fbpx
Menu

Search Results for "journaling" — 254 posts

20 Journaling Prompts to Help You Love Yourself

“Time spent in self-reflection is never wasted—it is an intimate date with yourself.” ~Paul TP Wong

I’ve found journaling is a polarizing activity. People love it or hate it. (If you are in the latter group, don’t worry, you’ll still get a lot out of this!) Personally, I’ve hit both ends of the spectrum at different points in my life.

I spent many years in a place of self-loathing. I truly believed I was just not blessed with being born a likable person. And this belief fueled decades of social anxiety, avoiding parties, coming up with lame excuses to …

Why Journaling is the Best Thing to Do During a Crisis

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

“The difference between despair and hope is just a different way of telling stories from the same set of facts.” ~Alain de Botton

When I was told that the man I loved had a terminal illness, I instinctively reached for my journal. When I was asked to evacuate my home ahead of a category-5 cyclone three short weeks after his funeral, the first thing I threw into the back of my car was a large box with my journals.

That was …

How Gratitude Journaling Can Boost Your Mood and Change Your Life

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” ~Melody Beattie

A few years ago I had an ulcer and I would get dizzy after almost every meal. There was a point when I was afraid to eat. I lost twenty pounds when I didn’t need to lose weight.

I wasn’t sleeping well.

I was a complete wreck inside.

It took me two and half …

How Journaling Helped Me Heal from Grief and How It Can Help You Too

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” ~C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

The day I was told that the man I loved was going to die from cancer, I did two things: I made a pact with myself never to have more than one bottle of wine in the house. I knew the risks of numbing pain and I knew that it didn’t work. Then I went to a stationery shop and bought a supply of fine moleskin journals.

My journey through grief started the day the pea-sized lump behind my husband’s ear was given a …

5 Ways Journaling Can Help You Get Through the Hard Stuff

“In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather—in many cases—offers an alternative to it.” ~Susan Sontag

My first journal was born into existence when I was twelve. I remember carefully choosing my favorite comics, pictures from magazines, and the odd scribble I’d drawn. Tongue stuck out in concentration, gluing them strategically on an unused exercise book. …

4 Ways to Use Journaling to Calm Your Inner Critic

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

It’s a voice we’re all familiar with, and one that we all find challenging. Yes, the inner critic is the part of our internal dialogue that can make or break our day.

At its best, our inner critic helps us live in a way that’s true to our values, questioning decisions that we might regret later and keeping us on the straight and narrow. At it’s worst, however, an inner critic rampage can bring down our mood, self-esteem, and sense of self-worth.

Much of my own self-work has …

10 Journaling Tips to Help You Heal, Grow and Thrive

“The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be.” ~Shakti Gawain

Keeping a journal has many positive benefits. Journaling can help with personal growth and development. By regularly recording your thoughts you will gain insight into your behaviors and moods.

Journaling can be used for problem-solving and stress reduction. It’s been proven to improve mental and physical health. It can lead to increased self-esteem.

Dr. John Grohol, CEO of Psych Central, estimates that one in three people suffer from a mental illness.  Anxiety disorders, mood disorders and substance abuse can be …

Break Free from Busyness and Uncover the Magic of Life

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” ~John Lennon

For as long as I can remember, I have been living in a never-ending to-do list. I was constantly thinking about what needed to get done, how I could multitask, or how I could be even more productive. Even on the weekends, I loved planning out my entire day, usually focusing on chores and other not-so-exciting things.

To be honest, I thought this was a perfectly normal way of operating. I would pride myself on my productivity and my ability to stay on top of …

How to Break the Cycle of Painful, Dramatic Relationships

“No matter how far we come, our parents are always in us.” ~Brad Meltzer

Had you asked me five years ago, before my healing and personal growth journey began, if my upbringing and childhood wounds were shaping the choices I was making in relationships, I would have scoffed at you and said, “No way. Are you kidding?”

Somehow, I had normalized the dysfunction I grew up in: the absentee father, the mother with mental illness, the lack of stability and safety, the enmeshment and codependency, the attachment wounds that left me spending a lifetime searching for someone or something to …

How Being Alone Made Me Fall in Love with Myself

“Solitude is where one discovers one is not alone.” ~Marty Rubin

“No one invites me to their party.” That’s what middle school was like for me, anyway. No matter how hard I tried, I could never really fit in with any friend groups.

It seemed like everyone got the instructions on who to hang with and where to sit except me.

I was the serious, quiet type. And the gossipers and sleepover crews didn’t want serious and reserved. So I bounced around, making a buddy here and there. But I was never fully brought into the social scene.

At first, …

How Embracing Grief Can Open Us Up to a Beautiful New Chapter

“When we are brave enough to tend to our hearts, our messy emotions can teach us how to be free—not free from pain but free from the fear of pain and the barrier it creates to fully living.” ~Kris Carr

It’s crazy how you go about your life thinking all is okay, and then BOOM, something happens that changes you forever. Grief and loss come and hit you in the face.

