6 Week Journaling Course
Week 5 of your journaling course - millionstoriesproject.com
 Week 5 of your journaling course 

I want to try something a little different with you. Before we start we will do a short journalling exercise.

The bank of great thoughts and feelings

This is a lovely exercise; you create for yourself a bank of thoughts and feelings stuff that makes you feel really good to be alive. Then in your odd moments when you’re feeling a little know you can go back to your bank and feelings and news them to lift your spirits.

Journaling exercise

Start by writing a series of single words, for example: –

  • Sunrise
  • Smile
  • Chocolate
  • Walk
  • Wine
  • Breeze
  • Kiss

You get the idea.

Take one of your words, what is the best experience you can recall about that particular word? Take a moment and close your eyes what can you see, feel, here, what colours do you see, what smells are there, who was with you, what did they all you say, what or who else was there?

You can use your bank of great thoughts and feelings as a bailout if you are doing an exercise that may cause you to some pain.  As soon as you start to feel uncomfortable step out of the exercise, change your physiology or practice some breathing techniques and move to your bank of great thoughts and feelings.


Learning to stand back

Often you write about painful experiences, and start to relive the experience, which may be unhelpful. It is important to get this stuff out and onto paper, and once we have done that is even more important that when we reflect on it we do so from a stand back position. We take a stand back position so that it protects it from the pain we may have been feeling, it separates feeling from the images that we can see, it allows us to see the event in a new way and therefore put it to bed.

 

In the picture

When we work with our journal and go back and look at some of the things that we have written, some of these things as we have said, may be painful so that when we reflect it is better to reflect when we are out of the picture so that we can view it objectively and without emotion. When we reflect on something that was great it is better to reflect when we are in the picture so that we can remember, see feel and hear all of the great things that happened.

 

Journaling exercise

At the movies

Think back to an entry in your journal, which may have been in an unpleasant event. As you start to reread the event, imagine that what you have written is a script for a play.

  • Picture a movie screen in front of you and watch the characters in your play act out the event.
  • Remember to stay out of the experience. You are a moviegoer sitting comfortably in a chair looking up at the screen and you have the advantage of seeing the situation from everybody’s perspective.
  • What do you notice about how each character is acting, that you didn’t notice when you wrote the original journal entry?
  • What do you notice about what each character is saying?
  • How could the problem have been averted?
  • What advice would you give to each of the characters?
  • What did you learn?
  • As you think about the experience and what you have just seen and heard, you now have the benefit of hindsight, ask yourself these questions:-
  • What would you like to have happened instead?
  • How could you have behaved differently?
Now rewrite the script, write out what you will be doing differently next time.Now that you have a new script for your play, start to run the play upon the movie screen in front of you, only this time you are taking part, see the play through your own eyes, hear what you want to hear, and act the way that you would have liked to have acted, and achieve the results you really wanted.

Blank screen, rerun the movie, and do this for at least 10 times.

Rewrite the script from other peoples perspectives. Run this through on your movie screen.

What did you learn?


Carry on journalling!

Kind Regards

Jacqui

PS:  Don’t forget to enter the Million Stories Project writing competition…