This is a guest post by Diana M. Raab. Diana is the author of Healing With Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey (Loving Healing Press, 2010). You can visit her blog or website. Diana is participating in the WOW! Women On Writing Blog Tour.

When life takes an unexpected turn, writing can be a beneficial form of release from stress, due to either emotional or physical factors.

Many published authors, including myself, have used writing as a catalyst for their survival during difficult times.

Some of them include: Anaïs Nin, Joan Didion, Reeve Lindbergh, Tobias Wolff, D.H. Lawrence, Isabel Allende, Vivian Gornick, Kathryn Harrison, Sue William Silverman, and May Sarton.

For us, writing has provided purpose and meaning to our lives. It gives one a reason to wake up in the morning and continue on with the day.

D.H. Lawrence, for example, sat at his mother’s bedside and while she was dying, wrote poems about her. He also began composing an early draft of Sons and Lovers, his novel which explored their complicated, loving, painful and close relationship.

Marcel Proust wrote Remembrance of Things Past while sick in bed with asthma. Flannery O’Connor wrote some of her best stories while dying from lupus. I wrote my first book, Getting Pregnant and Staying Pregnant back in 1983 while on bed rest with my eldest daughter.

The book began as a journal typed on my Smith Corona that was mounted on a specially-designed bed table my husband built for me. After my daughter was born, I condensed the journal into a prologue and added research to create a self-help reference book for women having similar experiences.

Now, more than twenty years later, the book is still in print and has helped many women cope with problem pregnancies.
My most recent book Healing With Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey also began as a journal and was recently published as a self-help memoir to help others battling cancer.

My background as a writer allows me to help and teach others while helping myself navigate through difficult times.

May Sarton and Anais Nin also used journaling to pull them through difficult times. In her book, Recovering, May Sarton chronicled her battle with depression and cancer. Anaïs Nin used her journals to write to her deranged father who left the family when she was young.

In Nin’s case, her journal entries became a springboard for a four-volume collection of published diaries. As one can see, journaling can be a cathartic way to express feelings. My attitude is: “Direct the rage to the page.”

I have a writing colleague who says, “If it hurts, write harder,” and for years those words were posted above my computer, until they simply became a part of me.

At an Associated Writing Conference a few years ago, Dr. James Pennebaker, author of Writing to Heal said, “Writing dissolves some of the barriers between you and others. If you write, it’s easier to communicate with others.” He does have one rule that he calls, “the flip out rule,” which proclaims that if you get too upset when writing, then simply stop.

Pennebaker believes that there’s a certain type of writing which erupts when we’re faced with loss, death, abuse, depression and trauma.

Whether affected by change, loss or pain, finding the time to write is critical to your healing process. Some people prefer to journal about their experience, while others may lean towards the fictional or poetic modalities to help them escape their own realities. Whatever your choice, once you try it, you’ll see that writing, in any form, can be healthy and empowering.

Reasons to journal

To discover yourself
To vent frustrations and cherish joys
To record and remember events
To fine one’s purpose
To plan for the future
To tap into your intuition
To become empowered
To build self-confidence
To allow self-expression
To uncover secrets, sometimes unknown to us
To improve communication skills
To improve mental health

Journaling tips

Date entries
Don’t worry about grammar
Be honestly and write deeply
Write quickly
Don’t erase
Write for yourself

Journaling prompts

Make a list of things which make you happy.
Make a list of what makes you angry.
Make a list of your accomplishments.
Write about your morning. Waking up, breakfast, the newspaper, the thoughts. Visualize a place you love and write about it. Give details.
What is your first memory?
Describe your childhood room.
Who are the people you love?
Describe a grandparent.
Write about books which have changed your life and why.

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This is a guest post by B. Lynn Goodwin. Lynn is a freelance writer, editor, teacher, former caregiver, and the author of You Want Me To Do WHAT? – Journaling for Caregivers (Tate Publishing), which can be purchased at Amazon, through Writer Advice, or from your local bookstore. She is published in numerous anthologies, magazines, newspapers, e-zines, and blogs, and she owns Writer Advice . When you visit the website, be sure to click on Journaling for Caregivers. Lynn is participating in the WOW! Women On Writing Blog Tour.
Have you ever been a caregiver for a spouse, parent, child, special needs child, or yourself?

