Do you enjoy journalling? It’s something I looked at for a long time but never really thought it was for me.
But then the lockdown came. I really love my family but I must admit that having all of them in the house 24/7 with not much prospect of anything different, was a bit wearing.
I mostly enjoyed the break from the norm, and so did they (one was studying A-levels and the other GCSEs), but there were occasional tensions.
I am normally a Tiggerish type of person. My hubby would say that I am maybe a bit annoyingly optimistic sometimes and often irrationally so. I can see the small dregs in the bottom of a glass that is definitely empty and enjoy them anyway, then go and figure out how to refill it.
But I have to say, during COVID times even my boundless optimism found its limits and I was finding myself ever more stressed and gloomy.
I had read enough times that journaling can help you to marshal and observe your thoughts. I’d never really felt a need before. But, after a few weeks of lockdown, I thought “What the heck? Why not? What’s the worst that could happen? It might even be fun.”
I was at a bit of a loose end, I had nowhere particularly to be, and I was sure I could find 10 minutes a day. So I invested in one of the many online coach-written sets of journaling prompts, and I have answered three short random questions a day in my book, plus writing three good things that I’m grateful for each day.
I’ll be honest, it felt a bit contrived at first. Some of the questions just didn’t really work for me, and I found myself just giving a brief yes or no answer or a couple of words. Some days I looked at the questions and simply said no, I’ve never thought like that – end of story.
But then some days the question brought forth an answer off the top of my head, and then I looked at it and realised something deep about myself, and that something had to change. Some days I answered no, I’ve never thought like that, and then realised that this was really sad, and I should start to think like that more often.
So I wrote a bit more and suddenly stuff was tumbling out.
Before long I felt a regular narrative unfolding, and I started to move forward in many areas of my life, taking the baby steps to get me towards where I suddenly realised I wanted to go. I changed my job and started doing more things for me and for the family.
I’m not going to share with you exactly what I found out about me, as that is for me alone. But I will tell you that this process was life-changing for me and still is. I still get hacked off by certain parts of my life, but I feel more in control again. And when I do get stressed, I whinge to the person in my journal, and not so much to my poor family. It sounds silly but it really does help.
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