Hi there,
I am a day late to the new week. A lot has been happening behind the scenes.
In the spirit of starting a journaling challenge, I took the time today to reflect on why I eventually started journaling.
What moment in my journey was it that prompted me to begin journaling naturally, without anyone recommending it to me?
It was 10 days before my father died.
Despite all the hope I had that he would somehow miracously make it, I was afraid enough of his certain death that I started journaling about what I’d learned from the process of losing him to the cancer that his unhealthy lifestyle had invited. I started writing from a place of deep fear, anxiety, and life’s burden on my shoulders, and it was raw. All the emotions. All the pain. All the learnings. Everything was so real. And putting words on paper became a powerful outlet for me to process the experience—and ultimately by publishing my reflections to the world-- also a way for me to heal, and find inspiration. This practice that began from a dark place of fear and trauma eventually inspired me to keep going and growing from a place of hope and love.
Something notable that I realized as I journaled more and more was that often the greatest breakthroughs came from typing everything and nothing, ideas I hadn’t even pondered before, whatever ideas came up in my subconscious mind, or feelings came up in my body. It turns out that—especially as adults--tuning into and tending to our body is a real commitment requiring thoughtfulness and work. As children, we’re naturally accustomed to expressing feelings through crying, singing, and creative language. I remember my son telling me that his nails felt all “curly" one time when I cut them too short. He cried and said it made him feel all tingly and “cribbly” inside. Funny enough, I knew exactly what he meant and apologized for making his nails feel all “curly and cribbly". It was such a simple moment. The emotions were all on the table. We knew what to work with, not necessarily how to fix it right away.
In journaling, everything’s fair game: you see it, you feel it, and you just leave it there for now, or you find a way to look at it from a different perspective. As the written words sit there, they don’t judge you, but they do give you a choice to respond. They make you feel things you otherwise might not, and that is so worth it. In fact, this experience of feeling is quite necessary if we’re to live our lives fully. Until we can sense the full range of signals offered by our bodies, we can’t expect to fully know ourselves, and it’ll be that much harder to achieve the life fulfillment we know is possible.
In a world of obsessed with maximal productivity, fast fixes, and instant gratification, it seems almost foreign to honor the time our bodies need to move through major life events, or even just feel the daily energy waves we naturally experience in our human journey.
The notion of getting back in touch with our personal somatic leadership can feel tricky, especially if you're trying to justify it through some predetermined set of outcomes. But what if this only feels tricky because we don’t actually know what we’re looking for? In our productivity-wired minds we obsess over outcomes (known knowns, and known unknowns), but don’t consider the importance of the unknown unknowns—out blind spots: how we feel, what we might find, new sensations, breakthroughs, or perspectives. Maybe we find a way to feel more, feel better, feel more alive, feel less stressed, feel more clarity, feel better equipped. What if the most productive element here is to feel great about feeling more and find answers in that?
While there are many ways to heal and/or to gain perspective on matters that occupy our mind and bodies, one very simple practice is journaling about our sensations. It might feel a bit awkward to start with, but it’s a great way to start to fall in love with your mind and body again.
I have personally never found greater leadership resilience and wisdom than in becoming aware of my own stories, strength, and unconscious battles. It is in the moments when I let go of what I might want to hear and listen to what I am here to hear that I find resolution and release. I become better at listening, better at delegating, better at setting boundaries, better at honoring my own energy and emotional availability—all simply because I am more aware. It’s almost like once the words are on paper, there is no place to hide from it anymore.
My journal is a place where my intuition and rational self meet, and where connect the dots to become more holistically tuned into the ways that events in my life make me feel, what they do to my energy, how I need to collect myself, and what my opportunities for engagement with myself and others are.
If you still want to join the challenge you can click this link. It’s free and it’s a group of wonderful, driven humans.
All the love,
Franzi
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Embodied, weekly discoveries:
The first journaling question in our group this week:
An embodied practice: When was the last time you laid on the ground and felt everything that came up? Try it. Do some deep. No phone, no music, no stimulation. Just you, and your breath. Let your energy and state come alive here. This is a great practice to settle into the day in the morning and check in with yourself before starting a day of leading, listening, making decisions, and chasing your calendar.
A thought: What’s blocking your vision to get to your big vision?