One of the fond memories I have of my Grandma is she always kept a record of her daily life in a diary. We would be sitting down after supper and she would take out her little black book and scribble away. I was fascinated by this daily ritual and the little bubble of silence she would be in as she contemplated the events of her day. I once asked exactly what she wrote about and mostly she said all the joyful moments and the memories she would treasure and look back on. What a beautiful thought and idea!
Of course not everyday is full of major milestones but it is an interesting concept to document our moments in our day for future reflection and reference. I was inspired to keep a diary myself and throughout the years I have gone from writing great stories about the ups and downs in my life, detail by detail, to simply keeping an organiser with a more functional appointment making and task driven approach. But its the idea of writing about our daily life and taking time for reflection, which is what I want to explore further today.
At the beginning of my coaching programme, I encourage my clients to keep a journal. Journalling provides the opportunity for clients to record thoughts and feelings and most importantly, track their successes and achievements as they go along the coaching journey. It is a very powerful tool and necessary to take a step back from our day to day stresses and focus on ourselves. This time taken out the day to write in a journal is one of the most effective ways to pay attention to what is going on inside us and how we process the events happening in our life.
There are different ways to journal, you can go the traditional method of hand writing in a book or you can join the trend of online journalling where you will find many sites or mobile apps that are very accessible and great visually. I personally prefer to write with a pen or pencil as I find it more cathartic and pleasing as an activity and I love to draw pictures on my page. The more artistically minded of you may also prefer to use this mode for conveying your thoughts and feelings.
So what do we record? A good place to start is to record the outcomes of the day, what went well and what didn’t so that we can approach similar situations in future with good decisions and a better response.
Think about your realisations from the day, how did certain situations or events make you feel – happy, graceful, frustrated anxious or depressed. Take a moment to read through your past week or month, six months and look for patterns or turn around moments. Look out for stress trigger points and what events brought them on. Communicate with yourself, monitor those emotions and find some clarity in your thinking. Its so easy to let day to day pressures become a reactive response in our behaviour rather than taking time to sit and reflect and handle each situation with greater ease.
My favourite is to record what we can celebrate today, the uplifting moments, the people who were kind to us or the breakthroughs we had at work or at home. When you review these moments, I hope like my Grandma, you feel joyful and treasure them dearly.
I challenge you to start a journal of your own, it may be the last half hour before you go to bed where you can relax and take time to yourself to think about your day. Keep writing, reflecting and enhancing your self awareness as this will bring you closer to filling your life with purpose and meaning.
Journaling has allowed me to find peace and gratitude in my day, it has helped me to be thankful to certain people and opportunites that have presented themselves. Its also made me see how I can handle problematic situations and overcome them with my new founded perspectives. I am a great advocate and have seen first hand how it can really help people blossom and create positive change in their life so why not give it a go!
If you found this post interesting and want to try online journaling for free – please click on the link below and enjoy a 52 week self-guided journaling programme from New Insights where you will be provided with 52 interesting questions on which you can reflect and write each week:
http://www.life-coach-journal.com
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