Have you ever met a person who journals their way into a healthier mental and emotional place? You may be surprised to see what makes journals into an elixir for healing, or what descends them onto a palate for pain.
Journaling can be especially useful to kindle mental and emotional health. Or journals can trick us into working against our brain’s capacity for healing and growth. Inner wellbeing relies on our ability to process and apply healthy strategies and to reboot calm with useful solutions. Pose possible alternatives for problems for instance, and we pack a punch to sustain the inner growth we are after. How so?
To journal complaints or problems, without equal efforts to offset or alter the situation, will stunt our ability to heal and go forward on the other side. Articulating problems, without proposing possibilities simply entrenches those problems, and barricades us from finding an exit ramp from misery we record. How so?
If we journal problems or focus on sorrows we fill our brains with more of the same! The brain’s basal ganglia is its unique storage place for panic-producing habits, ruts and routines we journal and that can slow us down. The logging of daily problems will continue to default us to a growing propensity for panic.
In contrast, a grace mindset guides us to create panic reducing habits and journal possibilities to overcome problems. For instance, we might pause to remember our worth, breathe deeply, relax more and so on. To practice grace in our journaling, we can store extraordinary elixirs, ready to replace panic with potential.
To express complaints and injustices only, is to raise toxins for collapsing under more of the same. One stress producing toxin, cortisol, feeds the brain’s ongoing routine for panic, anger, stress, anxiety, or disappointments. Cortisol not only ushers in panic whenever it gets the chance, it also traps us in stress mode if we stay focused on problems that caused upset in the first place. Focus on our amazing grace mindset by journaling thankfulness over a looked forward to event, and watch cortisol drop and release its stubborn grip.
Let’s say, we begin a thankfulness journal and remember daily to list five things that blessed us that day. Just writing these appreciation quips is enough to hold off panic that circles our wagons from remaining in cortisol. Focus on panic and we will only reproduce frantic situations but if we focus on fun, energizing chemicals are awakened, such as serotonin to ensure new and improved directions will follow.
Our serotonin is the brain’s aha fuel and awesomeness packed into a well-being chemical which increases its support and energy when we laugh or build goodwill. We awaken grace when we journal serotonin alternatives that replace panic with persistence and that increase loving-kindness to ourselves and others. Only then will journaling help to heal our brains for overcoming misery in its many forms. How so?
Recently we learned that brains come equipped to heal our mental and emotional lives! Plasticity is our brain’s ability to change itself when we act differently or justify a new grace-filled approach to overcome panic. Each change we practice creates neural pathway links to goodness, calm, and beauty.
We also come equipped with journaling tools to create awesome alternatives to thoughts and actions that can sink us daily. Working memory, is our brain’s thimble-sized capacity for holding new facts or alternatives to panic temporarily. We then practice these and apply their data bits to solve panic’s problems or create practices that we can retain for further use. Such practices require a certain amount of use to become embedded in our basal ganglia during REM sleep. Otherwise, with little repeated use, these newly developed practices will flee our working memory and disappear into the atmosphere, while we default back to panic practices.
And let’s not forget how journals can heal our emotions too. Our amygdala is our brain’s storage place for every emotion, mood and personal response to panic. A tamed amygdala will reflect change options and calmer choices to live our best lives. Whatever emotional responses we store over time, good or bad, we’ll draw on the same in knee-jerk responses to similar situations. Can you see how journaling a panic response to difficulties files away emotionally only to attack us again in our next fearful situation?
One effective journaling solution is to pose questions that leave us in a better place. To grow mindfully in grace and wisdom we can journal, reflect on, and act on two-footed questions, where one foot relates to the topic and the other foot relates to our active response.
For instance …
1. How could we do one act of self-care and kindness to distract from a panic trigger expected this week?
2. For what do we crave most loving-kindness and how can we help others who tend to panic?
3. How will we turn a panicky situation into a hopeful possibility?
4. Is it possible to rarely be panicked or cranky and if so how so?
5. Why will others likely commend our adventure and playfulness by the end of today.
Two-footed questions offer huge prompts for a daily gratitude log, or opening triggers for a wonderful working memory journal. When we journal to seek creative solutions to heal us from anxiety or panic rather than merely record the misery, daily journals can stir up and store life- changing solutions. From warehouses in our brain’s basal ganglia grace resurfaces to hand us grit and resilience each time we confront a challenging situation with a journaled act of kindness.
We can explore solutions to two-footed questions as a daily way to transform a past log of blame, barriers and blusters into a vibrant, personally crafted guidebook of wisdom, inner kindness, self- empathy, healing and hope. Simply propose possibilities with grace in mind, and enjoy acting on the solution that best offers loving-kindness to ourselves and those around us. A grace mindset way to benefit more from journals, is simply to extend the problems into proposed grace-filled solutions and act on one that excites us most!
Further two-footed questions to explore in grace mindset journals or lively discussions. People pose questions about the power of a grace mindset that overcomes panic with calm in the following situations or possibilities:
1. Why do people suffer while God looks on but fails to intervene
2. How does grace become a lightning rod to ward off panic?
3. What condition of the brain can nudge our grace to hide away?
4. What do children teach us about thankfulness and grace?
5. With whom do we discuss deeper ideas or wrangle with questions related to grace?
6. What metaphor does grace occupy most in our life?
7. Why is the unconditional love we crave actually quite a rare thing for most of us?
8. What does music have to do with grace in our life?
9. How does grace act like a crown when panic strikes to disrupt our day?
10 To cherish or be cherished, how does this pose panic and present a problem to grace?
11. Where’s our grace mindset when we’re so far down we have to look up to see bottom?
12. How could our visual IQ show us as a divine trophy of infinite favor and worth?
We may want to start our transformation from horrific pressures to hope’s courage with a brief consideration of the grace that already resides inside each of us. See its love, joy and kindness as our inner chariot ride into calmer, more delightful places. With grace awakened, we grow more comfortable in our own skins. We become OK with our personal imperfections that will come along for the ride.
