The Value of Venting or Sh** Journalling

The journal that you write your gratitude in is gorgeous.  

The one that you carry in your bag, at your bedside or keep on your desk is plump with ideas, musings and inspiration, and has the most decadent feel to it, in all ways.  

The writing instrument which you use to write the words of thanks, wax poetic about your intentions and mind map your inspirations is not merely a pen, but a vessel from which your own energy flows from and onto the pages of those sacred books.

Those journals, in all their beauty and masterpiece, are containers, preserving all the good thoughts and things documented about You and Your Life and Your Dreams.

So where do you document your angst, your tizzy, your discomfort.  

On those days when you are listening to a monologue from your gremlins?  The eye rolling, the disdain, the What The …?

There is a journal for that....drumroll please...

Introducing the "Sh** Journal"!!

The Sh** Journal is where you write with whatever marker, crayon, pen, pencil or finger dipped in peanut butter.

You write whatever sh** is running through your mind, that is fast tracking your moment, your morning, afternoon, evening, day, two days, week and beyond into the depths.  

The pages will be a safe place in which to express your sh**, your fire, brimstone and disdain. 

It is where you articulate thoughts like:

• The "I suck, let me count the ways!" soliloquy,
• The "What on earth made me think I could do this?" tirade,
• The "Are you freaking kidding me?" moments,
• The "Really...Seriously...This is happening?" and other drips of sarcasm,
• The why I should practise, "Would you like fries with that?" monologue.

Where you can pose philosophic questions like:

• "Who gives a Sh**?"
• "Why do I give a Sh**?"
• "Is this really my Sh**?"
• "Why is this Sh** running through my mind?

There's more...write about when you think you are or feel like the Sh**ty:

• boss,
• leader,
• parent, 
• partner, 
• spouse, 
• friend, 
• consumer,
• driver etc.

WHY DO IT  

We have 60,000 thoughts per day, and lets be honest they are not all affirmations.  Its when one of those "I Suck" themed thoughts grabs our attention, then it invites a friend, and the friend invites a friend and suddenly its gone viral.   One simple thought morphed into a stadium filled with these self-deprecating, confidence busting, and alignment kinking thoughts. 

The longer we ignore them, the more come to the party. So get them out of your head, its like crowd control, calling security or 911 for assistance.

HOW TO DO IT

1.  GRAB WHATEVER PAPER IS HANDY

You are welcome to go out and buy THE most unattractive to you journal to have at the ready.  You can even doodle or collage a picture of what your gremlin looks like and add it to the back page.  Therefore when you write pressing down as hard as you can its like a voodoo energy towards that monster.  **Don't forget to add horns or other adornments that further embellish that image.

Also, there is nothing stopping you from grabbing scrap paper from the recycle bin and just going to town.  Make it as easy as possible.

2.  WRITE WITHOUT STOPPING 

Or lifting the pen.  Write with absolute abandon, the faster you write those thoughts and get them out the better.

  

DO NOT edit, correct, punctuate...VENT!  Go with the flow.  Its not a presentation, dissertation or speech.   

Why not type it in a document on your laptop then delete it?  Read this article on why handwriting makes you smarter.

3.  EYE-ROLLING, SNEERING, SCOWLING ENCOURAGED

Get into the process, whether its rolling your eyes, sneering, snuffling, scowling or mimicking with your mouth what the face of those thoughts look like as you write them out.

Adding facial expressions while you are writing goes further get that energy out of you as you write is doubly cathartic.

4. SAY THANK YOU 

Once you have purged and vented all the Sh**, write Thank You to close.

I know you are thinking, "What the....?"  

You have just vented it out, every sh**ty detail.

How do you feel now?  Relief? Exhausted? Refreshed?

What's happening inside that beautiful head of yours now?  

Is it possible that steam roller is no longer making pass after pass flattening your energy, self-esteem, self-worth, and confidence?  

Have you every had this experience when talking to a friend, whereas you were given the space to vent or been that friend?  What did you say at the end?  Probably thank you for letting me get that off my mind. 

Thank you is closing the loop, its completing the process.

5.  LET IT GO

Rip the papers out of said unattractive to you journal, tear them into itty bitty bits, feed them to the shredder, or if possible set a match to them (in a safe, well ventilated area taking all the precautions when setting something afire).  