If so, you know that you spend every spare minute driving to medical appointments, stopping at the pharmacy, cooking, answering questions,

paying bills, giving medicine, adjusting machines, returning phone calls, and helping with matters that used to be private.

Why write about it?

Writing gives perspective and restores sanity. Writing is a lifeline as well as a record. Writing will improve your life and could even save it. Do not underestimate the power of journaling.
It allows you to vent, delve into issues, and untangle messes. It lets you analyze or celebrate. It allows you to finish a thought without interruption. Journaling releases mental toxins and deepens awareness.

What do you do if you don’t know what to write about?

One way to avoid facing a blank page is to use sentence starts. There are over 200 of them in You Want Me to Do WHAT? Journaling for Caregivers, and they will trigger all kinds of memories, plans, and ideas.

Want to try it right now? Pick one of the sentence starts listed here:
Today, I want…
Sometimes I wonder…
I lust after…
It’s hard to admit…
What if…
I will always love…
Finish the sentence and keep going. You are journaling. Explore your hopes and fears. Vent. Analyze. Process. Reflect. Make discoveries and find the hope that can hide when you are overwhelmed by your daily routine.

Are judgment gremlins nagging at you as you write? Ask them to go outside or tell them to play on the freeway. Your journal is yours. It does not need their approval.

Journaling helps you see yourself and your loved one from a new perspective. Journals never interrupt or argue. They let you evaluate, interpret, and rediscover your love.
Use the prompts in You Want Me to Do WHAT? to ease the stress of caring for a patient with dementia, stroke, cancer or any degenerative disease.

Use them if you care for someone with special needs or a mental illness.
Use them if you are a primary caregiver, spouse of a primary caregiver, or a long distance caregiver.
Use these prompts if you are in any kind of dependent relationship. Use them to process the end of a relationship. They will help you understand what happened.
Writing is therapeutic. It saves lives. Your truths are eager to come out. Let them spill onto the page, and see what doors writing opens for you.

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This is a guest post by Jon Rhodes. Jon is a very successful clinical hypnotherapist from the UK. If you are interested in self improvement, you can read the details of his very popular therapeutic hypnosis mp3 sessions. Charisma can help you in many aspects of life. It can help you win friends, be popular with the opposite sex, and even land that new exciting job. There is almost nothing that charisma can help you achieve.

For some, it is very natural to be charismatic. They just seem to have that ‘X-Factor’. However it is comforting to know that charisma can also be developed. Here are four top methods to help boost your charisma:

1 Have goals you are working towards. There are a lot more followers than leaders, so if you want to stand out then be a trailblazer. There is nothing wrong with being a follower, but people are naturally drawn to leaders.

Set yourself goals to work to. Have a sense of purpose and a vision – a big goal that you are working towards. You may or may not succeed to meet your goal, or it might change over time, but if you always have one, people will naturally feel drawn to you as you present the possibility of an exciting future. Don’t simply pretend to have a goal as people will quickly see through you and you will lose all credibility. In any case it is far more satisfying to spend life attempting to meet realistic goals.

2 Love yourself. If you don’t like yourself, how do you expect others to like you? Unknowingly you constantly give out thousands of small subconscious clues on how you should be treated, and it all begins with treating yourself right.

You need to learn to appreciate that you are a unique and valuable human being. Accept yourself as you are. It’s fine to have some flaws. You can work on improving them. However it must be remembered that the most charismatic people on earth are the ones with flaws. Someone who is perfect is not really all that interesting anyway. People are drawn to people, not robots. Be happy with who you are, wart and all. Love yourself and others will soon follow suit.

3 Be honestly interested in others. You must have met many people who talk incessantly about themselves? This may be OK at first, but after a while it becomes very tiresome and you just want to avoid them.

Charismatic people appreciate other people just as much as they appreciate themselves. Relax and listen properly to what other people are saying. Give them space to talk. You will learn new things, and they will notice and appreciate that you actually listen to them. The Chinese have a saying: “You have two ears and one mouth – use them in that proportion.”

