When I do workshops, I often share my experience of “Bunny’s Big Day.” When I was in kindergarten, we had an assignment where we had to cut out pictures, and put them into the correct order to create a story. I decided that the main character (Bunny) would get wake up, get dressed and then brush his teeth. When my teacher told me that this was wrong, and I would need to change the order to have Bunny brush his teeth and then get dressed, I refused to change it. I told the teacher that it was MY story, and I could tell it in any order I pleased. Unfortunately, my teacher did not agree, and we got into a power struggle, which resulted in my being sent home for the day!
I share this silly story to illustrate an important point: that our stories matter, and no one else should be able to define them for us. I am as adamant about this point now as I was at five years old. For the past 10 years, I’ve worked on creating a system that would use journaling as a tool to help people overcome stress and fear. The result is my “transformative journaling system.”
I borrowed the term transformative from the field of education. Transformative education is learning that changes a person’s core beliefs, emotions and actions. Likewise, transformative journaling is a process of writing that helps people create positive change.
I’ll share another story from my own journey that illustrates the power of journaling to create positive transformation. Eleven years ago, I was working as a doorman on the overnight shift at a busy hotel in Times Square in New York City. It was an interesting job, and well paid at that, but after a few years, I knew that there was more I could be doing with my life. However, I had lots of limiting stories that I bought into that prevented me from leaving. These stories included things like “I have no useful skills” and “no one will ever want to hire me” and “this job is good enough and safe, so why bother to change?”
Then one sunny morning in 2001, terrorists attacked the United States and the World Trade Center was destroyed. I was less then a mile from the World Trade Center on 9/11. It was a wake up call for me to look at how I had been living, and I realized that I was wasting my life. I began journaling about what I wanted to do and what I would do if I didn’t give in to fear, and decided that I wanted to spend the next chapter of my life helping others to overcome limiting stories. Eventually I went back to school and became a therapist and coach, and now work with people from all over the world.
What excites me most about transformative journaling is the opportunity to help people examine the stories that are holding them back, and to begin to give themselves permission to explore what they would like to believe, and how they would want to live. To live an authentic life is to be the AUTHOR of one’s life, and we can’t be the authors of our own life if we are living out someone else’s story of who we are and what we are capable of.
Much like my kindergarten experience, I urge and encourage you to find your true story. I know of no better method of releasing old stories then journaling. There is something magical about the power of writing. As Joan Didion says: "I don't know what I think until I write it down."
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Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/pezlet/2391458568/