By Fiction and Nonfiction Books Writer Denise Turney

Daily journal writing advantages aren’t just for adolescents and teens. Gone are the days when journaling is merely used as a way for teens to document intense feelings they hold for a classmate, a relative or a hidden crush. In fact, approximately one out of six people writes in a journal today, according to Psychology Today. Reasons for daily journaling vary.

Journaling Hidden Advantages

So too do the benefits. As an example, people journal to document their night dreams, track fitness progress and to capture major life experiences. Opportunity to work through hard emotions and “stuck” thought patterns are other benefits associated with journal writing. These advantages may be gained because writing offers clarity.

You have to focus and be more present while you write in a journal. Furthermore, writing activates the brain’s reticular activating system (RAS). Also, the frontal lobe part of your brain is activated while you write. As you write, you also activate your brain’s parietal lobe. But who thinks about the brain while writing? Those are hidden advantages.

More Daily Journal Writing Benefits

Here are more, less hidden, advantages that you may bring into your life after you start a daily journal writing practice. Some of these advantages could have long term impact on your mental health.

• Improved memory – Because journaling activates brain lobes, the act can find you focusing better, easier. As your focusing improves, so too might your ability to recall.
• Dream clarity – Writing down night dreams can help you to remember your dreams more. Try it. See if you don’t start to not only remember your night dreams but to also recall details in your dreams. On top of this, because dreams can hold keys to the future as well as guidance on what you should do now, recalling dream details can let you know whether you should take that new job. That, or details in your dreams could signal to you if a relationship is rewarding or dangerous. Those are just two examples of how journaling could prove helpful.
• Expanding communication – Keep writing, with or without journal prompts, and don’t be surprised if your vocabulary grows. Another takeaway that might not be surprising affects your overall writing skills. The more you write in a journal, the easier it may be for you to create pictures in readers’ minds, express emotions and convey important messages.

Capture Your History

This next journaling benefit snuck by me until I crossed paths with another journal writer. Our paths crossed during an Off The Shelf interview. During the interview, the guest shared that he not only wrote in a journal, but would occasionally return to former journals, re-reading passages.

He paid attention to what had been happening in his life when he seemingly randomly flipped to a page in an older journal. Another action that he took was to re-read journal writings, passages that he had written three, five or more years earlier, in order to spot patterns in his life.

Using journal writing to spot life patterns, including patterns that could be keeping me from goal achievement, had not before dawned on me. After that realization, I sat down and started looking through older journals, looking for hidden clues, patterns.

Honesty Matters

This is just one reason why daily journaling to capture your history can be beneficial over the long term. Pay attention to how you feel while journal writing, not just while you are actually writing but also how you feel days and weeks after you start writing in a journal.

As with other life practices, it’s important to be honest while daily journaling. The more expressive and honest you are while writing, the deeper the benefits could be. All of this is not to say that life will iron itself out or become easier after you start daily journaling.

However, expressing your thoughts, fears, challenges, successes and courage while writing in your journal could help you to feel heard. It could help you to better process experiences and perceptions. And, it can help you to capture your personal history, potentially spotting patterns, including patterns that have been holding you back.

Resources
https://www.bing.com/search?q=how+many+people+write+in+journals&cvid=b2eec6c462254972b27ac3f89a97c5db&aqs=edge..69i57j0j69i64.8144j0j1&pglt=675&FORM=ANNTA1&DAF1=1&PC=HCTS (Psychology Today)

By Fiction and Nonfiction Author Denise Turney

People living with a belief in innocence may find it easier to trust than people who have experienced trauma, betrayed trust or a string of disappointments. In part, this may be because people who have lived in an environment of collaboration, honest communication and cooperation have had proof that there are people in the world who they can depend on and trust.

These Experiences Build and Deepen Trust

Types of experiences that build and deepen trust always include honesty. You might not be told all the details related to a project, meeting, etc. But what is shared with you will be the truth. Furthermore, details that might be withheld won’t be withheld to use as leverage or to manipulate you.

A good example of this is when you tell a child that you’re driving to the beach on tomorrow to enjoy the day if it doesn’t rain. You might not tell the child how long the trip will take, which road you’ll be driving down or when you plan to stop to fuel up your vehicle.

If it doesn’t rain and you do, in fact, drive to the beach with the child and have loads of fun enjoying the ocean, warm sunshine and sand, you could build trust between the child and you. Do the opposite and the results could be devastating, especially if you make breaking promises a habit.