Feel free to do a tantrum tap dance on top of them before sending them off to their final resting place.

Keeping them serves no value.

Keeping them makes it possible for confidentiality to be compromised.

Keeping them is like keeping those thoughts.

Let them go with another dose of gratitude and a dash of Love.

Why Love?  Well, you may have learned something in your Sh** journalling, you may have learned that the stadium of thoughts had a common denominator called Fear.

Fear that those things were factual.  (Fear = False Evidence Appearing Real)

Adding love to the letting go process is more for YOU so that you can replenish what had been steam rolled earlier.  

AND FINALLY

Big Inhale

and

Big Exhale

Trust me, when you have been hosting all that Sh** in your head you were breathing shallowly and now that its out we can get back to business.  So freshen up and reset the body, mind and spirit by taking 3-5 big deep breaths.

Now you can get back to the business of being your awesome self, loving your fabulous thoughts and all sorts of other Good Sh**! 

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Building my Bagua for 2016

All those in favour of the "holidays" being over, raise your hand!

I'm ready to get back into a more normal flow of things and have been for a few days.  

The decompression of one's normalcy during the holiday season through to the New Year, starts out favourable, then it can bottom out.  

That lack of consistency of a routine has hit a saturation point when it comes to sleeping, waking, eating, coming and going.  

The starter's gun went off on January 1st, yet it feels like someone fouled at the line and we are in a holding pattern to really get going, until the 4th or 5th of the month.  When collectively the world around us gets back on the field.

I'm holiday'd out.

I'm ready to get on with it.  

I'm ready to put things back where they belong and move forward.

Inflowenza:  The state of awareness that one's energy is adapting and changing to life's experiences.  Symptoms can include:  Going with it, going against it, floating on it or treading your head above it. 

 ~Sherry Trentini

Feeling that sense of eagerness to get on with whatever moves your spirit is what fuels motivation.

While revamping my space I came across a few fun things in my archives.  I'm not certain what my source of motivation was, but I quite like what I've jotted down.

Nature abhors a vacuum

Who you want to be?

What you want to do?

What you want to have?

Who you become determines what you do and what you have.

Who do you want to become?  Be limitless...Remember emotion is the fuel of motivation.

Emotion is the reason you take all the action to create.

Fall in love with your vision.

How do you want to be remembered.

I AM........

This morning over coffee I really focused my energy on my Power or Theme word for 2016.  I've noticed that there many people are calling this year 'Sweet 16'.  

I loved turning 16.  It was pivotal.  The year I got my driving license and my first car.  Which expanded my independence and had me driving towards adulthood, (rather quickly at times with music blaring).

When I thought about what that felt like back in the day, and thought about the whole energy around turning and being 16, the word that came to my mind was "liberating".  

What would it feel like to have a liberating year in 2016?

What word would encapsulate that feeling of driving with music blaring?

3 sets of words came to mind:

• fulfil, fulfillment, fulfilled
• prosper, prosperity, prosperous
• thrive

All great sets of words.

The one I kept coming back to is...

Thrive may rhyme with drive, and since I was channelling my 16th year energy there may be an emotional connection.  However, truth be told, as I shared in my last email to subscribers, I shared that 2015 was a curvy year, the learning kind.  I'm ready to use that as a foundation of my personal growth and enhancement and compost it.  

Building on what I learned about myself and others.

Building on my ability to be fluid from 2014

Building on my ability to be fluent from 2015.

Sweet 2016 is my year to plant in that very fertile soil of the past and nurture a robust garden of delights.  

Thrive is defined online by:

• grow or develop vigorously
• prosper and flourish

And when I think of those definitions and the energy that burbles up when I think about how the word applies and its many applications to my life as a whole.  It looks like a starburst firework over my bagua!

I decided to reverse engineer things.  I decided to look at my 2016 year of thriving as if it were December 31, 2016.

I decided to feel what it would feel like to have:

• Thrived in feeling gratitude and feeling grateful;
• Been connected to a Thriving Community;
• Thrived in all my relationships (the one with myself included);
• Made nurturing decisions about health that supported my overall being thriving;
• Exponential growth in feeling Joy and being creative;
• Thrived in being able to reflect and learn;
• Having had a chronic case of "In-flow-enza";
• Flourished in being open to help and being a helpful spirit.

