Full Transcript for 429: 15 Min Fill Up: How Journaling Heals

Speaker 0: Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Heart Salvage podcast where we Speaker 1: are turning dreamers into doers. We are talking episode four twenty nine, how journaling heals. This is your annual reminder about why journaling is important, why we get to love it, and how to take advantage of it. I found my prep for this episode very interesting. I typically prep bullet points and go off of that and have this build up. But as I began to take notes for this episode, it came out as one long list. And I'm just gonna read it in order, and then we'll jam out. I don't know if this will be a a little bit of a shorter episode, but we're just gonna follow the flow because the original cue came from one specific sentence, and then it just poured right out. So let's read this list first. Speaker 0: Clogged, Speaker 1: stuck, stagnant, word dump, pouring, exorcise, release, flow, clarity, discovery, surprise, shock, realization, hilarity, joy, fun, play, insight, intuition, and actualization. Breath in and sigh of relief out. How does that list make you feel? In fact, I'm gonna read over it again, maybe a little bit faster, but just so that now you you got the gist, I'm gonna run that right by you. Again, clogged, stuck, stagnant, word dump, pouring, exorcise, release, flow, clarity, discovery, surprise, shock, realization, hilarity, joy, fun, play, insight, intuition, and actualization. Again, breath in Speaker 0: and sigh of relief out. Speaker 1: This felt so cool to write out. Like, I really feel like I could wrap up the episode here. It's like, don't you get it? I have met people. I've had people come to their first calls with me, like, listen. I'm not into journaling. And I'm like, that's cool. Maybe. There is so much available through journaling, and I wanna read the sentence that I wrote last year when I was on the encore season. And I had this thought that I was talking to someone who needed some convincing in the journaling arena, and I said 15,000 words. That's how much someone had written that we were in conversation with in about 15,000 words is substantial. Memoirs range typically from, like, 35 to 45,000 words. So 15 is it's less than a book. It's more than a your average journaling session. I'll tell you that much. Okay? And so this person had measured 15,000 words that they wrote, and they were talking about how glad they were that they got used to journaling, that they accepted journaling, and had embraced it because they were reviewing what they had written. And my only reflection at that moment was that is 15,000 words out on paper or, in this case, in your computer versus in your body. And, of course, a lot of the reasons we journal, especially at the start, is that word exorcise, to exercise the demons, to get the shit out of you. That's why it starts with clogged, stuck, stagnant, word dump. Another word that could fit in here is dislodging. To dislodge our word dumping, our pouring, the release to just pour all of the unspoken communications, the words that are hard to say, the feelings that are embarrassing to feel, to put that to paper, especially and and some people don't realize they have to take on the mindset, like, no one's gonna read what you write. And if you're truly afraid of it, you can either Speaker 0: do it in, like I don't Speaker 1: know if y'all remember. I'm a millennial. We had locket journals, like, journals, diaries that had little clasps and locks on them. But you can lock your notes app or you can write and burn if there's a privacy concern. But you need to write like no one's gonna read it so that you have all the permission from yourself to just write your deepest, darkest inner shit, thoughts, fears, insecurities, jealousies, like, all that needs to be communicated. Because, I mean, I can sit here and tell you that some of the best power I have as a coach is listening because there are no words more powerful than your own out loud. People have the most breakthroughs when they say something they've always thought but never said and especially never said to someone, and it's the same with writing. So now we have flow, clarity, discovery, surprise, shock, realization. The holy shit. I didn't actually know I thought that. I never put those two things together. I never said that that way. Those are some of the most pivotal moments of someone's life to have the realizations of speaking what is in you out of you. You can try this alone, meaning I speak in the car while driving or prayer, obviously. I ask for help. I ask for grace. I ask for understanding. I ask for my mind and heart to be changed. I ask for the my stress to be taken. I ask for my stress to go somewhere, anywhere. You know, the things that challenge me, the things that confront me, I might write about it. You can speak about it, or you could set your phone up and record or you know, obviously, speaking with a professional, you're gonna have some really powerful reflections, and and that's very helpful. And then, of course, being heard and witnessed and held and not being rejected or corrected is medicinal. Oh my god. I'm not actually here to convince you to work with a professional today, but, obviously, I'm I'm all for that. I'm a huge advocate for that, but I hear we're advocating for journaling today. So then getting all of that which is in your body and uncommunicated out onto paper communicates it, and it also there's a level of actually removing it from your body. There are a lot of things I journaled that once they were out, didn't come back in. Let me fucking tell you. Set it down. Set the pain down, the grief down, the anger down, the frustration down, the grudges down, the resentment down, the insecurities, the beliefs. Half of your beliefs aren't yours, and you've never really questioned them or no one's ever questioned you. Right? So we go to discovery and surprise and shock and realization. We're like, woah. I don't really think that. That's not my voice. That's