October 7
Writing things down does more than get ideas out of your head – a journaling success story
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!
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.
Kristi’s last blog post..Subscribe to Comments
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?