Journaling Challenge: Week Two

I have been journaling up a storm in this last week, which is week 2 of our Journaling Challenge! Not to toot my own horn, but I’m really getting into the journaling groove! It’s really been helping me out. Dianne wrote a post about cultivating an attitude of gratitude on Monday, and if you haven’t checked it out yet, zoom on over and have a look. I’ll wait. This turns out to be important, later, I promise.

This week has been a roller coaster for me. At the beginning of last week, I had my first mammogram, which led me to an ultrasound next, and on Monday of this week, a biopsy. Needless to say, I was kind of losing my cool. The what-ifs started their dismal march through my head. I won’t keep you in suspense, my biopsy came out in the clear. But in the interim between finding that out and the actual test, I thought I would be a nervous wreck. Because that’s pretty much my only plan, usually. Here’s why I wasn’t:

Writing it Down

Every day I’ve been writing down the stuff and the feelings that I’ve had going on in my mind. Like I said last week, getting that time to process my feelings and the events that happened to me was crucial. What I usually do is just stay in my head and isolate myself. Newsflash, this doesn’t work. For anyone!

Even though my basic instinct was to jam my fears and frustrations down inside, I poured it out into my journal. Some days I only wrote one page, but every day I wrote at least one page. Instead of feeling like a whining burden (which is what I feel like when I confide my fears in my massively patient partner), I feel like the burden of it all was lifted from me, and not just foisted on to another person. I got relief without feeling guilty about it. I was refreshed after writing and felt ready to tackle my problems anew.

Keeping it Consistent

My main problem with journaling in the past is consistency. I wanted to start this big bullet journaling project with pretty pens and washi tape, graphs and pictures. I wanted a journal that was beautiful and meaningful. What I’ve discovered is, I like to make things grandiose and larger than life. I want an A+ on everything that I do. But journaling in the long run doesn’t have to be about that. What it’s really about is getting that stuff down.

For me, just spewing my feelings down on the page, while reflecting on my motivations for my feelings was the real way to go. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with the beautiful approach. Just for me, it made the idea of journaling too overwhelming if it had to be perfect all the time. I don’t need the A+ approach when it comes to my feelings. I just need to get those feelings out of my head and spend some time examining them. If I promise myself just to write about my personal headspace every day, I can commit to that. It actually gets done.

Getting Your Gratitude On

I can’t stress enough how important this has been this last week. Counting my blessings has been something I’ve been actively engaged in since I started journaling, and this week it saved my butt. The American Psychological Association did a study involving individuals with debilitating conditions, one group practicing an attitude of gratitude, and a control group. People practicing gratitude had better coping mechanisms and an overall better sense of well-being.

Why this is important is that I numbered at least one of my blessing every day these last two weeks. I really think that this saved the part of my mind that likes to spiral out of control with worry when I’m presented with a situation that I can’t control the outcome of. While I breathed a big sigh of relief when I got the good news this morning, I wasn’t any where near as out of control as I would have been without journaling.

Did you join us on our 30 day journaling challenge? I hope you will decide to, if you haven’t already. It’s really helping me. Please share your experience, strengths, and hopes with me about your progress so far. I look forward to hearing from you!