Why Courage Counts More Than You Might Realize

Now, imagine that you’ve put your trust in someone only to be disappointed. Even if you don’t want to doubt people, you could start to find it hard to trust. Not only could you find it hard to trust the person who broke her promise to you, over time, you could find it challenging to trust anyone.

As hard as this outcome is, it could be even more painful to use courage and invest trust in someone who betrayed your trust only to have this person fail to deliver on a promise again. However, it doesn’t have to end there. In fact, what if you could help restore betrayed trust?

For instance, what would you do if for vacation you drove to an area with miles of open land, a wide countryside, and, while on vacation, you happened upon a young man who clearly was distressed? Once you confirmed that the guy was clear of bad intentions, would you help him?

Or would you turn away from courage and leave the distressed man on his own? What would you do if you took this latter option and a day later read in the newspaper that the guy perished?

Are You a Bridge?

Whether you realize it or not, you might have countless opportunities to build and deepen trust. One way that you could do this is to gain firsthand experiences that require you to exercise courage by giving yourself the chance to trust another person.

Another way that you could do this is to help another person restore their betrayed trust. Back to the parenting example, if someone has repeatedly betrayed your child’s trust, you could be a bridge between your child and that person. That way your child wouldn’t have to deal with the person directly, potentially reducing or eliminating future harm.

Secondly, you could create more opportunities to build your child’s trust. Revisiting the beach example, you could spend an uninterrupted hour three days a week with your child engaging in loving, safe activities. Do this and you’d be keeping promises and demonstrating that exhibiting the courage to trust another person is not bad or unintelligent.

Help restore betrayed trust and you could be doing a great work. Don’t think so?

Will You Restore Betrayed Trust?

Consider the times when you lost trust in someone. Simply recalling how it felt to be disappointed and discouraged may be enough to see how powerful restoring someone’s trust is. To help restore trust, you might have to practice awareness.

In other words, you might have to look beyond the surface. Instead of seeing someone as being needy, afraid or aloof, you might be advantaged if you start to consider why and how the person became the way that he is. If you consider that the person might have had his trust betrayed numerous times, you could see a seemingly “inconvenience” (a person asking for help, a runaway hiding in your garage, etc.) as a great opportunity to restore betrayed trust.

It takes Clarissa (Escaping Toward Freedom) time to get here, to realize what’s in front of her. Yet, she does learn. Healing one another requires awareness and the willingness to restore betrayed trust with love, courage and patience. Look around. There are so many safe opportunities to restore betrayed trust.

By Books Writer Denise Turney

You need a target to hit. Without a clear goal, you could spend way too much time circling the mountain. It’s not enough to just want something to happen. To gain success, you need to know exactly what you want and why. Get specific.

What Do You Want

For example, do you want to feel the emotion “happiness”, lose weight or be wealthy? At first glance, those goals may sound clear. However, they are broad. As it regards feeling “happiness”, you could want to feel happy all the time. Aim for this and you might not come to know what shortcuts your path to happiness. You also might ignore signs that you’re headed off path as it regards key life areas.

That’s right. Although frustration, anger and sorrow are emotions that don’t feel good, they can serve as great guideposts. Think of it this way. If you were driving your car and hit a guard rail, you’d know that you were in a danger zone. Keep going, and you could suffer damages.

The same applies with emotions. Sadness, frustration or anger could alert you to the fact that you’re not working the job that you really want to work. Or those emotions (especially if they linger) could alert you to the fact that you’re in a relationship, etc. that you don’t want to be in.

Get Clear About Your Intentions

Additionally, as it regards getting specific about what you want, if you want to lose weight, narrow it down. As an example, instead of going broad with “I want to lose weight”, get more specific and develop a goal to “lose 15 pounds within three months.” Regarding the goal to be wealthy, consider narrowing that goal down into something like “I want to pay off both of my credit cards by end of the year, then grow my savings up to $10,000 or more by the end of next year.”

Those are specific “intended” goals. To stay encouraged as you pursue those goals, align rewards to the intentions. Make sure that you set rewards at markers along the way toward the goal fulfillment. For instance, you could reward yourself with a day off (actually take a vacation day) after you pay down a quarter of your credit card debt.