When I paused and looked at all the life areas from the perspective of 

Having Lived 2016 in a Thriving Energy, 

as if I had already achieved it at December 31st.  

WOW!

Un-clicks Seatbelt and gets out of the car to a

Huge Celebration!

I plunked down from Exhilaration!

I AM THRIVE!

I AM FEELING THRIVE ENERGY!

I AM THRIVING!

What word gets your engine going for 2016?

Or do you need a word that supports you slowing down, pulling over, being a passenger?  

On December 31, 2016 what word do you want to use to describe your year?

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Intentional Gratitude: The Bounce Back

What do you do if you set your  

pre-gratitude intention and things go

...not as you intended?

Paving the way by feeling grateful in advance for something is not immunity against it turning out differently than intended.  There can be a host of extenuating circumstances at work that can influence and affect the outcome. 

If you were feeling the gratitude vibeage and were focused on everything going right and instead everything went wrong.  I would ask you this:

How did you bounce back when that happened?

Using our thoughts, intentions and feelings for creating goodness in our lives is a powerful force.  When they do not manifest as we had focused on, it can feel anti-climactic and downright crummy!

This is where choice comes in...

You get to choose how you respond to the outcome!

How cool is that?  You get to choose how you respond to a successful intentional gratitude effort as well as to one which was not so successful.

If you have the experience that what you intended with the focus of feeling and being grateful didn't manifest:  Did you handle it with more flexibility?  Did you bounce back easier?  Rather than get mired in the disappointment? 

Let's look at the opposite scenario: 
Have you an experience when you felt that niggling feeling about something, someone, an event or experience that was going to go sideways, and sure enough it did.  

Then in domino tipping fashion that one thing may be followed by another then another.  Further proving your point that you knew that nothing good was going to come from this and your intuition was correct.  You had anticipated and braced yourself in advance to be disappointed, upset or angry.  And you were one, two or all three and then some.

In the event that the niggling feeling did not come to pass, then you may have shrugged it off casually with a semblance of relief, while still possibly waiting for something wrong to happen.

I've certainly have been there done that!

So how did you bounce back when that happened?

Were you prepared for clean up afterwards when things got messy or depending on the circumstances you may have even felt that you were going deeper and deeper into the abyss.  Preparing ourselves for a potential disaster doesn't mean that we are preparing to respond, rather we may be still in a reaction state.  

If your intentional gratitude vibe doesn't manifest I invite you to choose to look at it as: 

1. A way to practice your try try again attitude.
2. A chance to celebrate your ability to bounce back easier
3. A way to increase your gratitude muscle by looking at the bright side of what you did create...a chance to learn!

Think of Gratitude like a muscle, flex it, use it and it strengthens!

Enjoy the process and celebrate the effort!

Intentional Gratitude: Scripting

I wanted to share some scripting ideas to use when thinking, journalling, speaking and above all feeling your Intentional Gratitude.

Setting a pre-gratitude intention is like crafting an affirmation.  Affirmations are declarative statements of something that is true and is a positive statement. 

When choosing your statement it is important to employ 3 things:

1.  Take ownership of the statement.

Begin your intentional gratitude with "I am... or I feel", this makes the affirmation about YOU.  You are the one who is wanting to create the goodness, so you are who the statement is about.

2.  Stay current or present.

Granted this is about being thankful for something in your future, however, you will be best served by using a current timeline such as "I am Grateful NOW for... or I feel so Grateful NOW that...".  

Using words like "will and when" as in "I will be Grateful when....such and such happens"; is wishy washy.  If you are saying you will be grateful, then you are not grateful now; If you are saying when it happens you are not attracting it back in a timely manner.

That verbage puts your thought energy out into the world like playing catch with yourself.  You throw the ball high and long but it lands in the grass so that when you want it to come back you will have to go look for wherever it landed.  Anchoring your intention in the present projects your vibeage out there like a boomerang, as we want it to come back to us.

3.  Feeling the Gratitude.

Language can anchor our thoughts, but feeling it empowers our thoughts and ourselves.

