writing from the heart
Here’s a radical idea: when you start to write a chapter for your book or a page in your journal, stop thinking. Don’t try to figure anything out. Just let go of your everyday mind and stop trying to tame the muse. Instead, take a slow, deep breath, let it out, and focus your attention on your heart. According to research done at the HeartMath Institute, “Coherence is the state of heart, mind, and energetic alignment and cooperation.” Coherence is associated with sustained positive emotion and a high degree of emotional and… Read More
journaling: a meditation
Journaling is a genius way to focus on a single idea for a dedicated period of time or space. In this way, it is not so different from meditation. If you take your journaling seriously, as many high-performing leaders do, you’re focused on that activity to the exclusion of all else. If you treat journaling as a discipline, you will create structures and rituals around it. For instance, you will write in a certain place, at a certain time, about particular topics or goal-related concepts. You will be accountable to the practice…. Read More
sheltering notes
Shelter in Place Day 10: notes from the field, preview of Journal Camp 2020.Prompt: temptationIf you had asked a month ago I wouldn’t have recognized that person. What dances outside my reach is coffee with my pals squeezed between meetings, lunch at Toast, riding elevators, a trip to the Rack, visiting with a neighbor so close we can exchange oven-warm oatmeal cookies, church, the dog park (Dog is my co-pilot), casual conversation about nothingness and madness, leisurely stalking the aisles of Sonoma Market, stopping at a winery to taste just because, farmers… Read More
journal me
Journal Camp 2020 has landed, and it is nothing short of ah-mazing! Herewith, a sample of the kind of genius free-writing can provoke: Going Home I bid farewell to the state of old New York, My home away from Home – In the state of NY I came of age, where first I started roaming….; I’m a rambler and a gambler a long way from home – Old Irish folk song My mom is a wanderer, and my dad was a climber. He dragged me through ashy volcanic landscapes festooned with blocks of air-popped… Read More