Journal

Do you journal?

A few months ago, I joined a yoga retreat in Turkey were I was told to bring a notebook as journaling daily would be encouraged.

“What is journaling?" I asked as I raised my hand in front of the group on the first night. I hadn’t a clue what it was or what to write, but as the teacher explained, it is whatever I want it to be. A note of my thoughts, my observations, jotting down how I felt that morning or the day before.

Quickly, I found myself lost in my notebook! Each day, during the retreat, I would look forward to quiet time where I put pen to paper and emptied my head onto the page.

It has been many months since I returned from that trip and to my surprise, it is a custom that I have woven into my daily life.

I look forward to getting out of bed each day, making a coffee and sitting with Juno and my thoughts and journaling. It is a practice that has helped me examine my relationship with social media (for example) and ultimately lead to me dealing with that addiction.

This small habit has had a massive impact on my mental health. It has helped me prioritise my problems, fears and worries so I can control them better and make decisions with a clear head.

It has also given me an excuse indulge in one of my favourite pleasures, buying notebooks and stationary. I have fallen for these recycled books from Cork based designer Badly Made Books.

Social media and why I kicked the habit!

As my 40th birthday approached, I realised that I had spent almost half my life using social media. From the early days on MySpace up to TikTok and everything that came and went in between. What was almost 20 years of poking people (remember the early days of Facebook), writing on friends’ walls, making stories and creating reels, why the sudden change of heart?

As I came to realise, it wasn’t sudden at all.

For a couple of years (at least) I had lost my ability to focus (or had it been stolen?) I was no longer present with my friends and family! Seeing everything as ‘content’ and through a screen of some sort -be it my phone, drone or GoPro- I was losing special moments. Whilst I was busy documenting my experiences I wasn’t actually experiencing them.

In addition to no longer being present, I was frustrated at my lack of ability to concentrate, to sit down with a book and get lost in its pages, to remember why I had lifted my phone (I’m sure it was for an important reason) or why I had walked into a room.

Before I started journaling in Spring this year, I could not make sense of what was happening to me. Why my anxiety levels were high and my mood low. As I started to write, my stream of consciousness began to reveal a pattern. I was addicted to my phone and the validation and attention I got from the apps installed on it. Something had to give, but how?

Social Media, especially Instagram had become my life (or so it felt). I had a great network on IG, a wonderful community full of positivity and opportunity, how could I walk away from that. It then dawned on me, that a lot of those people are now actual friends in real life who are a wonderful addition to my circle of friends who always existed outside of the Gram.

I started to equate my SM habit with my old addiction to smoking. There was always a reason to buy another packet of tobacco, to roll another cigarette, but if I could kick that habit surely I could experiment with leaving the virtual world behind for a while.

So, I ‘went fishing’ - just for one month I told myself. But quickly I started to reap the benefits of not filming every special moment, of not spending time editing and creating content, of not refreshing the page to see if there were more Hearts. I felt freer, present, and my focus started to come back. I picked up a book and started to work through that pile by my bed. I experienced all my experiences, every single minute of them. My anxious nature disappeared and my mood lifted. I no longer felt a pressure to perfectly capture what I was doing, but instead to just enjoy doing it. Sitting on a beach watching the sun come up, just for me, not to share on Stories or post about it later.

That little experiment has changed my life. I have come to realise that after 20 years of straddling my offline and virtual lives, I prefer being unplugged and present in the real world.

Word of the Year!

Happy new year! I love the start of a new year as I see as I chance to regroup and focus on what changes I want to make, but who the hell can stick to new year’s resolutions? After a few weeks of best intentions, mine always fall to the wayside. So at the start of 2022, I decided to take a new approach to my goals.

Word of the Year is a gentle and constant reminder to focus on the positive changes you want to create. It motivates and inspires by helping you reflect on your intentions and hopes for the new year.

Instead of resolving to cut things out or make rigid grandiose plans for the year ahead, I picked a word that would sum up my intention for 2022. Initially, it seemed like a difficult task, how could one word cover all that I wanted to do in the next 12 months? In actual fact, it turned out to be easier than I thought. I gathered my intentions and eventually a theme started to emerge.

My 2022 Word of the Year became Strength.

At the start of the year I was approaching my 40th birthday and I found that weight control had become harder as the years rolled on. Was I going to continue to torture myself with trying to maintain a weight I had been through my twenties and early 30s or was I going to change my focus? I decided to focus more on building strength than losing weight. I quickly found an amazing online PT whose combination of weight and interval training worked for me. I discovered the late great, Jannine Murray via Daily OM and started her online classes. I found a daily workout routine that has woven easily into my life and has now followed through into 2023.

In addition to gaining physical strength, my Word of Year helped me kick my social media habit as it nudged me toward positive changes throughout the whole year.

What next? This year, I want to build on strength and have picked a word that captures the mind-set I want to adopt in 2023; breath.

Will you choose a Word for 2023? Take your time, try a few out for size before deciding which one will inspire and motivate all year round and keep it in the front of your mind. Happy New Year!