banner photo credit: Brad Neathery @bradneathery
Regular journaling encourages personal growth and development. Writing helps you mindfully reflect on your life experiences, priorities, and goals, and emotionally process difficult experiences. This article explains how to use your journal during the Mindfulness Fundamentals course and beyond.
What to Write in My Journal?
During the course, we recommend you include the following kinds of things in your journal:
Notes from the course, inspiring quotes and ideas, and any insights you have. You can think of insights are light-bulb, “Aha,” or heart-opening moments where a truth suddenly becomes clear to you. Write down whatever wisdom you gained from that experience. Review these entries during difficult times in your life.
Write down any difficult thoughts, feelings, experiences, and situations that occur. Key things to include are: the situation encountered, the thoughts you thought, the feelings you felt, and the behavior impulses (what you wanted to do) as well as what you actually did, and the consequences of those actions.
As the course progresses, you will learn how to mindfully investigate these thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to see patterns more clearly, relate to it all skillfully with compassion and detachment, respond to it all with kindness and wisdom, and generate liberating insights. For now, write down these experiences in your journal so you can revisit and investigate them with the tools the course teaches.
Here are some examples of specific difficulties to include, and some specific ideas relevant to those difficulties.Write down any and all disturbing, difficult, mean, or hateful thoughts that arise. The content of our minds is conditioned by our culture and upbringing. In other words, what you think is not your fault. Therefore, be compassionate with yourself, regardless of how ugly or vile the thoughts may be. And although these thoughts are not your fault, they are your responsibility. The tools the course teaches will help you respond to these thoughts mindfully with love and wisdom.
Whenever emotionally upset or triggered, use your journal to vent. Express your thoughts, emotions, and desires in all of their uncensored rawness. What do you think, feel, and what do you want to do? Let it all out on paper. If you have a lot of energy in your system, then vigorously move your body before attempting to journal. You can do this by dancing, running in place, jumping jacks, and so on.
Write about situations you handled unskillfully. Write what happened. Be sure to include all of the thoughts you were thinking, and the feelings you were feeling before you did it. Then write how you think and feel about the situation now. Do you feel guilt, remorse, shame, or other emotions? What might you do to apologize and make amends to anyone harmed by your behavior? Consider doing that. Brainstorm a list of skillful ways you would have liked to responded to that situation. Doing this sets a new and clear intention for how you want to respond to similar situations in the future. Finally, is the way you talk about yourself and this situation compassionate? If you believed you had unconditional worth and value, how would you talk to yourself about this situation?
Thoughts about your meditation and mindfulness practice. Write down any insights gained, benefits noticed, or unusual experiences that happened as a result of your meditation and mindfulness practices. Also include questions you have about the practices. Try to answer them on your own, or ask the teacher your questions.
Mindfulness Missions. Throughout the course, you will get journal activities. Do them in your journal so they are all together and you can refer to them in the future.
Gratitude. Appreciation is a wonderful antidote to sadness and depression. Share what you are thankful for in your journal. Write about all that is good and wonderful in your life. You may explore what can be appreciated from unpleasant and unfortunate experiences. For example, “I appreciate how my severe seasonal allergies have given me a profound appreciation for my health and vitality when they are present and a deep compassion for others who are sick.”
Write about what you are curious or confused about. What interesting and important questions are arising in your mind? Write them down. For example: How do I gain self-control around [insert your addiction - food, porn, alcohol, shopping, phone use, etc.]? Brainstorm some possible answers, but allow the question to remain alive for you as you keep mindfully exploring your experience in the search of more and more helpful answers. Your journal is a place to write down those questions and explore your own answers in search of truth and freedom. The course will offer you numerous wonderful questions to explore and tools for how to effectively explore them.
Write down your goals and dreams for the future. Journals are a great place to imagine positive futures, set goals, and create plans to obtain them. After you write your goals, rework them so they are skillful. Skillful goals aim to benefit, inspire, and enrich the lives of others, or connect you with other beings or life forms. A self-oriented goal such as, "I want a nursing degree by 2020," can be turned into the skillful goal of, "I want the skills and knowledge to effectively heal and reduce the suffering of people who are sick or injured. To that end, I seek to obtain a nursing degree by 2020." Avoid goals that are simply about owning or possessing an item unless you can turn it into a skillful goal.
Journal about whatever is important to you right now. Know your priorities. They will change over time, but what motivates and inspires you right now?
Whatever else you want to journal about. It's your journal. Make it your own and do with it as you see fit.
Now that you have some ideas of what to write in your journal, here are some tips to help you get more out of your journaling experience.
Tips on Journaling
Write knowing that no one else will read this. Your journal is a place for you to practice being as authentic, genuine, and as honest as possible. If you write either fearful that others will read it, or with the hopes that it will be published after your death, it will be less-than-authentic. When we write for an audience, we tend to censor our thoughts and feelings. This will decrease the effectiveness of journaling as a transformational tool for your mental, emotional, and spiritual health. So be authentic, genuine, and honest. If you write entries you don’t want others to see, take appropriate measures to prevent others from accessing and reading your journal.
Start every journal entry with the current date. This helps you find journal entries you want to revisit, and helps you see your progress over the months and years.
Include topical headers for easy reference. If you know what you are going to write about, you can put the header in first. Otherwise, leave a blank line and fill in the topic header after you write your entry. Topic headers might include: “Course Notes,” “Upsetting Thoughts,” "Beautiful Quote on Courage," "Insight on Judgment," "Goals," and so on.
Journal several times a week for several months to get in the habit of it. When you start journaling, it may not feel natural to you. Try to block 10 minutes of time, several days a week as your dedicated journaling time. As you journal on a regular basis, you may find it becoming easier and start to experience the benefits of it in your life.
Journal whenever you feel the need to. Your life situation will have times when journaling calls to you. Don't resist. Go for it! Journal as much as you want to.
Periodically review what you wrote. This is a wonderful way to remind yourself of your skillful intentions and the collective wisdom you have gathered. You may also be pleasantly surprised by how much progress and growth you have had over the months and years.
We wish you much succcess and many benefits from your journaling!
Contemplation or Journal Activity
Answer these questions in your head or use them as an opportunity to journal. The topic header can be “Journaling for Personal Growth.”
How often and how frequently would you like to journal?
What do you plan to write in your journal?
Which of the journaling tips from this article do you plan to use?