Get Down Off The Cross

Strange as that chapter heading may be it doesn't really mean much I just like it. I grew up in a catholic country and all I ever heard at mass was a letter from St Paul to the Corinthians and for some reason I never heard of these guys writing back to him. Not a big surprise either tough, his letters did seem to be very long.

This chapter is all about writing a letter to your self. Some people call it joumaling some call it reflection others call it doodling! In the last few stations I have been asking you to get a notepad and a pen handy and start writing beliefs and questions and so on. If you have been doing this then congratulations you have already started the process of joumaling or reflection. If you have not been doing this then go back to the start do not pass go and do not collect two hundred Euros!

So what's the big deal here? What is the purpose of journaling? Well put it like this were you ever in a job and you were so focused on what you were doing you did not see time pass you by? Then some gobshite comes along and disturbs you and you cannot get back to that original job you were doing? Well the purpose of the journal is for exactly that, your everyday thoughts come in so fast you cannot process them as quickly as you would like to. Then as soon as you do get some time to process what you have been thinking of a new thought comes into your head and you add that to another one and another one and another one. This has a snowball effect and while all these thoughts are going on you will not even be able to retrieve the original thought.

The journal is your chance to get all this stuff out of your head. The simple act of putting it down on paper puts it out of your head and allows you the time to ask yourself the powerful questions around your thoughts. See this is all fitting together now a little bit isn't it!

The journal is also another opportunity to be honest with yourself as again it is for you alone and no one has to see it except you. If you are worried someone will see it then write it out and then rip it out, bum it or shred it. It really does not matter as long as you get it out of your head as that is where the gremlin can do a lot of work with it. Five minutes a night will achieve this for and if you absolutely detest writing why not get a Dictaphone and record yourself talking and play it back to yourself and ask the powerful questions that way. It really does not matter what form the journaling takes as long as you get all the stuff out of your head. When this stuff comes out of your head it is a release of energy onto the paper or into the Dictaphone. Trust me it's much safer to have the information in the pages or in the Dictaphone than it is to have it in your head. When your head is freed up it will allow you to be more positive and it will also allow you to spend your energy on more constructive actions than trying to plough through what's going on in the internal brain.

It's also a great way of solving problems as when it is down on paper you can now look at it with a birds eye view. While you are now reading your journal you are looking at it from a different point of view in other words you are disassociated from it. That overwhelming problem or thought in your head now does not seem as bad. This is because you are looking at it slightly different because now it is focused on a piece of paper that you can edit easily. Stick your question in here too, what else could this mean?

There is so much you can say in your journal and so little also. You could just journal about your day, Le. when Bob next door called me such and such it made me feel so angry that I thought I would cut his head off with the chainsaw I always carry around with me but I didn't. If this little piece was not expressed in your journal, how long would it be before you realized that what Bob said didn't make you feel angry it was you that decided to feel anger? You might also come to the realization that unless you are a lumberjack you really don't need to be carrying around a chainsaw!

It is also another form of taking more power away from the little gremlin. Remember that weak squeaky voiced little person in station one?

A journal is also a very effective tracker for you. How about if every evening you wrote down what you did well that day or what got you a little closer to your goals?

This would indeed be a powerful way of keeping yourself in line.

You could also use your journal for feedback. Feedback is vital, all failure by the way is feedback nothing more. It is simply feedback on what does not work cross it off your list and move onto what does!