Journalling through Change

We (Tara and I) are very excited that Simone is one of our Virtual Book Tour Hosts (thank you Simone). We are touring the virtual world promoting our recently released guided journal and companion meditation CD, Journal for the Modern Goddess.

Today I thought I would talk about ‘Journaling through Change’. As we know Simone could possibly be going through a major change in the future if/when her and her family move to Ireland. Having moved from Australia to Hong Kong, I went through a huge cultural change, just as Simone will if/when she leaves South Africa. Journaling helped me cope with those cultural changes.

Journaling is the practice of keeping a journal that explores your thoughts and feelings surrounding the events of your life. It is more than keeping a diary and recording the activities of your life, journaling allows you to clarify your thoughts and feelings, thereby gaining valuable self-knowledge.

As we go through changes within our life, whether it is a change in relationship, a job, a family member passing away, moving to a new home or even a change within you, journaling through your life changes can be more beneficial than just talking about them.

Journal can help you to:-

Reduce Stress – Journaling has a proven benefit of reducing stress. The process of writing your thoughts and feelings down allows you to let go, and not carry as much with you throughout your day. This is a powerful form of self-expression, and through that expression you can gain clarity, release, and relief.

Grow Personally – As you express yourself through your writing, you can integrate new experiences and learnings, compare how it once was to how it is now, explore your dreams, and feelings. By expressing yourself, you are allowing yourself to move forward in discovering who you really are.

Better Know Yourself – Journaling helps you create awareness of your beliefs and options, as well as help identify your values. This self discovery reveals different aspects of yourself, and allows you to better know yourself and make changes where you feel there is a need. This is particularly important when living in another culture because you need to integrate yourself into a new environment. By understanding your beliefs and opinions can help you move through any difficulties in adapting to your new home.

Communicate Better – Instead of saying something you may regret at a later stage, journaling is a safe way of expressing feelings and half-formed thoughts until you are ready to communicate them to others in a healthy and constructive way.

When we created our Journal for the Modern Goddess included a section dedicated to ‘Moving Forward’. This section allows the journal owner to recognize the changes she is going through, at that moment and turn them around to focus on how she can move forward, and through the change.

There are many different journaling techniques you can use to help you move through change, the three journaling techniques we used are:-

Asking Yourself Questions – In our guided sections (Dreams and Inspirations; Moving Forward; Gratitude and Happiness), we provide a number of questions that allows the journal owner to ask herself. By asking herself the questions she can start to journal her answers and allow her answers to flow.

Our questions are guides; therefore any journal writer can ask herself a range of questions such as “how do I feel at this moment in time?” “What makes me happy?” “What changes are going on around me and how do they affect me?” etc.

Asking yourself questions provides you with prompts to move from not writing to writing, and from there you can allow your pen to flow.

Guided Meditations – Our journal comes with a companion guided meditation CD and we encourage the journal owner to write down her experiences from the meditation and if there are any actions she may need to take to move her forward in her life.

One of our tracks was specifically designed to release your fears and when there is change going on, usually there is a fear about the change.

Meditation allows a person to relax and journaling directly after listening to a meditation CD is powerful because the insights you gained through your journey can be put onto paper immediately.

Free Flow Writing – We have also offered journal pages for the journal owner to write whatever she feels like without being guided. Some call this “intuitive writing” and others call it “free writing”. Free flow writing has one rule, and that is, there are no rules.

Free flow writing is you put pen to paper and write whatever comes into your head. If it is “I don’t know what to write”, then you write that and any thought or feeling, you write and you don’t stop. At first you may set yourself a time limit of 10 minutes and over time you may increase the time.

During this time you do not worry about punctuation, spelling, grammar, capitalisation, paragraph breaks etc. Do not worry if it doesn’t make sense, because you are writing purely for you. Free flow writing leads you places you never would have imagined. Allow your thoughts to flow and your pen will naturally move without you having to think about it.

Overall journaling can be an effective tool for processing the changes going on in your life – As they say; the only constant in life is change. Don’t be afraid to journal your way through your change.

Your journal is your own sacred space, where you honour yourself and the unique light that you bring to our world.

Happy journaling!

~

Nicole Graham and Tara Spicer are currently on a virtual book tour promoting their recently released writing journal, Journal for the Modern Goddess.

About the Journal for the Modern Goddess:

This beautiful hard covered, spiral bound writing journal helps women uncover the beautiful, unique and powerful Goddess that they really are.

The journal features 6 coloured inserts with inspirational quotes, guided questions, affirmations and 204 lined pages for journaling. The coloured inserts divides the journal into sections - Gratitude and Happiness; Moving Forward; Dreams and Visions; Journal Pages; Guided Meditation; and Sanctuaries and Sisterhood.

The companion guided meditation CD features 3 tracks that provide women with sacred journeys that inspire and encourage them to create positive life patterns. These tracks help them to recognise and invite magic, inspiration and loving energy into their lives.

The journal retails for $34.95 AUD including GST.

To view or purchase the journal, please visit Nicole and Tara’s website, Journals for Empowerment.

Tomorrow, Tara and Nicole have a friendly chat over at Nirvana Visions (http://nirvanavisions.iblog.com). Please drop by.