you!” 

In the 1300s, mystic theologian and philosopher Meister Eckhart said that would be enough.

Vision Is Tonic

Originally posted in 2016

Barn in Utah

Consistency is not my middle name. I’m really good at starting new projects and new habits. Maintaining them over time … not so much.

So, it was something of a surprise to me this morning to realize that I’ve just finished 5 weeks of keeping the Gratitude Miracles journal. 35 days. Without a miss.

It made me wonder why I’ve been able to maintain this new behavior of keeping the gratitude journal when most of my new leaves have turned brown shortly after turning them over.

A couple of things come to mind … the system I designed for myself is easy and quick (5 minutes), and I completely believe that gratitude is powerful (the fact that there are scientific experiments confirming that helps).

However, last week reminded me of the interplay of vision and discomfort.

Leo Babauta talks a lot about discomfort and new habits in zenhabits.net and says that the one skill that changed his life was learning to be comfortable with discomfort. But, no one really wants to be discomforted, so that thought never got me far.

Last week, however, I did a 5-year visioning/planning workshop for a small company I’ve been involved with for the past ten years. It’s a successful, small niche company and the people are warm, generous and dedicated to quality for the clients as well as healthy, balanced lives for themselves.

One of employees shared an article focused on vision and discomfort (included below) with the main two-part take-away being:

1. Execution invariably requires taking new actions, and new actions are often uncomfortable.
2. Creating and maintaining a compelling vision of the the future that you want even more than you desire your own short-term comfort is the key to success.

I have some new habits I would like to start … and, this time, I’m determined to maintain them over time. The Gratitude Miracles journal has given me the confidence to think I can design a system that will work for me and the article below makes me think I can withstand the discomfort involved … if I can create a vision that’s bigger than the effort and discomfort required. 

It seems that there are three things required for “success” in any new endeavor:

• Vision: a possibility or end result that’s bigger, more appealing, more delicious than the reality of today. Vision is the tonic that makes all things possible.
• Action: doing new or different things … moving out of our zone of comfort, i.e. into discomfort and tolerating the discomfort long enough to achieve the vision.
• Confidence: in the vision as a possible reality and in our own ability to tolerate the zone of discomfort to get there.

So, on this lovely Sunday afternoon, I am off to create a vision for a new possibility.

 

How about you?

More Information:

From:  The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington.

"Behind every impossible achievement is a dreamer of impossible dreams." - Robert K. Greenleaf

"All my life I wanted to be somebody. Now I see I should have been more specific." - Lily Tomlin

Effective execution isn't complicated, but it's not necessarily easy, either. In fact, most people and companies struggle to execute well. Execution invariably requires taking new actions, and new actions are often uncomfortable.

When faced with a course of action that includes difficult or uncomfortable tasks, the short-term costs of taking action can seem so much greater than the long-term benefits of reaching the goal. Because of this, individuals and entire organizations often abandon both the tasks, and ultimately, the entire strategy. We have found from experience that to execute successfully it is essential to have a strong emotional stake in the outcome.

Without a compelling reason to choose otherwise, most people will take comfortable actions over uncomfortable ones. The issue is that the important actions are often the uncomfortable ones. In our experience, the number-one thing that you will have to sacrifice to be great, to achieve what you are capable of, and to execute your plans, is your comfort. Therefore, the critical first step to executing well is creating and maintaining a compelling vision of the the future that you want even more than you desire your own short-term comfort, and then aligning your shorter term goals and plans, with that long-term vision.

Think about what you truly want to achieve.

• What legacy do you want to create?
• What do you want for yourself and for your family?
• What do you want spiritually?
• What level of security do you seek?
• What level of income and fulfillment do you want from your career?
• What interests do you wish you could pursue?
• What do you really want to do with the time you have been allotted?

If you are going to perform at a high level, take new ground, and be great, then you better have a vision that is compelling. In order to achieve a level of performance that is greater than your current performance, you will need a vision of the future that is bigger than the present. You must find a vision with which you are emotionally connected. Without a compelling vision, you will discover there is no reason to go through the pain of change.

Vision is the starting point of all high performance. You create things twice; first mentally, then physically. The biggest barrier to high performance is not the physical manifestation but the mental creation. You will never outpace your mental models. Vision is the first place where you engage your thinking about what is possible for you. 

You must be clear on what it is you want to create. Most people focus primarily on their business or career, but business is just part of life, and it is actually your life vision that gives traction and relevance to your business. That is why we begin with your personal vision, what you want your life to look like in the future. After that is established, we move on to what your business needs to look like in order to align with and enable your personal vision. The more personally compelling your vision is, the more likely it is that you will act upon it. It is your personal vision that creates an emotional connection to the daily actions that need to take place in your business.
In order to tap the incredible power of your vision you need a future that is bigger than the present. If you're going to create a breakthrough-if you're going to reach the next level-you will need to move through fear, uncertainty, and discomfort. It is your personal vision that keeps you in the game when things become difficult.

