Live Life on Purpose with Journaling
Live Life on Purpose with Journaling
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron offers a chance for 12+ weeks of journaling daily – called morning pages – doing a weekly “artist date” and most importantly, week by week, helping you work through cleaning / clearing “your stuff” in order to reclaim your creative self.
Each time I have done the book, I have had a major milestone of creative accomplishments, most notably I wrote (or completed writing) and published two separate books. I could go on with my list of accomplishments, but what’s missing is yours. When others complete the 12 weeks, some continue to journal routinely, knowing the benefits. Others, continue their daily morning pages for a few weeks, and eventually drop off finding that they return to their old ways. Dropping the daily routine of journaling – or writing the morning pages – because other routines take precedence? What is more important than YOU and your inner child growing, learning, changing and enjoying life? Certainly not hurrying to go to work at a job you probably hate!
Yet as “life happens.” Life unfolds and gets tangled up at the same time. Journaling can help you see the reasons why things get tangled up and help you have less confusion with those tangles.
Change is hard, yet change is growth. “Change and you shape your future” was one of my quotes in my first book, aptly titled, “Facing Changes In Employment.” For some, fear enters the picture and overtakes your life in various forms such as “too busy”… “not enough time” … and “overwhelm” just to name a few. It is at this time it is important to keep writing. Keep writing the story of your life, creating new scenes, new plots and new outcomes using your journal. As I para-phrase Dale Carnegie, “if you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always gotten.”
It’s easy for us to forget to write daily in our journal… we get up too late or have other chores to do that are more important – or so they seem. It’s not laziness and it’s not procrastination that stops you from journaling daily. Julia calls it FEAR and she hits it straight on. I call it fear as well, and definitely fear living on a deeper, more sub-conscious level. You might not even know you are doing it, thinking it, or letting fear rule your life. Yet it really is true that your thoughts control your life. What you think about you will manifest in time whether you know it or believe it.
“Dwell on Possibilities” is a quote I have on my wall. You can dwell on good thoughts or bad. We can dwell on positive or negative. We can dwell on our future and all the possibilities as endless – depending on the possibilities your mind thinks about.
Life has many twists and turns, and ups and downs, but when you live life on purpose you gain so much more than you could ever imagine. Daily journaling for 15-20 minutes a day can open so many doors for you, helping you resolve issues, identify patterns, take you on a journey to discover all the possibilities to explore, and maybe even implement them. Journaling arouses the senses and raises your level of awareness, where you are able to notice more, listen more and recognize signals when they come.
Fear has played a major role in my life – for most of my life. I’m not sure how I did this or when it happened but I learned to turn fear into productive and artistic creations – with my art, writing and publishing. By doing so, I have been a role model for others to do the same. Fear is a choice and so is laziness and procrastination (which again is only fear in disguise). Choose to recognize that fear can control you or you can control it. Fear is your little child saying, “Please can we play?” Instead of saying “yes” to your inner child, you let fear say “no” and smack him/her at the same time just for asking.
Next time you hear your inner child ask “can we play?” take his/her hand and say “yes, absolutely.” Ask fear to join the two of you in play and watch fear melt away. Fear is a four-letter word, but so is Play…so is Love… so is Life… and so is Home. Give your inner child a chance to come out and play, to see the world and beam with happiness.
Say YES! And start your day with daily journaling (morning pages). It takes about 15 minutes and my experience with Julia’s morning pages (3 pages written long hand) has lasted no more than 20 minutes. When your inner child starts to hear YES more frequently, you’ll find that living life on purpose starts with allowing yourself to play – everyday. And by journaling regularly, you learn to recognize and listen to the signals.
~ ~ ~