If you are saying this or any affirmation by rote and not believing it, more importantly feeling it, then its simply words.  Dialing in on with the anticipation that your intentional gratitude will come to fruition.

This bears repeating... When you intend to be grateful for something and anticipate how grateful you will be for it and feel it; your energy is conspiring in your favor for you to achieve it!

I'd love to hear your experiences, feel free to share in the comments!

I Am Grateful NOW, for the comments posted on this blog post :)

Intentional Gratitude

Did you participate in the social media Gratitude Challenge?  Whereas as friend tagged you and you were to post 3 things daily which you were grateful for?  I enjoyed reading the posts on my news feed and participated myself.  Then another friend tagged me and I decided to do things a little differently. 

Rather than posting a daily Gratitude Reflection, I decided to post a Pre-Gratitude Intention.

For the first couple days I wrote my Pre-Gratitude in the morning, and posted what I intended to be grateful for that day such as:

• Grateful for mindful drivers and safe travel to my destination.
• Grateful for the ease in accomplishing something.

Fun Fact:   

My success was immediate. Traffic can especially be a nemesis so I was elated that travelling with everyone else on the roads was easy. Plus since I began my day with setting those intentions they were in the forefront of my mind, so my actions followed my thinking.

On the third day I decided to change the format again.  

What if I put my Pre-Gratitude thoughts out there the night before rather than the morning of.  Would that impact or improve how I felt and what transpired?  

Think about this:  If you have ever gone to bed dreading a task or situation set for the next day?  Gone to bed thinking about it, mulling it over, worrying and anticipating the potential level of yuck its going to be?  Potentially having a fitful sleep only to wake up the next morning feeling exhausted and unsettled.  I certainly have.

Suffice to say, setting a Pre-Gratitude Intention before going to bed resulted in my feeling the Opposite of that!  My experience was that it was as effective in results; but I felt a greater connection to the intention.  In my opinion, setting the Gratitude Intention the night before allowed my subconscious mind work out the details.

What can you be Pre-Grateful for tomorrow?  How would it feel to set your intention to be and feel Grateful for something before it even happens?

Feel Free to share in the comments below or on my Facebook page

Letting Clothing Go with Gratitude and Love

My post Feng Shui Your Wardrobe for Clutter Rescue has resonated with many, myself included, to take action and create space in the clothing closet.  

No matter how few or how many things you edit from your wardrobe I always invite people to say "Thank You" to the items that you are letting go of and to do so with "Love". 

If you are passing the clothes along as a donation or to someone you know; its good practise to infuse the articles with the good energy of Gratitude.  You valued their worth when it was in your closet, so send it on its way to someone else with that good feeling.

If you have any reservations about what you are decluttering do not let it leave until you can do so with love and thanks.  Otherwise the energy may linger as regret and not the vibeage you want to store in your freshly cleared out space.

Dress Stress:

Someone had recently let go of an outfit they had custom made for a very special occasion. 

Despite the beautiful memories of that event where she wore the dress; it also evoked the NOT so beautiful memories of her dealings with the seamstress. Even with the dress no longer in her wardrobe, she would be reminded, especially when looking back at photographs, of how she felt about the designer.

I suggested that she think of the dress and hold it in her mind; then focus on the JOY she felt while wearing the dress for the celebration; letting the Good feelings about the dress grow greater and stronger while letting the drama of the dressmaker experience go.  This may take some practise, however it will time and energy well invested.  

Simply Put:

• Inhale the Joy of the celebration;
• Exhale the dressmaker;
• Inhale the Joy;
• Exhale the drama
• Repeat
• Repeat
• Repeat

Repeat until you can feel that you have released the dressmaker as you have the dress.

The beautiful memories from that occasion will continue to grow in value; while holding space for the designer experience does not serve you or honor your memories overall.  

What's in your closet that you would benefit from releasing with Gratitude and Love?  

The Emotional Oil & Water

Grief can arrive like the rolling in of black clouds before a storm.

Grief can make your brain feel stuffy like a full blown head cold.

Grief can make your physical body feel as if you are walking through mud.

Grief can contract your emotions so tight you feel like you are waiting for the bomb to blow.

Grief feeds on and morphs into the very monsters hiding in the closet or under the bed.  