A compelling personal vision creates passion. Think about something that you are passionate about, and you will always find a clear vision behind it. If you find you're lacking passion in either your business or in a relationship, it's not a crisis of passion; it's a crisis of vision. We will show you how to craft a compelling personal vision and a business vision that aligns with and supports your life goals.

The first step is to create a personal vision, a vision that clearly captures and articulates what you want in life. The personal vision should define the life you want to live in all areas, including spiritual, relationships, family, income, lifestyle, health, and community. The personal vision creates the foundation for an emotional link to your business and career objectives so that there is a strong alignment between what you pursue in your business and the life you desire to live.

Your business vision is most powerful when it is developed in light of your personal vision. The reason so many people fail to follow through when things become difficult is due to this lack of connection with their personal lives.

Your business objectives are not the end in themselves, but the means to an end. Too often, managers and associates plan for business success but fail to connect with the real power source that will enable them to achieve that success. In essence, the personal vision is the reason why we work in the first place.

Once you understand the linkage between your life vision and your business success, you can define exactly what level of income or production your business must deliver in order to support your complete vision.

Vision provides you with that line of sight, that emotional link, to help you overcome the challenges and execute. When the task seems too difficult or unpleasant, you can reconnect with your personal objections (I think they meant objectives!) and vision. It is this emotional connection that will provide you with the inner strength to forge ahead in spite of any difficulties, thus enabling you to achieve your dreams and desires.

NEW! Gratitude Mojo ... where a few minutes a day sparks a better, happier life

When your mojo is working, 

your energy is turned on and 
things rather effortlessly fall into place. 

Gratitude is feeling thankful

for the good things in your life 

as well as for the tough times and challenges 

that help you learn and grow, becoming 

a stronger, happier, more resilient person.

Gratitude Practice is deliberately

paying attention to 

everything you value.

Gratitude Mojo is understanding that 

 everything is a gift!

 While countless academic studies have proven that gratitude brings us greater happiness, health, and success, it is actually the practicing of gratitude that brings results. Keeping a gratitude journal is a universal recommendation as it not only focuses your thoughts on what you’re grateful for, it is a way of honoring your own life journey.

In order to help everyone achieve Gratitude Mojo, we are introducing a simple system to turn your gratitude practice into a powerful habit. It may seem like a lot, however, it actually only takes a few minutes a day to create amazing results using this full size journal which offers you engaging prompts that make it easy to write about the wonders in your life.

After only three weeks of working with the Gratitude Mojo journal, Barbara Muller wrote:

“This journal stops you in your tracks, giving you space to find the miracles in your life. 

I used Joyce’s first gratitude journal for years but never actually “got it!” Today, I couldn’t stop writing and I was practically weeping with gratitude for my life. 

Gratitude Mojo proves that size matters and gives me space to respond to the many inspiring prompts that call me to look at various aspects of my life. 

I am falling in love with gratitude journaling as it sparks wonder for my own life.” 

— Barbara Muller, PeacePodcast.org

Click here.

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Gratitude Benefit: Forgiveness

Forgiveness is not a simple act, nor generally an easy one. Marina Cantacuzino, founder of The Forgiveness Project, says,

"All too often we sanitize and simplify forgiveness, when in fact it’s an arduous, exhausting task — messy, risky and unpredictable.”

For some people, forgiveness is an interpersonal act and requires remorse and a request for forgiveness. For others it’s part of a personal, spiritual journey. Author Tony Wilkinson states,

"This process (of forgiveness) is part of your inner life, your inner journey and doesn’t depend on them (perpetrators), which is why insisting on remorse before forgiveness puts the power in the wrong hands."

This journal addresses the inner journey of forgiveness and does not take the hard work of forgiving lightly.

Special thanks to the following for their beautiful thoughts on forgiveness: 

Click here.

• Relationship coach Larry James at CelebrateLove.com 
• Fred Luskin, Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects. More about his work here.  
• Robert Enright, a licensed psychologist and professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Gratitude Benefit: Optimism & Generosity

Christopher Bergland in Psychology Today states,

“Recent studies have shown that generosity and gratitude go hand in hand, both at a psychological and neurobiological level. Generosity and gratitude are separate sides of the same coin. They are symbiotic.

"Fortunately, each of us has the free will to kickstart the neurobiological feedback loop—and upward spiral of well-being—that is triggered by small acts of generosity and gratitude each and every day of our lives.

"Why not practice a small act of generosity today?”

Special thanks to the following for their thoughts on gratitude and optimism and generosity:
Pursuit-of-Happines.com
Martha Beck
Fast Company magazine

Click here.

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Gratitude Benefit: Passion & Purpose

"When we brim, when we shimmer,

when we glow with love for something, anything,
we become conduits of magic,
and we ourselves become gifts to the world."
-- Melissa Studdard, poet

Researchers focused on developing gratitude and purpose among adolescents report,

"Whereas gratitude involves recognizing all the good things that someone receives from the world, purpose entails considering how one can contribute to the world around them. 

“Indeed, we find these constructs work in tandem; when people feel grateful, they naturally tend to turn towards thinking about how they can give back. In addition, expressing gratitude strengthens relationships, which can then help to guide and support the development of purpose. 