Some people struggle concentrating on listening to others, and become anxious that they may forget what they are thinking next. This causes them to not listen properly to what the person was saying, as they struggle to remember what they want to say, then immediately respond to what they say with something totally irrelevant.

This will not win you too many fans, and is irritating to the recipient. Relax, allow that thought to disappear, and listen. This thought will return if it is still relevant. If it is so important, you will remember it again some time in the future. With a little practice listening becomes much easier, and you will enjoy far more productive two way conversations.

4 Model someone who you consider very charismatic. Hypnotherapists and NLP practitioners often utilize this technique very successfully. It could be a friend, a celebrity, or even a fictional character that you model. You may wish to be like James Bond for example. Don’t try and copy them exactly, just consider how they would act in the situations you face.

You have to sometimes be careful with this as it may not be appropriate to blow up the whole building up with your watch, or do a flying kick to the face a la Bruce Lee! Get a ‘feel’ of a certain character, and how they work on the inside. Try to catch their essence, rather than exactly cloning them. Done with thought and care this can significantly raise your charisma levels.

So remember you should have goals that you are working towards, love yourself, listen to others, and model other charismatic people. Try to be charismatic, but don’t try too hard. Watch other people and observe what they ‘get right’ and what they ‘get wrong’ in the charisma game.

This will greatly increase your awareness over time, and help hone your skills. Pretty soon you will notice huge strides in charisma levels, and your success and enjoyment of life will also soar. Now get out there and wow the world with your new charming charismatic self!

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Have you ever heard someone saying “he made me feel x” or “because of her I felt y” ? Maybe you even said it yourself. Stop for a moment and think about it, did they point a gun to your head and forced you to feel something? The truth is we and no one else are responsible for our emotions.

Have you ever felt great even though something you consider negative happened? For instance maybe it was raining and you were all soaked and you still smiled and enjoyed the moment, or maybe something you consider good happened and you still felt bad. These examples show us that we can choose our emotions and we don’t have to react to the situation or to the others.

Change your negative emotions into positive emotions

Usually our decision to feel a certain emotion is unconscious but it doesn’t have to be that way. At first you’ll notice your emotions only after you feel them. Start by accepting your emotions and take full responsibility for them, you can’t change something until you accept it.

Think about the positive intent of the feeling. E.g. Perhaps the fear helps saving your life or gives you a feeling of safety. If you don’t know what the intent is you can use the Six-Step Reframing technique to find the positive intentions and to find alternative ways to accomplish your positive function.

Permit yourself to feel sad, frightened, angry or any emotion you consider negative. Explain yourself that it’s ok to feel that way and distinguish between the emotion and yourself. If you feel angry it doesn’t mean that  you’re an angry person and if you feel scared it doesn’t mean you’re a coward.

Don’t try to block the emotion, instead let yourself feel it as much as you can. If you’ll stay with the emotion you’ll find peace. Notice if you’ve unpleasant feelings in the body every time you feel the emotion, if you do ask yourself what emotion lays underneath the first emotion and let yourself feel it. Keep doing it until you feel all the emotions.

After you felt the emotions, if you still feel a negative emotion in your body, you can breathe through your mouth and direct the breathing to the discomfort area in your body. If you don’t feel a discomfort in the body you can direct the breathing to your heart. All of our feelings are filtered through the heart. The breathing should be deep and slow. After a few minutes you’ll feel relieved.

Realize that you don’t feel that way all day long, there are times when you feel great. Think about all the instances when you felt bad, what do they all have in common? In most cases you’ll find that it’s related to a few areas in your life that require your attention. It can be areas like self acceptance and love, making independent decisions, loneliness and so on. These areas are related to limiting beliefs. Talk to someone about the things that bother you. It’s best to talk to a professional but your friends and family can help too.

Think about all the times you felt great. Remember what it was like to feel the emotions, remember the things you saw, heard, smelled and so on. Make a vivid image of the good times you had, make the colors of the image bright and sharp. Make the image bigger and bigger and notice how you feel about it. Play with it until you feel wonderful. Our thoughts influence our emotions, If you have a negative sentence that you keep repeating in your mind simply replace it with something short and positive.

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