Of course, it would be smart to avoid using credit cards as a way to reward yourself as you work to eliminate debt. Yet, that shouldn’t be a problem, as there are so many things that you could do that don’t call for spending money. There’s fishing, hiking, bike riding, visiting local arts centers, stopping by a museum, checking out a local bookstore, hanging out with family and friends and so much more.

You Should Be Rewarded

Reward yourself by engaging in activities that you truly love and enjoy. Not only could this encourage you to continue moving forward, it could reinforce the message that you love yourself. And that’s a powerful message to get across to yourself.

After you set clear intentions, think about the reason/s that you want to fulfill the specific goal. Believe it or not, this might be where the rubber meets the road. The why of your aim and your actions might turn out to be your biggest payout.

Check out these whys as it relates to weight loss, wealth and artistic success. See if any of these whys resonate with you.

• To live with high physical energy and to feel vibrant, hopeful and joyful
• To enjoy physical strength and top health, opening myself up to more and more fun activities
• To live debt free for the rest of my physical experience
• To live debt free and build financial wealth so that I can explore experiences that bring me joy
• To gain success creating artwork that I love to create, enough success to earn an entire income creating and selling my artwork
• To make doing what I love, as it regards art and creativity, my life’s work

Create Powerful Whys

Keep going. Create a list of powerful whys. Connect those whys to your goals/intentions. As a note, the more powerful your whys, the easier it may be to map out a clear path or a strategy to achieve your goals and start receiving the rewards that are directly linked to your whys.

This brings up another important point. After you identify specific goals, set reward markers and establish clear whys, you need to outline actions that you are going to take to fulfill your goals. Again, you’ll need to get specific.

Here’s an example of specific steps that you could take to gain wealth. Remember to align this and other goals with one or more powerful whys to stay encouraged and motivated. If you want to gain wealth, consider taking the following actions:

• Create a line-item budget (add mortgage, rent, utilities, credit card payments, entertainment, etc. to the budget)
• Identify expenses that you could forego temporarily or permanently. Eliminate these purchases at least temporarily.
• See which expenses you could substitute for lower costing items. For instance, instead of eating out for lunch, cook enough fresh food over the weekend to easily bring lunch into work.
• Pay $100 or more extra a month on the credit card with the highest fees and interest rates
• Complete online consulting or freelance work. Put 60% money earned from this extra work in an interest-bearing savings account. Consider investing the other 40% of this money into regulated low-risk mutual funds.

Go Get What You Really Want

Start taking the actions and see if you don’t begin to feel empowered. Choose goals and whys that are rooted in love. Also, when you break goals down, set powerful whys and intentions as well as reward yourself along the way, you could feel energized enough to tackle two to three goals simultaneously.

That’s not all. You pursuing and fulfilling your goals could inspire other people to go after what they really want. In fact, don’t be surprised if colleagues, relatives and friends start noticing a positive change in you. They also might start to ask you how you changed.

This is a great time to share the power of setting an intention for success, including how setting clear goals, identifying clear whys and outlining action steps offers amazing energy to your pursuit. A strong why, rewards and clear intentions and action steps can fuel you throughout this world’s ups and downs.

By Mystery Suspense Books Writer Denise Turney

If you’re feeling stuck, it might be time to improve your life script. First, just what is a life script and why does it have so much impact? Here’s a general way to look at a life script.

Building Your Life Script

Have you ever felt like you were living between hard boundaries, making it feel impossible to experience great positive shifts, limiting yourself to the same routines? If so, you might be adhering to a script. Beautiful Truth shares that a life script or storytelling is part of how we navigate the world. “Storytelling occurs at our most basic experience of navigating the world. But most of the time, we aren’t even aware of ourselves doing it.”¹

Furthermore, “And here is the most exciting part. In realising how prone we are to tell stories, and more importantly – to believe them – we are able to create new ones. And when we change the stories we tell ourselves, we can change the way we see the world and ourselves within it. ^“1

Generally, by the time you’re seven-years-old, your life script is set. In addition to being made at the unconscious level, this script can play out seemingly to your conscious unawareness. Should this happen, you could be attracted to people who struggle with anger, lack of confidence, workaholism or gambling. But not only would you be attracted to a specific “type” of person, you might not know why you’re attracted to those types of people.

Who’s Part of Your Life Script

Also, as with many unconscious scripts, your life story consists of habits, statements, beliefs, etc. that you saw those around you engaging in, particularly people who you were close to as a child. Without meaning to, you could create a life story that causes you to mirror a parent, uncle, coach, etc. All by itself, this proves that you do have impact.

