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  • October 7

    Writing things down does more than get ideas out of your head – a journaling success story

    Posted by James the Shivanaut
    Filed under Helpful hints | 2 Comments

    I wrote a note in my journal…

    I made a note about the fact that my feet were cold when relaxing after practice – my favourite part.  I lie flat on the floor and completely relaxed (Yoga peeps will know this as Shavasana or corpse pose).  If you’ve ever seen a Bunny Flop you know what I mean.

    Writing the note let an idea through…

    My clever thought was this: wear some socks!  It sounds silly and obvious, but it was something I would never have considered if I hadn’t given my thought about my cold feet some attention (one of the reasons to keep a journal).  If you’re anything like me you won’t go and get a pair of socks now and put them where you practice/with your notebook/on the floor somewhere – but you might remember this post next time you realise your feet are freezing!

    Which then led to me having a lovely warm feeling!

    The next day as I lay down I suddenly remembered about the socks and got to have lovely warm feet – now that’s a result!

    Writing things down does more than get ideas that are running lose in your head out and onto paper.  It gives them a tiny amount of undivided attention.  If you read productivity blogs you’ll know about the idea of focussing on one idea at a time, and even on a small level this seems to work wonders.  My theory is that they are looking for your attention and having got your focussed attention for just a few seconds your thoughts are happy to get to work generating ideas for you!

    Do you have any little success stories from your journaling – or any other part of your practice – you can share?  I’d love to hear of anything that your proud of so we can celebrate your success!

    Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

    This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 10:38 am and is filed under Helpful hints. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    2 Responses to “Writing things down does more than get ideas out of your head – a journaling success story”

    1.   Kristi on January 12th, 2009 at 6:42 am

      I can relate to this. More and more, my tendency is to journal everything. As a writer, I heard throughout my writing classes that I should be journaling every day. But it really hit home at work as a technical writer (writing user manuals and help systems for a software company). The more organized I got at work, the more notes I was keeping there. Here is my log for this project, here is my master to-do list, et al. It was super useful there because if I came across an item that was a match for something on some list, I could open up the list and capture the idea or to-do item right away. And I have finally started doing that in my personal life, as well. So I started off my new Shiva Nata practise with a journal straight-away. Not only does it improve my overall function, but it turns out, even these little lists and entries build my skills as a writer.

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    2.   James the Shivanaut on January 24th, 2009 at 12:28 am

      How’s that journal coming on? I stopped writing separately for Shiva Nata and ended up just writing blog posts afterwards because I ended up wanting to blog what I was journaling! Whatever works for us, right?

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