“Therefore, we believe that cultivating a deeper sense of gratitude will help individuals to find a sense of purpose in life."

From: Fostering Gratitude and Purpose among Adolescents
We are a team of researchers at Claremont Graduate University (http://sites.cgu.edu/bronk/) and California State University, Dominguez Hills (http://www.csudhnews.com/2012/09/bono-giacomo/). This project is generously funded by the John Templeton Foundation, in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.

Click here.

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Gratitude Benefit: Resilience

Canadian life coach Ray Samuels defines resilience as “functioning with a sense of purpose, meaning and forward momentum in the face of trauma.”

An example of that kind of trauma was featured in the commencement speech to UC Berkeley graduates in 2016. Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer at Facebook, told her story of the unexpected death of her husband, her family’s grief, and what she learned in the aftermath.

“Dave’s death changed me in very profound ways. I learned about the depths of sadness and the brutality of loss. But I also learned that when life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again. I learned that in the face of the void—or in the face of any challenge—you can choose joy and meaning.”

See more about Sheryl Sandberg’s often humorous and tech-savvy speech here.
See more from Ray Samuels here. 
Special Thanks to:

• 

  Click here.

   Martin Seligman, Founder and Director of the Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania 
• Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and the founding editor-in-chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology
• Dr. Joseph Mercola, health expert

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Gratitude Benefit: Creativity

Expressing gratitude for everything in our lives opens us up, makes us look at things in a different way, noticing details, understanding the interrelationships. It keeps us in the moment. We can’t worry about an unpaid bill when we’re thinking about all the ways we’re grateful for the new rose in our garden.

That kind of attention is fundamental to problem-solving and creativity. The positive regard that we feel when we’re practicing gratitude makes us see things in new ways. A well-worn story in creativity tells us about a man walking through a field of burrs. Rather than rant and rail about the discomfort and inconvenience of being stuck, he thought, “Wow! Look how those little hooks catch my socks.” And, thus, velcro was born.

The more we practice gratitude, the more we will notice details and connections that will lead to ideas. And, while all ideas are gifts, not all of them are good ones. Honor them when they come, but be prepared to sort the keepers from the losers.

Click here.

Special thanks to:

• Maja at BusinessInRhyme.com
• Theresa Amabile, Baker Foundation Professor and Director of Research at Harvard Business School

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Gratitude Benefit: Contentment

It is easy to be grateful for what we have.

The harder question is how to be content with what we don't have. To say, "This is enough.” Being grateful for every aspect of our lives creates a pathway to contentment.

Joshua Becker at BecomingMinimalist.com says, “Gratitude provides proper understanding of our place in the world. Gratitude is the feeling and expression of thankfulness for the actions of others that are costly to them and beneficial to us.

Click here.

“By definition, gratitude requires humility. It requires us to admit we have been the recipient of something we did not deserve. And it calls us to admit there are no entirely self-made men or women. 

“Gratitude opens the door to contentment. It pushes our praise to those who rightly deserve it.

 It causes us to focus on the good things we already have regardless of our present circumstances. It improves our well-being in almost every regard. As a result, it is the surest pathway to contentment.”

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Gratitude Benefit: Wonder

Click here to see the amazing video from Louis Schwartzberg.

One of the most popular gratitude quotes comes from G. K. Chesterton (shown on Week 2). One of his that is not as well known, but is equally great is:

“You say grace before meals.

"All right.

“But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

 The American Chesterton Society says he was the greatest writer of the 20th century because he was also the greatest thinker of the 20th century.

Obviously he steeped himself in gratitude. 

Click here.

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Gratitude Benefit: Connection

We are part of an interconnected world ... connection to ourselves, to each other, to the world of plants and animals, to the inanimate world of oceans and mountains, rocks and clouds. When we feel gratitude for all of those elements, we build our sense of connection and our sense of peace and belonging in the world.

Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence says this about practicing gratitude: “Gratitude isn’t just an emotion that happens along, but a virtue we can cultivate. Think of it as something you practice as you might meditation or yoga.

“Gratitude practice begins by paying attention. Notice all the good things you normally take for granted. Did you sleep well last night? Did someone at work or on the street treat you with courtesy? Have you caught a glimpse of the sky, with its sun and clouds, and had a moment of peace?
“It also involves acknowledging that difficult and painful moments are instructive and you can be grateful for them as well. Directing our attention this way blocks feelings of victimhood.”

Click here.

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Gratitude Benefit: Energy

Gratitude shifts our focus to the present moment. Adela Rubio, a “deep dive mentor,” states, “Even though the actions, or experiences you might feel grateful for occurred in the past, the energy of gratitude, focuses in the present moment. The present moment is where everything IS! It connects you to what’s true, to the dynamic aliveness of right now… the best place to BE!”

Abraham Maslow stated that, "The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness."

Gratitude helps us stay in the present and, therefore, be healthier mentally and have more energy for the things we want to do in life.

Special thanks to:

• Jafree Ozwald at EnlightenedBeings.com
• Bruce Campbell, first Executive Director of CFICDS & Fibromyalgia Self Help
• GratitudeRevealed

Click here.

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.