HowToJournal

From Elfi

This text will explain why journaling is important and what and when you can journal. It also contains examples of journal-entries, tips about layout, and shows you that journaling can actually be fun. In prettier layout: http://www.elfpath.com/forum/how-to-journal-t922.html

Contents 1 Why is journaling important? 2 Content 2.1 Exercises 2.2 Problems you overcame 3 Layout 4 Summary, and fun

Why is journaling important?

Journaling will help you in your progress. There are multiple reasons why we ask all of you to journal:

1. You simply can't remember everything. How awesome a certain experience might be now, what a meaningful conversation you just had with your teacher, how you finally tackled that problem that was bugging you for weeks: however clear it may seem now, you will probably forget most of it. However, being able to remember all these experiences would really help you in your progress. First of all, how you experience things depends on your current state of mind. If you feel down sometimes, you may think that you always felt like this, and on top of that that it will never ever change again. In such a case it is very useful to have a journal where you can read back that a) you still felt awesome last week, how could you forget :), and/or b) posts in which you wrote down how down you were and that you thought that it would never end, but that you did overcome those feelings, and that you felt fine afterwards again! Reading back old journals like that can help you getting out of a down mood, it shows you some perspective. Also, if you have an epiphany of some sort, write it down! When you are selfbashing, it can be very helpful to read back all the awesome things you have done. And finally, journals can show you your growth. Problems that once were so real are now maybe things you deal with on a daily basis, without even thinking about it. By keeping a journal, you can remind yourself of the long way you've already come, and if you sometimes feel that you haven't changed, read up your old journalposts. It will show you how much you have grown.

2. Another reason for journaling is that it is an easy way to get feedback from your teachers and other elfpath-people[/color]. If you journal, your teachers can keep a bit more of an eye out for you. But classmates or other people can also have suggestions for a problem you are having, and maybe help you forward with it. Or you can help other people with writing your journal: maybe your experiences and ideas help other people as well, or even inspire them :).

3. Finally, writing kan work therapeutically. When you have a lot going on, it can help to simply write down everything that is going on. It can not only help you writing things of your chest, but while writing new insights can also hit you.

Content

Ideally you should journal every 2 or 3 days. Journals can be about everything though. It is your journal, so you can decide how detailed you describe everything. Not everyone is comfortable with discussing private things, and that's perfectly fine. If you want to you can write about how your day went and everything that happened, but if you just want to make a short update about how your exercises are going, what you ran into last week and what you learned from that, that's also great. Some people like to write whole stories, other people like to write to the point. Either way is fine, but do journal.

You can use your journal for different kind of updates. You can write everything you want, anything that feels important to you:

• How your exercises are going, what effects they have on your life, how you do them

• How your day went and what kinda problems you ran into

• Something awesome you did

• Problems you encountered and how you overcame them

• A conversation with someone that gave you new insights

However, it is also smart to keep your audience in mind. If you’re not sure if you can write something, scan it. And remember to not carelessly write personal stuff about other people.

Sometimes it can be hard to structure a journal, to write everything down in a logical order and don't forget things. So here are two examples of how you can structure a journal:

Exercises

It is very helpful to journal about the exercises you are doing. It is useful for your classmates (“hey, let’s see how my classmates did SWEET, maybe I can learn something from them”), and it is useful for yourself and your teachers. It is very recommended to write in your journal about the exercises you got (both from class or from a private teacher) and how they affect you. An example:

What is the exercise? When should you use it?

• In class we learned about SWEET. It stands for Soft Warm Expanding Energy Technique. They say this is a very important exercise that I should do twice a day. You should make a ball in your guts (that is below your bellybutton), a ball of energy. Then I should expand this ball through my body. It should be warm. And I feel any blocks, I can try to dissolve them in the warmth. Not use force but be gentle.

How are you doing the exercise? What happens, what do you feel, what does it do to your system?

• I did SWEET twice last 2 days. Once when I woke up, and once when I went to sleep. I did it as they explained, but I am not entirely sure I do it from the right spot. How do I know for sure where my guts are? But I could feel a warm tingly spread through my body. I think I have a block in my knee. I tried to dissolve it but it keeps coming back. I am not always sure if I really feel energy or if it is just my imaginiation. But my teachers said that it doesnt matter, that even when it is imagination it still works. And I do feel pleasant when I do it, so that is very positive. Owh and I fell asleep once when I wanted to do SWEET.

How does it help you? (Very important for later on when you doubt about why exercises are helpful.)

• I can already feel that it helps me feel. It is a bit scary sometimes to feel my gut and everything that is in there, but I do feel more emotions. And they told us it is important to be in your guts cause that is sort of like a powerplug or something. That it is your center and that it is best for my energy if my energy is in my system. So it defenitely does help me, and I already feel more than usual! And that with such a simple exercise, funny :).

Do you have questions regarding the exercise?

• They said it might make me sick a bit for the first couple of days, but this nausea is very annoying. Is it really normal to feel like this? Owh and also that question about where my guts are exactly located again.

Problems you overcame

When you run into things, you can bet on it that this same problem will come on your path again, either in the same form or in a different form. So journaling about it can help you later when it happens again. An example of how you can write a journal update about problems that you overcame:

What were you feeling, what was happening?

• I am constantly in a fight with my boyfriend! Last week it has been getting worse and worse. And I just couldn't figure out what was going on. We were fighting over small things that were not even meaningful. For example, last sunday I was cooking dinner for him, and he came in the kitchen and said "shouldn't you throw in the vegetables a little bit later? Now they will probably burn..." And I got so angry at him! I felt attacked, I know how to cook, so why does he always interfere with my business? So I started yelling at him that I'm doing my best, and if he knows how to do it better, he can cook for himself! And then he just walked away. And then I felt alone. Well small incidents like that kept happening all week long.

