Day 4: JOURNAL YOUR FEELINGS
Welcome to Day 4 of Confidence Boot Camp. Today we are pleased to welcome Mia Selway as our guest confidence expert to share her experiences about journaling. Mia is an actor from London, England. She is also one of our Aluminaria featured stories, and we encourage you to go here and read more about her most courageous and amazing life journey. She has used journaling through art, poetry, and writing to document events and experiences from her life.
“Journaling has been one of the most important processes in my journey to live an authentic and wholehearted life.”
Whether the experience is positive or negative, she uses journaling as a way to sit with and explore her feelings and reactions, which helps her to process that experience in the present moment. She also uses the journal as a record to look back and re-process at a time when she is in a different frame of mind. At that time, she can explore questions like:
“How would I react to this experience if it happened to me today?”
“Would my reaction be different or the same?”
“Did my response to an experience fit with my core values?”
“What did I learn from that experience?”
Processing through a journal in this way can give you the opportunity to change the way you see and react to a situation and be more confident the next time you are in a similar experience.
Some of the benefits of journaling might include:
Journaling allows you to take a break and “sit in solace and have a dialogue with yourself about where you are in life… and build an honest relationship with yourself that is one of the most important relationships that one can have.”
Journaling can be in any form of creative expression: writing, drawing, painting, poetry, collages or doing exercises in a workbook where we can define our values, verbalize what we want in a relationship or job, or set boundaries.
You can find additional ideas for journaling through drawing, painting and poetry here: Illustrating Poems in Art Journaling
Many creative people practice what is frequently called “daily pages” or “morning pages”. In a notebook or journal, they simply write whatever comes to mind, without judgment or editing. It’s important to write by hand in these exercises, as it uses a different brain process than typing on a keyboard. Some write three pages, and some write for 10 or 20 minutes. In this experience, most people report they are able to sort through their thoughts, get them out on paper to look at them more objectively (like the Lizard Brain drawing!) and prioritize what they want to do with them. Some say they feel like they are opening a water faucet to their creativity, and once they’ve done their morning pages, new ideas or new fixes to problems start flowing in.
We are absolutely inspired to add journaling to our daily lives after hearing Mia’s experience.
Here’s your assignment for Day 4:
Find a new notebook and a pen you really like. The pen is important—it has to flow for you and keep up with your thoughts.
Write anything you want that comes to mind for 10 minutes or 3 pages, whichever you prefer.
Rinse and repeat every day for one week.
At the end of the week, write a new journal entry that reflects your observations of your week of writing.
For an extra confidence boost: Reach out to us on social media and tell us about your experience. Leave a comment or post on your page and tag us. FB: @ourvillanetwork IG: @our_villa_blog
You’re rocking this! Remember, there is no way to “fail” at Confidence Boot Camp. Just do the best you can, try some new things, and pay attention to your experience. Each day as you practice, you’ll begin to see small, but very subtle changes in the way you think, see your world, or feel every day. And if you fall behind, it’s really easy to catch up. Just go back to our page at The Villa blog and review.
See you tomorrow, Confidence Crew!
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