Not only have other people helped to make your life script, but right now you’re saying, believing and doing things that are helping to make someone else’s “story”. For example, if you curse and bang furniture whenever your laptop is slow and you have to wait for a webpage to load while your manager is waiting for you to send her a file, your niece could learn to react that way when she’s feeling stress and waiting for something, after she becomes a woman.

Fortunately, you can rewrite your life script. Psychology Today shares a story about a young girl who had been bullied while teachers seemed either not to notice or chose not to respond.² The girl’s mother helped her to step into her power, even calling teachers and those involved herself, refusing to ignore what her daughter had shared with her. Those choices helped to change the girl’s script, also referred to as “story”.

Improve Your Life Story

In the Psychology Today article, it’s shared that, “We are the stories we tell—and we are compelled to create stories to understand ourselves.” Inner Self³ and Bestselfology⁴ offer suggestions on actions you could take to change your “story” or your life script. (See below link in our “Resources” section.)

Here are a few actions that you could take to improve your story:

• Accept that your experiences are part of a “story”
• Accept that you are more powerful than your “story”
• Watch videos of people struggling, dealing with stress and low confidence who prove that you can improve your life script as you watch the people in the videos listen to a training, read specific books or watch shows that actually open them up to the point where they change their “story”
• Listen to your inner dialogue. It’s there. Become aware of it and simply listen to what you say throughout the day and night.
• Acknowledge that you can change your life script.
• Meditate regularly to quiet your mind. Get in the habit of uncluttering your mind.
• Pay attention to how you feel and see if your feelings are connected to a script.
• Try something new every day. This is also a good way to get your brain off autopilot.
• Give yourself options.

Support to Improve Your Life Script

To improve your life script, you might find it beneficial to work with a licensed, experienced therapist. An experienced, licensed therapist could access your subconscious mind and help you to rewrite your life story.

That’s good work. But what if you peered into your future and saw specifics around one or more events that were headed your way? In other words, what if you visualized an actual event before it occurred? Do you think you would be scared if you knew what was coming in your life?

Furthermore, do you think it’s possible to see the specifics as it regards sights, sounds and maybe even lighting and smells, about events that don’t actually show up in your life for 10 or more years?

Several times I have received details on an upcoming event that was 10 or more away. Based on research on life scripts, not certain if these experiences are related to a script or if a Higher Power preplanned the visionary experiences. Tammy Tilson’s daughter addresses these and other questions in a life changing way in the mystery book, Spiral.

Life Scripts in Spiral

She can’t ignore what she knows. What she knows is connected to other people’s life scripts that do not allow for good endings. Yet, if she doesn’t act, try to change the endings, she won’t be free and she knows it.

Her conscience will play and re-play a tape that could rob her of peace. She’s not willing to let that happen, and so she acts.

This all is worth asking, have the experiences you see already happened? Are you remembering a distant past, simply perceiving it as the present?

And, if so, do you have access to information that will allow you to make better decisions? That would be one way to effectively change your life, to really improve your life script.

Are You Willing to Improve Your Life Script

To know what is coming next and then to make decisions that cause the effect you truly want is a fortune. Should you choose this route, foreknowledge could prove beneficial. Yet, if your life is running, in part, off an internal script that you perceived and put into place when you were as young as seven-years-old, you might have forgotten what you put into place or why.

Is a first step toward improving your life script and opening up to more loving experiences a willingness to become aware of what you are thinking, becoming aware of what you have spent years focusing on? And is an early step toward changing your life a willingness to open up to change?

Resources:

1. The Stories We Tell Ourselves — The Beautiful Truth
2. Rewrite Your Script | Psychology Today
3. How You Can Rewrite the Script of Your Life – InnerSelf.com
4. What is your life script and are you happy with it? – BestselfologyBestselfology

By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

Living thanksgiving calls for appreciation. It’s an ongoing process that requires present awareness. When you were a kid, you may have practiced present awareness effortlessly. In fact, a sure blessing linked to a happy, loving childhood is the ability to live in the present.

When you feel safe, loved and wanted, you can become fully involved in what you’re experiencing right now. Gone is the temptation to daydream or to pretend that you are someplace else.

Living Thanksgiving in The Present

Even more, a blessed childhood can keep you from looking to the future. Experience a loving childhood and you might not fall into the habit of convincing yourself that good things are always in the future always “out there” somewhere. That by itself can bring more goodness into your life.

