AS THE END OF THE YEAR APPROACHES, I like to spend time reflecting on what happened during the year. Typically, I review my goals for the year and assess how I did in relationship to my intentions; I read past blog posts to help remember what happened and refresh my […]
YOU ARE WISE. Your inner being, soul, Self, intuition, psyche — whatever you want to call it — knows more than you realize. And journaling can be an effective way of tapping into this inner wisdom. But how does it work? Carl Jung is famous for having given us many of […]
Chase down your passion like it’s the last bus of the night. ~Terri Guillemets HOWEVER YOU WANT to describe it, when you follow your heart — do what you love, live your passion, live the life of your dreams — you are engaged in activities that fill you with a sense of […]
LIFE IS FULL of endings and beginnings, each both exciting and bittersweet in its own way. This is why we so widely celebrate the turning of a calendar year — the date itself might be arbitrary, but the beginning of a new year is important to us because of what it […]
A WHILE AGO, while reviewing past journal entries, I realized that I hadn’t included much about what was going on in the world around me in any of my entries. My journal writing practice included explorations of everything physically and emotionally related to my life — family, friends, work, health, […]
WHETHER YOU’RE NEW TO JOURNALING or have been doing it for years, it’s beneficial to shake things up now and again — use a new technique or approach your writing from a new perspective. A fun activity is to generate your own journal writing prompts. What makes journaling prompts different from […]
STRESS is an emotional, mental, and/or physical response to pressure. That pressure may be internally generated, such as when we place high expectations on ourselves and fail to live up to those expectations. Or it may come from external circumstances, such as a demanding job, ill health, or any situation […]
AT ITS CORE, writing is about finding meaning in the mundane. That’s why some of the most satisfying and universal personal essays and stories spring out of completely ordinary events. You don’t have to have climbed Mount Everest or overcome a deadly disease to have something interesting to write about. […]
NEXT TO YOUR EARLIEST childhood friend, the friends you hung out with when you were a teen probably had the greatest influence on your life. As you moved into your teen years, you likely began to spend less time with your family and more with your peers. You started to […]
IT MAY SEEM STRANGE in a journaling series on relationships to focus on oneself, but when you think about it, what other relationship in your life is more immediate, more impactful, more intimate, or more important? Our relationships with others truly begin with ourselves. Yet, for the most part, we […]
“My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn.” ― Louis Adamic GRANDFATHERS — We don’t write much about them, or at least I don’t see much about them in the stories I read. Why is that? Do they not take up much space in our lives? […]
WELCOME TO A NEW WritingThroughLife SERIES about journaling into and through relationships! From the beginning of our lives, relationships form and inform us. From our parents or caregivers, to siblings, extended family, friends, teachers, and lovers, every interaction leaves its mark on our development as human beings. Whether we were […]
