Discover the power of journaling for personal growth. Explore the lessons we can learn through adversity, self-examination, and declaration.
“In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.”
— Susan Sontag
As part of my year end journaling practice (which you can do at any time), I review what I learned from my past year’s experience and use it to create the coming year.
This year, I was asked what my top 3 lessons were from 2024.
I found the inquiry to be a great prompt for emotional alchemy, helping to launch me into the new year, stronger, wiser, and more resilient.
I began freely speculating in that way that only the intimacy and safety of a journal can provide.
This is the story of the first lesson learned.
Jim Carrey said...“
You stop explaining yourself when you realize people only understand you from ‘their’ level of perception.”
It logically follows that people can only respond from their perception.
This is preceded by the fact that their perception is shaped by all their previous life experiences, and therefore can’t have anything to do with you.
Ergo, nothing is ever truly personal.
That doesn’t mean that criticism or attacks are easy, but our reaction does give us pause for reflection and an opportunity to grow.
In 2024, I was subjected to the most public and personal attack of my life.
It cracked apart an undistinguished and rather naive world view I held that if you treat people the way you wish to be treated, they will generally reciprocate.
This new experience made no sense to me.
I played the scenario out over and over in my head.
I couldn’t work, I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t think.
Can you relate?
I knew the attackers had a different view than I had, but that certainly didn’t explain why they made their differences so personal or so public.
Though I disagreed with their perception of reality, I didn’t attack them and never would.
And that was the first breadcrumb to my lesson.
I could not understand their actions because they were not the actions I would take.
It follows that I would not take the same actions because I don’t think the same way.
And if I can’t think like someone, I will never be able to understand how or why they say or do what they say and do.
Knowing that I can’t, means that I can stop wasting time trying.
That’s quite liberating.
The best I can do is to understand that everyone is acting at the level of their understanding of the world.
Even, and especially, those who think and act very differently to us.
If the world occurs as an adversarial place, people will fight.
If the world occurs as a scary place, people will act out of fear.
It all comes down to our personal programming, including how we were raised, our life experience, the input of all the stimuli around us, and how we interpret it all.
In May of 1995, I began a lifelong journey of re-programming myself from a scared, insecure victim of circumstance, to a grown woman responsible for her life and how the world around her occurs.
I choose to see the world as a place of opportunity to grow in the face of challenges, to contribute to others what I’ve learned, and to believe in and practice love as the most powerful force in the universe.
In 2024, my old world view was shattered — but a stronger one emerged through the brokenness.
A view given not by expectations but by declaration.
In other words, a view given by a chosen response rather than reaction, undaunted by external forces, but illuminated from within.
As Eckhart Tolle said when he paraphrased Leonard Cohen…
“There’s a crack in everything — that’s where the light gets out.”
Stay tuned for lessons 2 and 3.
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Join me for a journaling journey into personal growth and write your own story.
The Power of Journaling is a 10-week course that will transform how you think about and experience your own agency.
The journey begins Saturday, March 1,2025
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