After all, as you enjoy living in the present, you can actually experience the happiness that is associated with appreciation. The more physically present the thing you appreciate is, the stronger the happiness you may feel.

Try it. See how you feel when you fantasize or imagine having an experience that you like, but the experience is always in the future. Then, give yourself an experience that you enjoy right now. Look around your environment and count 5 things that you appreciate about the experience that you’re having right now. Which way feels better?

How Daydreaming and Fantasizing Influence Thankfulness

Daydreaming about a future experience that’s always too far ahead of you to enjoy or entering a loving experience and appreciating it right now? Which feels better right now? Fortunately, you could learn to appreciate what’s happening right now even if yours was a troubled childhood.

Furthermore, as it regards a blessed childhood, this doesn’t mean that you never felt sad or angry as a kid. It means that you didn’t experience trauma, especially ongoing trauma when you were a child. Trauma that’s experienced during childhood could make you want to be someplace else. To read more about childhood trauma, check out this article.

Continuously daydreaming, fantasizing and telling yourself that situations are better than they actually are could be signs that you have unresolved trauma. The good news is that you can deal with trauma and get through it, even it doing so requires the help of a licensed and highly experienced professional who you trust.

Associated Benefits of Living Thanksgiving

Whether yours was a trauma-free or stressful childhood, it can take work to start living in the present. When you consider the blessings associated with living in the present, you might be encouraged to try.

Living thanksgiving offers rewards. To start, when you are fully present, you notice more. You actually see colors, people, events that you might otherwise miss. Other benefits include:

• Strengthening your intuition – the more you become aware of what’s happening right now, the more clues you can pick up about what’s coming. You also might start to notice slight shifts in your inner guidance which could allow you to pick up when something feels right or wrong.
• Enjoy conversations more deeply – being present can help you to hear what people are saying more fully and more clearly. This, in turn, could lead to a deep appreciation for what’s being shared.
• Dining may become less of an addictive action – live in the present and you might stop and only eat while you’re dining. This could allow you to taste your food and beverages more thoroughly. Keep it up and you might stop eating and/or drinking to feed an emotion or to avoid an emotion or memory. (According to Psychology Today, trauma can cause your brain to replay the traumatic event.)
• Improved relationships – Hearing and listening to people better can strengthen interpersonal relationships. You also might pick up when someone is disrespecting you and choose to love yourself and ask the person to hold you in respect as you do them.

Exploring More Thankfulness Advantages

There are more advantages connected to living thanksgiving. It could take a while, but you’d eventually see that everything in this world is temporary. That includes traumas that you’ve experienced, if you experienced trauma. The key is to let the trauma go. Again, you might need help from a licensed and experienced professional you trust.

The more you realize how temporary everything is in this world, the more you might pause and enter living thanksgiving as you observe what’s happening in your life and around you. If you’ve ever seen a loved one transition, you know the power of being thankful for what’s happening now.

Delay living thanksgiving and you could encounter regret. For instance, you might not appreciate a person, a pet or an experience until after the person or pet transitions or the experience has ended. Just think about it. How much joy and peace would you allow into your life if you appreciated what was right in front of you?

If you’re in a challenging situation, look for something to appreciate. But don’t stop there. Also, seek a way out of the situation. Definitely gain lessons from the experience. Don’t leave an experience with empty pockets. Always walk away with a lesson, at the minimum.

Surprising Answers

Throughout your journey, focus on appreciating what’s happening now. This means appreciating the people around you now, appreciating a job that you’re in right now and appreciating your dwelling now. To repeat, this doesn’t mean that you don’t seek a better job or dwelling. It means that you find something to be thankful about where you are right now.

Living thanksgiving or appreciating what’s right in front of you can keep you free of a nagging sense that something is always wrong. It can keep you energized and hopeful. Just remember to be honest about what you’re thankful about. For instance, if you don’t like loud music, don’t say that you do. However, if you’re in an area where music is being played loudly, you might be able to appreciate the lyrics.

You might even discover an answer to a question you’ve been mulling in the lyrics. When you practice living thanksgiving, another takeaway is that you could become more aware. It’s no secret that appreciation and awareness are linked. After all, you actually have to practice awareness to spot things to appreciate.

Resources:

1. 21 Common Reactions to Trauma | Psychology Today