You know… the days that you start as one person and end as someone else.

But it’s not your first loss or trauma! You had a childhood of pain

How to Free Yourself from Pain from the Past

There are two levels to your pain: the pain that you create now, and the pain from the past that still lives on in your mind and body.” ~Eckhart Tolle

When I read this quote, it stopped me in my tracks. So much of our pain and suffering in the present is caused by us repeating cycles and dwelling on pain from the past. We want so badly to resolve our suffering. But our search for resolution often involves repeating the painful cycles we have already been through, in the hope that someone or something will change.

5 Practical Tools to Balance Your Chakras (Energy Centers)

In my personal development journey, one framework has captivated my attention and focus for more than a decade.

Understanding and working with this system has had a profound impact on my journey toward increased self-awareness, healing past wounds, and feeling more aligned and authentic to myself. So much that all my yoga classes and coaching approaches integrate this system in a holistic way.

Rooted in the wisdom of Eastern philosophies, this ancient system that has captivated seekers for centuries—the chakra system.

The chakra system remains a bit misunderstood and esoteric, reserved for a select few: yoga teachers or energy healers. …

Forever Healing: 4 Things I Now Prioritize After Cancer

“I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.” ~Audre Lorde

I’m a year out after completing chemo treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and on my healing journey. Cancer is a nasty little thing and can rear its ugly head at any time again. So, to minimize those recurrent chances and to feel like I’m doing all that’s in my control, I’ve accepted that this healing path will be for the rest of my life.

I originally thought I’d be spending this first year rebuilding myself. And I have. …

Handling Lifequakes: How to Navigate the Storms of Change

“How you revise, rethink, and rewrite your personal narrative as things change, lurch, or go wrong in your life matters a great deal.”  ~Bruce Feiler

It’s happened to all of us.

Just when life is going smoothly, a big, scary event comes along that threatens to ruin everything.

A frightening diagnosis, a relationship breakup, the death of a loved one, a job loss, or the COVID-19 pandemic.

Your life gets turned upside down when you least expect it.

I don’t know about you, but my life has been full of significant life changes over the last ten years: my …

How Replacing Worry with Gratitude Turned My Whole Life Around

“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” ~Willie Nelson

You know you’re not living the life of your dreams when you’re doing mundane things like brushing your teeth, doing laundry, getting dressed, or preparing a meal, and your constant thoughts are “Oh, we need more toothpaste or laundry detergent, but we can’t get either right now. Money’s too tight.” Or “We should get more milk and lettuce, but we have to put that money toward our utility bill so our lights don’t get turned off.”

This train of thought started to be the norm for me …

Always Exhausted? Native Wisdom to Restore Your Energy

TRIGGER WARNING: This post references sexual assault and may be triggering to some people.

“Spirit carved by Nature
Here I am.
Slowly ascending
toward my own profundity.”
~Elicura Chihuailaf

That exhaustion you feel when your body is fighting something, the feeling of being completely drained to the point where you can barely move your body…. that’s how I felt when I was living with trauma.

Over the years it had piled up inside of me—the sexual assault I survived one night after I’d just turned twenty, the physical and emotional abuse that went on almost daily when I lived with …

3 Things I Learned About Healing from an Autoimmune Diagnosis

“To truly heal, we need to create a healing space—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.” ~Lynn Keegan

Growing up, I never understood the importance of taking care of myself. I thought my body was invincible, and I treated it quite poorly. I stayed up late, I ate out a lot, I partied, and didn’t have a care in the world.

In my early twenties this all began to shift for me. I began experiencing all types of symptoms. My body was doing things I was embarrassed to share with anyone.

I started having eight to ten bowel movements per day, I was …

How I Stopped Feeling Like There Was Something Wrong with Me

“A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.” – Zen Shin

In the past, I often felt like I didn’t belong in groups of women.

Sometimes I felt like something was wrong with me, like I was othered in one way or another: too sporty, too quiet, too serious, too emotional, too dumb, too smart, too wild, too normal, too sexual, too prude.

Other times, I felt like something was wrong with all of them. Girls’ nights and bachelorette parties? The screeching voices, the loud laughs, the mundane conversations about makeup, …

How I Found a Beautiful Purpose by Giving Up the Search

“You and your purpose in life are the same thing. Your purpose is to be you.” ~George Alexiou

We all play a pivotal role in society. But I’ve toyed with the New Age spiritual notion that we all have a unique purpose on Earth to fulfill—a purpose for which we have chosen to be here.

I used to wonder if I could only be happy if I found this one resounding and elusive purpose.

If I knew my soul’s purpose, I believed my life would suddenly have endless meaning and vitality. Once I found my purpose, I would leap out …