Welcome to Awakening to Your Story the place to learn, get inspired and be supported with heart-centered solutions for your everyday life. I am Alicia Hartzell and today we are going to be adding Journaling to your Emotional Tool Library.
Metacognition is your brains ability to be conscious of and focus on your thoughts. It is one of your brain’s many super powers. When you activate metacognition you step into a roll of being an active participant. So rather then thinking and feeling from an autopilot response or the reactive state of your limbic system you have the power shift into a state that allows you to watch and choose your thoughts. Journaling is a great way to activate this super power.
One of my favorite ideas is that it is ALL just information. I want you to keep that in mind as you use journaling as an emotional tool. Negative thoughts and feelings and positive thoughts and feelings are all valuable indicators designed to help you. It’s what you do with that information that really matters the most. Journaling is a great way to pay attention to the indicators and navigate through the information positive or negative.
Let’s look at 2 ways to start using Journaling as an Emotional Tool:
- Accumulating the positive
- Processing the negative
Accumulating The Positive:
Journaling to catch positive experiences can be a wonderful way to reinforce and create momentum to thinking and feeling more positively. There are three tools in the Awakening to Your Story Emotional Tool Library that focus on this very practice.
We are going to look at all three as prompts to get you writing – journaling. I have added links so that you can watch or read more about each one.
Creating a Positive Bias: Is all about scanning for what is right and working in your life. Taking pen to paper and writing about where you feel gratitude and appreciation. Think about what sparks joy? Scan for everything you can that feels positive, optimistic, affirming, and good then gift yourself time and space to write it down and revel in how it all feels. The positive is there for you it’s about catching it and claiming it as your own. Scan and write, then keep scanning. This is a great start to creating a positive bias.
Building a Positive Cellular Memory Bank: Is all about taking those thrilling, enthusiastic, cozy, whimsical, connected, and joyful moments that you feel so deeply they hit every cell of your being and then writing about them. When writing about it use all of the flowery language that evokes a deep sense of feelings. I like mixing in photos from the memory to really double down of the positive emotional response. Once you have it captured you can add it to your emotional bank account know as your Positive Cellular Memory Bank. (Don’t worry I give examples of how to find the language that evokes all that positive emotion and feeling) The goal with this prompt is to write about all the things that feel so good that you can feel them down to every cell of your being.
Taking a Thought Party Even Deeper: This is all about capturing your daydreams and putting it on paper. A thought party allows you to take the parameter of reality off and play in a world where anything is possible. Gifting yourself space to write about the ideas and feelings that come from a thought party is a wonderful way to journal. The more time you spend thinking, feeling, and writing from this place of possibility the more room you make for it to show up in your life off the pages of your journal. To put it simply make room to daydream and then put the essence of it to paper.
Processing The Negative:
Before we get into the how, there are two things to keep in mind when journaling to process negative situations in your life.
-First is to understand that negative thoughts and emotions happen in a loop. Some people describe it as a negative spiral. The goal is to use journaling to interrupt that loop. Whether it is a present negative situation or one from the past that still persists you have the power to interrupt that negative loop.
Remember stopping to write about it already puts you into a metacognitive state, which means you are actively paying attention to your thoughts as you write them down.
-Second to help you break that loop pay attention to the percentage of space you give to validating the negative verses getting to neutral and moving through to thoughts on the other side of the emotional spectrum. The tendency will be to write out the negative loop and validate the suffering then walk away. Instead try to put in an equal amount of time and words into getting neutral or to the other side of the emotional spectrum. There is value in the amount of time and space you give to breaking the loop. The prompts below will help.
Start by writing these 6 prompts out and then work your way through each one.
- Get It Out
- Shift Focus Back To Your Heart
- Think About Who You Want To Be In This
- Think About How You Want To Feel In This
- Scan For Important Information Both Positive and Negative
- Find Next Logical Steps Forward
Get It Out – Get it all off your chest. Write out all of the parts of the situation that are playing in the negative loop. Tell the story as you feel it and as it sits in your mind and heart now. In this type of validating purge of information the tendency will be to focus on “them” the outside source that helped to create the negative situation. And that is just fine. This is the space to get it out of your mind and onto the page.
Shift Focus Back To Your Heart – Take a breath. Now it is time to pivot and shift your focus back to your own heart and story. Acknowledge where you have power. Your power is in your own emotional heart and consciousness. You have power in how you live your life and think and feel along they way. If you need help with this shift in focus the Point Of Reference Emotional Tool can help.
Think About Who You Want To Be In This– Who do I want to be? The reactive state where your limbic system takes over and you participate from the primal fight, flight or freeze is not the only way forward now. You get to choose who you want to be in the midst of this negative situation or part of your story. If it is something from the past you get to decide who you want to be now, in this present chapter of your story. You are not defined by your situation but rather who you become along the way. Think about it and write it out. The choice is yours.
Think About How You Want To Feel In This– How do I want to feel? Once again you have a choice in the matter. Sometimes you have to know what you don’t want to you can figure out what you do want. So if you need to you can start there. I feel… but I want to feel… Sometimes you have to remove other people’s expectations of how you should feel to make room to discover how you want to feel. Maybe how you once felt kept you safe but it isn’t serving you anymore. It is ok to change your mind and to make room for more freedom in how you want to feel. If it helps you can even write out the progression of feelings.
Scan For Important Information Positive or Negative– What can I learn here? There is always important information for you woven into any negative situation you may find yourself in, past or present. Things you can learn so you won’t end up in the situation again. Things you discovered about yourself or others that will give you a broader understanding moving forward. Patterns that have emerged that you want to change. Maybe it’s identifying limiting beliefs that are holding you back. Or maybe it is a dream that was sparked in the midst of it all. It can even be as simply as getting clarity about how you want to feel and who you want to be. Call it out and write it down.
Find The Next Logical Steps Forward – What is my next logical step forward? Ask yourself and then scan your heart and mind to see what feels right. It may not come right away but leave room for it on the page. The next step may be as simple as actively shifting your thoughts to support who you want to be and how you want to feel. It might an action you can put into motion. Whatever it may be try to remain in a state of gentle curiosity with yourself as you scan for it.
Ok, that is a lot to get you started. Work on those two areas and I think you can add journaling to your Emotional Tool Library. You know how to get yourself into a metacognitive state to capture the positive and process the negative using journaling. The more you practice the easier it gets.
Remember, I am here if you have questions or need help along the way. Leave your comments, like and share this video and post, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and until next time know that I am holding a place of love for you where you have the power to catch all that is positive and navigate your way through anything that is negative.
