September 2013 – Inspiration and motivation

It seems that some people love to sit in misery. I say that with sarcasm…however that may be what you are doing when you journal. Writing in your diary about all of the terrible things that happened during the day is a risky move. Rehashing your day in print can go one of two ways: it can assist in your mental processing and help you reach a conclusion OR it can bring up and intensify the negative feelings. Only you know the effect writing has on your emotional state. My advice to you is to be aware. Don’t get me wrong, journaling can be a fantastic coping tool. If you need distance from a situation, need to rehearse what you want to say or want to keep a record of your growth, I’d say writing is a great option. I’d worry if the nightly writing becomes a depressive trigger.

An alternative to traditional journaling is to keep a gratitude journal instead. A gratitude journal is where you keep a log of things you are thankful for each day. As you may imagine, this task is easier some days than others. When I keep a gratitude journal, I do it in list format. Each day I only write the date and three things I’m grateful for in list form. This creates a great record and tool I can look back on for inspiration. In fact, just now I looked back through mine and felt a rush of satisfaction, happiness, love, and pride.

This post has reminded me how much the gratitude journal means to me and I’ve fallen away from the practice recently…So today I’m grateful for:

Not procrastinating
Having time to re-read my past gratitude lists
New pillows

Has anyone ever asked you what your values are? It seems like such a simple question and yet it’s quite complicated! Values are such an abstract concept that people often don’t know what they actually are. Values are personality traits, beliefs or principles that increase your feeling of self worth. Values should make you feel more confident in your identity and when relied on, will guide you in making decisions you feel proud of.

A (very short) list of values:

Creativity
Fitness
Spirituality
Belonging
Mastery
Intellect
Empathy
Honesty
Gratitude
Loyalty
Patriotism
Health
Altruism
Professionalism
Security
Achievement
Independence
Faith
Accomplishment
Fluency
Challenge
Balance

What I would recommend you do is make a list of your core values. The internet is an amazing resource here, searching for lists of values will produce immediate results. Once you have your list, see if you can group any of them into categories. For instance, if you chose faith, spirituality, and belonging you could group them into spirituality. Or if you chose fitness, accomplishment and health you could consider them as a whole. Step three is to develop an action plan. Figure out how to incorporate you values into your life. With the example of spirituality, you could join a church community to feel a part of something while also nurturing your spiritual life. If you are working on the fitness goal, you may set a goal of a 5K run to satisfy your value of accomplishing something that also improves your health and fitness. Working toward goals that are aligned with your values will increase your sense of self, thus improving your self esteem.