There is an art to living, to creating your life on your terms based on what you want, your talents, your values, and your dreams.  In a culture where we must attend 13 years of school, we are rarely taught to look within and name what it is we want from life.  We are rarely taught that we have the power within to live the lives we want.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.  -Buddha

While we cannot control what happens to us, we can control how we respond to what happens based on what we want.  For example, if we want to be loved and valued for who we are, and someone important to us mistreats us and doesn’t value who we are, we do not have to believe that we aren’t lovable or not valuable.  We can respond to someone’s mistreatment by affirming to ourselves what we want: “I want to surround myself with people who love and value me.”

But first, we must know what we want.  One way of giving voice to our wants is through the practice of journaling.

“You can do what’s reasonable or you can decide what’s possible.”
-Unknown

When we write, we continually meet ourselves at the page and listen to our deepest wisdom and desires.  As we become clearer and clearer about the things in life that we want, the things and people that we don’t want have a tendency, over time, to fade away, making room for those things and people that we do want.

Writing in a journal is a powerful tool for cultivating what we want from life and living our way toward that ideal.  It is a way to express the art of living.  We are artists, creating our lives out of the materials of our experiences, thoughts, and dreams.  When we write, we empower ourselves and breathe life into what we want and how we want to life.

Writing Exercise: What do you want?

If you could create your life to be exactly how you want, what would it look like?  Dare to imagine the perfect life for you—what kind of person do you want to be?  What kind of people do you want to spend time with?  How do you want to feel?  How do you want to make the people around you feel?  Where do you want to live?  What do you want to do for your work?  What do you want your home to look and feel like?  How do you want to live—do you want freedom, stability, love, acceptance?  Do you want adventure, wisdom, and laughter?

To begin, simply sit down and open your journal to a blank page.  Beginning with the words, “I want,” write everything that comes into your mind that you want.  Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, or grammar.  If you get stuck, begin again with the words, “I want.”  As you write, be as specific and courageous as possible.  Do not let your fears and insecurities step in and block what you want.  Don’t listen to that critical, mean voice within that says, “This is not possible for you.”  Like you are flicking at a piece of lint, flick away negative thoughts that only bring you down.  These thoughts are not real—they come from our shadow side.  And nothing shrinks a shadow better than a beam of light.  Shine light on all that you are and all that you want.

Today and beyond today, continually ask yourself and write about what you want.  If you keep up with this practice, you will live your way into the life you want.
Remember always, you are the ultimate artist creating your life.

All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life.  -M. C. Richards

Stay tuned for upcoming classes in the Zen Adventure Treehouse this spring:

The Anti Anti-Aging Workshop

Inspired by the ridiculous trend in our society of desperately (and expensively) fighting the futile battle against the physical manifestations of aging, this workshop will move the focal point from the physical to the spiritual process of living long and vital lives.

During this workshop, we will practice the art of journaling through writing exercises focused on self-knowledge, growing wisdom, dwelling in gratitude, radical acceptance, and figuring out how to honor a life of health, vitality, and continued inspiration.

“Live your life and forget your age.” -Norman Vincent Peale

In addition to a more hopeful and empowered attitude toward aging, participants will leave with ideas and materials to continue the art and practice of journaling.

A Different Kind of Baby Book: Journaling To Our Children from Conception On

Inspired by the sudden death of my mother and loss of our history together, this journaling workshop is for women to honor and record the sacred and challenging journey through motherhood beginning as early as conception.

During this workshop, participants will begin a journal to their child (or children), which will become an ongoing story of their lives before their own memories take hold. Within its pages, we will share stories from our childhoods, our experiences and moments as mothers, and the evolution of our children’s lives.  Participants will leave with ideas and inspiration to continue writing to their children.

“When God thought of mother, He must have laughed with satisfaction and framed it quickly—so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception.”  -Henry Ward Beecher

Ultimately, this journal will become a record of the blooming of two lives—of mother and child—eternally interconnected, as we move through this intense and fleeting time of life.

As I started to picture the trees in the storm, the answer began to dawn on me. The trees in the storm don’t try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go. Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are the ones that break. – Julia Butterfly Hill

This morning I taught a class on letting go–letting go of regrets, of fears, emotional baggage, and useless ruminations–through the practice of writing.  How timely it was!  Earlier, while I was trying like hell to focus on my breath in yoga class, I was wrestling with my own personal baggage, dwelling on all of the things that bug me about me.  Sometimes I just can’t give myself any slack.

To the observer, I looked like just another yoga student in Tree Pose.  But if that observer could have gotten a glimpse into my mind, I would have looked like I was mud wrestling an alligator–thrashing and futile.

I couldn’t wait to get to the page, to release the run-around ruminations and emotional self-abuse. I have learned, over and over and over that writing acts like releasing a valve on a pressure-cooker.  I can actually feel the energy move from my brain, through my hands, and onto the page.

While a writing practice does not make the problems and questions and challenges of life go away, it is a forum for dealing with them in a way that promotes wellness.  I will never be able to change my wily ways, to be a mello person of a consistently even keel.  My emotional variances off the mean have always been a rockin’ adventure, a fire-on-both-ends existence.

But my writing practice helps me tame the demons and move through life in an inspired kind of way.  My belief in its power to promote physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health is steadfast.  Not only am I filled with conviction about the benefits of a writing practice based on my own life and research, here is a brief overview of some of the other research:

Psychologist James W. Pennebaker began the first formal study of what he termed “expressive writing” as a path toward healing from trauma. Following his initial study, “Confession, inhibition, and disease,” hundreds of studies on the power of journaling have been conducted with different populations, and consistently these studies suggest that journaling benefits our minds, bodies, and emotions. He says writing helps in two ways:

“It reduces the physical and mental stress involved in inhibiting thoughts. But more importantly, writing is a powerful tool to organize overwhelming events and make them manageable.  The mind torments itself by thinking about unresolved issues.  By translating the experience into language, people begin to organize and structure the surge of overwhelming thoughts.  Once organized, they are easier to resolve.”

The practice of journaling benefits our physical health.  Overwhelming evidence shows that psychological conflict, stress, and anxiety can exacerbate and even cause disease.  Individuals who are not able to cope with traumatic events may be more susceptible to major and minor illnesses.  When we begin to write, we arouse the toxins created from holding our emotions inside.  As we continue to express our emotions through writing, we detoxify our minds and bodies, and even increase our immune function.

Journaling also cultivates mental health.  Dr. Edward J. Murray, professor of psychology at the University of Miami said he initially didn’t fully believe that merely writing about emotional experiences could do as much as psychotherapy.  But after he conducted his own study, he said, “writing seems to produce as much therapeutic benefit as sessions with a psychotherapist.” Writing about emotional topics significantly reduces stress.  While writing about distressing events is painful initially, in the long term people who journal feel an elevation in mood and a greater sense of wellbeing.

Why Write?  To Cultivate Wellness because no one else can do it for us.

As we live in an increasingly hyperbolic society where we run breathless through our days, we have got to find a way to stop and to release, so that we can move with greater ease and lightness of being.

Stay tuned for upcoming journaling classes in the Treehouse this spring: The Art of Life: Journaling as a Wellness Practice; A Different Kind of Baby Book: Journaling to Our Children from Conception On; and The Anti Anti-Aging Forum: Growing Older with Vitality, Wisdom, and Wrinkles.