Spirituality and Self Help » techniques

Using Words For The Health Of It

shimon — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:23:28 +0000

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.

The Three E’s to Finding the Career You Love

shimon — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:08:29 +0000

This is a guest post by Michele Wahlder. Michele is a Life & Career Coach, the founder of Life Possibilities, LLC and author of Alphatudes: The Alphabet of Gratitude—26 Solutions for Life’s Little Challenges.
You might fall into a career that you love by chance or you may have known since you were a child what you wanted to do when you grew up and ended up loving your chosen profession. For many of us, though, finding a career we love is not so easy.

Most of us have gone through the trial and error process, but it’s not a very strategic method for the activity you’ll be doing for forty hours a week until you retire. Considering the amount of time we spend comparing brands at the supermarket or researching vacations, shouldn’t we put a little more time and research into our career choice too?

If you’re contemplating a career move, reassessing your mid-life career choice or just entering the job market, consider working through the Three E’s to Finding the Career You Love: Exploration, Evaluation, Execution.

EXPLORATION

Before you start your job search, the first thing you’ll want to do is assess your work values. Ask yourself what you need in order to be happy in your work environment. Prepare a standard set of questions to ask on an interview based on the values you are not willing to set aside. These values provide a template for what any career you pursue should look like.

Then, assess your strengths. Once you have defined what you are naturally talented at, focus on how you can optimize those strengths and write a competitive edge statement that explains what makes you unique, different and valuable.

The final step in the Exploration stage is to find the common “golden” threads that run through your interests and brainstorm careers that would incorporate them. For example, you may find that most of your interests tend to be individual activities that allow your mind to go somewhere else, such as reading, cycling, and playing computer games.

If you thrive working alone and enjoy the “escape” of everyday life, then think of careers that might let you use those interests. Perhaps, you’d enjoy being a writer, a truck driver, or a computer programmer. Write down all the potential careers based on your interests. Don’t edit or censor at this point, jot it all down, everything from a vague interest or silly idea to a dream job.

EVALUATION

Once you’ve explored and discovered your work values, your strengths, your interests, and brainstormed career options, it’s time to evaluate what jobs may actually be suitable for you.

Take your list of jobs and compare and contrast it with your work values and your strengths. You may find that even though being a truck driver aligns with your interests, one of your values is to have the option to work from home. Or, you may not be a very good driver. Narrow your list down to the jobs that fit with your values, use your strengths, and include some of your interests.

Once you’ve narrowed down your options, do a little “on the road” evaluating for your top three job choices—job shadowing, internships, web-research, and informational interviews.

EXECUTION

Now that you’ve learned about your options, pick the one that is the best fit for you. Then find out as much about the industry and the opportunities within that career field as you can. Re-write your resume to position yourself for this career or begin building the foundational components of the new business you would like to start.

Connect with professional organizations in your industry, take any training or educational courses you need to be competitive, and get out there and submit your resume or start that business.

Congratulations, you have arrived at a career choice that will utilize your talents, skills, and passions!

Here is a bonus video to help you get the job of your dreams.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh3VV90v5po

How Writing Can Save Your Life

shimon — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:45:55 +0000

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.

How Journaling Improves Your Emotional Life

shimon — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:53:57 +0000

This is a guest post by Chaundra McGill. Chaundra is the owner of writing reflections and the author of the new free e-book, $1 Therapy: Achieving Emotional Well-Being Through Reflective Writing Therapy.
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of keeping a journal? If the image of a teenage girl divulging her first crush on the pages of a padlocked diary springs to mind, I encourage you to reevaluate your notions of journaling.

For most of my life, I always heard that it was good to keep a journal, primarily from people who never kept a journal. As an English major in college, a few professors required journaling as a part of the curriculum and factored these forced logs into our final grades.

Needless to say, I did not find the musing of required classical readings helpful. As a writer, a mentor encouraged me to keep a journal because you need a place to jot your random ideas. Ok, this made a little more sense to me. But only until I turned to the pages of a journal to help me deal with my past issues and trauma, did I see a direct and pertinent need for a journal.

Let’s face it, we all need an outlet. Some people confide in their friends, some people pay a therapist, I used the pages of a journal. A journal appealed to me in ways that confiding in another human being could not, mainly because I never had to worry about my journal judging me or divulging my most intimate thoughts.

The physical act of writing my thoughts was similar to the release I felt jogging three miles on a treadmill. The emotional release of writing lifted years of pinned up frustration. The words I revealed on my journal pages allowed me to see clearly and sort out all of the confusion that swirled about in my mind.

But let’s get one thing clear, it’s hard to get started. When I first started journaling, I would often arrive at the page without a clue what to write about, which was extremely frustrating. So to help you avoid the same frustration, I have listed below a few journaling techniques that can help your get started on improving your emotional life.

Automatic Writing

This works well when you don’t have anything to write about, but just need to write. Simply place your pen to the page and begin writing. You can even write “I don’t know what to write about” repeatedly, until another topic flows from your pen. For many people, it doesn’t take long before a topic springs to mind. Also, be forewarned, it is common for people practicing this exercise for the first time to cry because your subconscious mind seizes this opportunity to release festering issues.

One-word Association

Arrive at the page with one word in mind and write as much as you possibly can about the topic. It can be anything: a person, place or thing. Some topics that have proven very helpful for me are: mother, father, uncle, home, love, death, goals, motive, etc. I personally learned a lot about myself and my feelings about a particular topic during this exercise.

Who am I?

Oh, the quintessential defining question. No, but seriously, who are you? Describe your life as it is today. Consider the various facets of your life, such as work, relationships, family, spirituality, etc. Describe exactly how you see yourself today. Writing this description will inevitably lead you to evaluate not only your present, but your past and future.