How did you react to that?

• I think I was an intimidator a lot of the time. I didn't want to fight him, but I just couldn't help it. Everytime he said something I just flipped a bit. It's weird that I have so little control over it :(. So I tried to avoid my boyfriend most days. But that also didn't help ofcourse. And it made me feel utterly crap. I felt like a bad girlfriend, like I can't do anything right, and I also feel like I am the only one who is busy for our relationship. Like he doesn't even care.

Where does the problem come from: what inner pieces issues were responsible or involved with this?

• I talked to my teacher about this, and then I finally understood what was happening :)! I explained the situation to my teacher, and he said the real problem was not actually my boyfriend. He said I have inner pieces regarding my dad. And yes that is right, my dad ... well he had a big influence in my life. My teacher helped me feel and we found out that I am very insecure regarding my dad. I always wanted his approval, but he never gave it to me, he always gave me the feeling I was doing things wrong. So I always wanted to do everything right for him, and I felt like I could never succeed in that. There was always *something* that wasn't good enough for my dad... And apparently my boyfriend reminds me of my dad sometimes. So when he says things like that, I feel immediately the young child again that is critised by dad. And because I feel pushed in a corner because of that, I lash out as an intimidator. To defend myself a bit. But that is not healthy of course. And then I feel alone again, because after I lash out, my boyfriend just walks away. My dad always made me feel alone as well. Hmm... now that I think of it, almost all fights with my boyfriend were indeed after situations in which he critised me! (And he probably doesn't even do it on purpose, it just gives me that feeling). But, my teacher helped me to gutmuck some part of this dad-thing. It was really sad actually. As a young child my dad never was there for me, and my teacher said that (healthy) fathers should always give conditional love, saying you did things right etc. So not weird that somewhere in me is a piece that feels really alone because of that.[/quote][/size]

How did you overcome/solve the problem in the end?

• It already helped heaps that I gutmucked a bit of it out. And talking to my teacher helped me realise what was going on. I didn't solve the problem completely yet, my boyfriend still triggers me sometimes. But I now know better how to handle it.

What should you do in response to this? What can you do when this problem shows up again, what did you learn from it? (Certain exercises, watch out for certain things).

• I should gutmuck some more on the daddy-issue. But my teacher said it's a big one, so it can take a while. Also I should keep an eye out for new situations like this. It is good to remember that problems are not always as they seem. A lot of the time there is a deeper thing going on (often from childhood) where I am actually responding from, although I don't recognize it at those particular moments. So that's good to keep in mind! And use GCB a bit more, especially in situations like that. I tend to GCB sometimes.

Did things change, did you see effects?

• Now that I know that it wasn't really my boyfriend but something about my dad, it get's easier to handle. I talked to my boy about it, and explained what was really going on. I think he understood most of it. Well either way, he was sweet about it and said he thinks it's brave of me that I am working on things like this!! Yay :D. Yesterday we had a certain situation again where he said something, and I felt the not-being-good-enough pop up again. But now I realised what it was! So I took a moment, GCB'd (this was really helpful) and told him I felt the same way again, but that I knew that he meant well.

Of course these example structures aren't as rigid as this. You can add sub-titles or delete some if they are not relevant. But using a structure like this can help you structure your journal, and help you to not forget certain things.

Layout

It helps a lot if journals are readable. Not only for others, but also for yourself when you are searching for a particular thing in your journal. Texts that are one big block of word-soup aren't a big invitation to read it. However, texts that use (sub)titles, whitespace, [color=#8000FF]colors [/color]and pictures, are not only more readable (and thus more helpful for your progress), but also more fun to write and read. Making things [b]bold[/b], [u]underlined[/u] or [i]italic[/i] will also help to let certain things stand out more from the rest.[i][size=120][b] [color=#FF0000]Or [/color][color=#FF8000]everything [/color][color=#FFFF00]at[/color][color=#00BF00] the [/color][color=#0080FF]same [/color][color=#BF00FF]time[/color][color=#FF00BF] :).[/color][/b][/size][/i] And pictures can sometimes be a perfect way to get a certain energy across. Same for youtube videos, they can be embedded in your journal, so why not use it :)?

What also helps is to give a short summary in the end. For a lot of people it works therapeutic to write a lot of thoughts/emotions down, to get it off their chests. But sometimes the general idea can get lost in all those words. That's why it is very helpful to make a short summary in the end. This can be done in 2 lines if you want: "So last week all the things I ran into had to do with my mom. The exercise I should be doing is X. Don't forget to pay attention to poor-me since I am likely to do that."

In short:

- Give your entry a meaningful title.

- Use subtitles, highlights, pictures, bold text, etc.

- Use a short summary in the end (something like this ;))

Summary, and fun

Journaling is important. For you, for your progress. It is most helpful if you journal every 2 or 3 days. You can write about anything you want, but journaling about exercises and things you ran into are most important to write down.

And don't forget: it can be fun!

A journal doesn't have to be a boring, long, old piece of text. You can be an adventurer, looking for new land, and your journal can be your logbook. The book you write in about all the seamonsters you encountered and how you conquered them (of course with awesome pictures of the sea monsters and little arrows to their weak spots), about your crew that all of a sudden got sick and how you think that comes from lack of vegetables, about the sun and stars and how every day and night again they help you to determine the right direction, about other adventurers you met during your travels and what you learned from them. Journaling doesn't have to be boring, it can be fun, if you let it :).