Grief sensitizes us to ourselves and others.
Grief is the great lecturer on the past;
Grief is the shoulda, coulda, woulda.
Grief is the judge and the jury;
and given permission grief can be the jailer.

Grief is the darkness.

Grief does to you anything it wants...if you allow it.

So what now................(Inhale Peace)

I choose Gratitude (Exhale Love)

I choose Lovingkindness.

The days leading up to the memorial date were not filled with Lovingkindness.  Nope they sure were not.

I was channelling the power of anger and depression.  The uninvited flashback moments of 4 years ago running through my  mind.  The details as crystal clear as if it were all happening in present moment.  I could feel it in my body, I could smell it, I could taste it.  I could hear the question, "Why?" being asked by myself and others.  I was generating a vortex full of wrath and fury fueled with sadness and loss.  I was feeling "without".

Then, I would look at my daughters and the storm would pause, the turbulence would sigh with dismay at losing momentum.

The morning of the memorial day I woke up feeling lighter.  Feeling partly cloudy rather than imminent storm.  I asked the girls what happy story they were thinking of about their Dad.  I saw their father in their faces.  I invited private flashback moments of their births, of stories of our lives with him.  And I began to feel gratitude. I was feeling "with". 

Not gratitude for him not being here, but gratitude for him giving us what we had with him in our lives.  Reflection.

Over a comfort food breakfast we shared stories.  Nurture

Looking around our ecosystem and feeling Blessed.  Gratitude.

Choosing kindness over bitterness.  Community.

Inhaling Peace and Exhaling Love.  Love.

Went out for lunch and shared laughter and fellowship.  Joy.

Reminded myself that I am supported.  Spirit.

Allowed myself to let go.  Flow

The mixing of Gratitude with Grief is like trying to blend oil and water.  

Grief being the oil at the top not allowing the water (Gratitude or Peace) to mix in.  You can shake the jar as long and hard as you want and in the end the oil will always float to the top.  

We can not change the physical properties of oil and water, however what we can do is change our perspective.  Perhaps the oil is the Gratitude and the water is the grief?  Its possible, if we allow it.

Everyone has their own process in coping with and moving through grief. And as each year passes I'd love to say that it gets easier; however what I will say is that it gets different.

I consciously choose to be open to what is possible.  Grief can rise to the top on any given day.  

I'm not looking to close the door on grief for myself or my daughters, I am however always open to creatively approaching this memorial day or any other day that grief appears. 

I'm grateful.  I'm grateful to be here to hug my girls, to love my girls and send love to everyone who has lost.

Its safe and okay to be sad and miss our Dads,

Its safe and okay to love and miss our Dads,

All is well.

Inhale Love,

Exhale Peace

and repeat.

Press Any Key to Continue

Wouldn't it be awesome if our lives came with an Any Key? 

I'm all about choosing to Move Forward, and admittedly there are times, such as now, that I would love for my life to have a pop up window that said...

 

"Press any key to continue" 

• To continue...
• To continue...
• To continue...

What does that mean "to continue"?

How do we reboot or wait for our internal harddrive to stop spinning on its own and find the point where we left off?

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Ughhh

My focus is to share my interpretation of Feng Shui to help people find their center, their balance and to feel more grounded.  I've gone back to this time and again when my footing has slipped and my foundation shifted.  Over the last few months I have been tested time and again about the feasibility and structural integrity of this concept.

There are five elements that affect and work in concert the Bagua in Feng Shui.  

Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal.  

I trust you are familiar with that feeling when things are moving along just tickety boo,  Gotta love that vibeage.

Metaphorically speaking, the Controlling or Destructive cycle can feel like:

Kerspoosh a big rock is tossed into your Water/Flow;

That splash then douses the flames of your Fire;

Or Sizzle sizzle drip drip the container that holds it all together has melted into a puddle of no discernible shape;

Or Whack...Timmmmber; down fall the tree(s) you've been nurturing;

An imbalance of any element does not have to be your downfall.  The magic is in being able to step back to see what needs to be added or culled to bring back harmony.

And the best direction I can give at this time is to that is to 

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then  "Press any key to continue" 

• To continue...
• To continue...
• To continue...