Awakening may mean a walking meditation where we focus more on what calm could be rather than how chaos can push us out of control. Or it may be a brief entry into our thankfulness journal with a glass of wine, on our balcony at sunset.
Whatever grace mindset approach we choose, we can access and awaken kindness and openness to help us trust in a higher power and agape love that will heal what is broken and strengthen what is seeded. The first step we may need to take will become clear when we focus on change for better spiritual, emotional or mental balance. Change we may wish to start with could simply involve a better sleep that night. Or self-kindness may indicate we consume less alcohol or sugar. It may nudge us to walk in the park with a trusted friend. Or we may choose to curl up in front of a cozy fire with a book, a buddy, or both.
When we step or look away from toxic pressures, we grow ready to relax and allow our inner wisdom to reshape responses for healthy outcomes beyond feeling only life’s pain or suffering. Let’s say we feel overwhelmed when the alarm goes off. We may start the day with one small, calm step only, such as a happier encounter with a critical family member. One small step toward unconditional kindness here will trigger our grace mindset and lay down a new neural pathway to each joyous outcome we envision.
Not that we get perfect results with every effort or trial. Yet each time we step into a quieter, calmer purpose, with aha-level hope, we discover new chances to rewire and improve our spiritual, chemical and electrical circuitry. We can open healthier inner roadways to follow and enjoy our dreams rather than sink into overwhelming dreads.
Rarely will every ordinary day offer us rainbows and unicorn dreams, but we can live more joyfully from within a grace mindset sanctum, where our gifts support us in spite of our past ego or failed efforts, and more from the eternal perfection of divine love.
Wherever hope fuels us to use and develop our multiple intelligences, it’s also true that hopelessness which comes from longing for what others possess, tends to fade.
For instance, intrapersonal activities such as keeping a thankfulness journal can increase thickness in our cerebral cortex, especially in areas of attention and sensation. Reconnect neurons of wellbeing and contentment in this way, and we can successfully support neuron pathways to hope for the best in ourselves and in others. Tapping into several intelligences, we can activate reward centers to depress hopeless concerns that flame the amygdala with toxic longings, and increase gratitude for all we have and can build upon.
Let’s say we journal on a relationship problem, with a focus on caring solutions to resolve unkind resentments, and then we have a meaningful place to begin to put an action that includes kindness into motion. That action is what alters our brain chemistry and circuitry. It will move from the temporary working memory holding spot, and take its place in our basal ganglia as we sleep in REM cycles and as our brains rewire based on actions done that day.
With a journaling focus on possibilities, we find opportunities to reboot for a life with far less resentment, little or no envy and jealousy, and a life where grudges increasingly meld into actions that show more empathy. Grace creates space where loving-kindness guides our kinder responses to ourselves and our caring reactions to others.
A journal can be an ideal place to identify difficult areas in our lives as a way to awaken a grace mindset approach forward. Unfortunately though we sometimes use journals against our wellbeing because we list daily problems without identifying or seeking possibilities to grow and move forward in healthier ways. List negative emotions, dissatisfaction, and self-pity and we will lead ourselves down dark rabbit holes of despair. To focus on problems only is to lay down new neural pathways for more of the same vents. Cortisol increases and we get more and more into the weeds of disappointments and upsets, because we stored one-sided upsets into our amygdala.
How then can a daily journal help our grace mindset to click into gear and support our joy in the face of difficult times. Beside each complaint or feelings of frustrations we can propose a possibility that will infuse our minds with loving-kindness, add mercy to the mix and inspire us to design an improved situation. For example rather than list all the problems we face when one person abandons us, we can focus on a friend or family member who loves us in spite of our flaws.
Or we may include a thankfulness section to our journals, so that we remember to focus more on acts of gratitude than acts of grievances. Gratitude could be anything from thankfulness for a magnificent sunrise to experiencing the calming opportunity to sit beside the lull of waves licking rocks beside us. With this new journal addition we can find solutions in the wake of kindness and we can grow resilience and grit in a safe, grace mindset setting.
It we feel criticized, abused, or traumatized, it can be extremely difficult to feel cherished or to cherish others. What do we do in this situation? Perhaps the best we can do in the moment is to create time and space for healing. How so?
Consider a huge physical wound and we recognize that this takes time and tender care to support healing. We may gently add antibiotics, and carefully place a bandage over the wound, allowing it space and time to mend. The same is also true for healing emotional wounds. It takes grit, along with robust yet tender care for sustainable healing to kick in and do its transformational work over time.
The healing power of a grace mindset comes from validating our pain for sure! We are healed in journals however, by also embracing our potential to transform any complaints or grievances logged, with kindness and agape love that starts with ourselves.
Unless we strangle its potential by emphasizing go-nowhere problems, journals can hold immense potential. Our written reflections can help us to love others and also to feel loved, in spite of inevitable daily challenges.
YOUR TURN! Join our Brain Based Circles! Would love to meet you at any of the following!
Brain Leaders and Learners Blog
Mita Brain Center Facebook at @mitabraincenter
efweber on Pinterest
@ellenfweber on Twitter
ellenfweber on Instagram
Ellen Weber on Google+
Ellen Weber on LinkedIngrowth