TOOLS WITH HEART NEWSLETTER
WINTER – SEASON OF STILLNESS
"Winter invites us to rest from the frantic activity of the other seasons and to reflect on what we have accomplished. This is the season of sleep for the earth and many of its creatures, and it is the season of stillness and rest for us. It is the end of the earthÕs fertile period, a time when we focus energy inward, allowing for the replenishment that is vital to future growth."
A
SEASON TO JOURNAL
WINTER:
SEASON OF STILLNESS
IN THIS ISSUE
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Vision Walk is meant to be a long walk. You need to walk long enough to fall into an unconscious rhythm, to experience a state in which the body-mind has found a certain accord and harmony, conditions ripe for dreaming while awake.
If possible plan your Vision Walk as a large circle rather than an out-and-back route. The circle symbolizes wholeness and completion.
The Vision Walk is best as a solitary journey, but if you need to take a companion for safety reasons, make sure youÕre both participating in the ritual. You may even agree to maintain silence during the walk, speaking only when necessary to check your route or stop for water.
DonÕt hurry. The Vision Walk is a walking meditation. Direct your awareness to commonplace details: the hardware on a gate the color of rosehips, the smell of wet soil, the texture of clouds. Enjoy the sensory stimuli without analysis. You may find a token of your Vision Walk to bring home with you. You can add this small object to an altar and use it to remind yourself of your vision for the year.
When you return, sit quietly for a few minutes; and then write down whatever you remember. This is a new year and your new world. What did you discover when your eyes were wide open and your attention expanded? What surprised you? What was exquisite? What was painful, sad or distressing?
Keep a collection of your New YearÕs Vision Walk journals. They make for fascinating reading as your life progresses.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
DECISION MAKING in an Election Year
If a decision-making matrix sounds more like a TQM or time management exercise than a journal-writing prompt, you are right. And if you think that my background as founder of Day Runner, Inc. the personal organizer company is influencing this idea, you are right again. I believe that writing things down, whether list-making a to do list or writing your heart out in an unsent letter is all good. Time management techniques and journal writing techniques work hand in hand toward a balanced and well-informed life.
The typical decision making spreadsheets do not include the intuition or heart-centered messages, so letÕs add that piece of the pie chart and design something to help you make decisions.
How are you going to decide whom to vote for this year for President? Based on the issues? Based on the character and experience of the candidates? If you are like most of us journalers, you use your intuition, "Blink Response" (Michael GladwellÕs first two seconds decision), gut feelings or body response (Dr. David R. Hawkins, Power Vs. Force) to help make decisions.
You can use any spreadsheet, list the candidates, the issues, leadership and experience, personal characteristics and add your own inner wisdom as one of the measuring tools. Give a weight to each category. You may want to rely more on the issues or the personal characteristics of the candidate, so add more weight or a percentage point to that item. After you add up the scores for each candidate, shift the points to the weightier items.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
TRAVEL JOURNALS – Going on Purpose
"Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I can remember and remember more than I have seen"
~ Benjamin Disraeli
Traveling, especially to unknown, foreign or exotic places can shift our perspective, and if weÕre lucky the shift can be seismic. This was true on my recent trip to Burma. For once, I traveled without family or friends to a very unfamiliar place and wasnÕt under the influence of anyone but me. I also didnÕt feel responsible for anyone elseÕs experience. There was a singular starkness and a purity in the expressions of the Buddhist statues, monks and village people. There was an unparalleled simplicity in the wheat and rice farmers, the gravel workers, the weavers, the gold leaf workers and other craftspeople. The pagodas were uncountable, diverse, golden and full of wonders. I was tempted to buy ancient treasures at every stop, feeling like mother to all the children and moved to tears for most of the trip. Fortunately, my journal was beside me when we settled in for the evenings.
Travel journals can contain lots of practical information including health and safety tips, advice and resources, charts for measurements, equivalent clothing sizes, international dialing codes, world climate information, reading lists, and much more. Dozens of travel journals are available for you to buy.
I suggest your travel journal have plenty of room to write. I use a separate journal just for writing without all the tips and charts. You may also want one that includes plastic pockets for collectables – ephemera, stamps, museum and train tickets, candy wrappers or what have you. Adding photos and journal notes to these paper items make memorable collages of your trip in your writing journal or in a separate scrapbook or journal.
My guide, Don Lyon of Close-Up Expeditions, suggested assembling the items we bought to make a still life photo. If you would like to see the photos of my Burma trip, go to:
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
JOURNAL CONFERENCE 2008 – The Power of Writing – June 18-21, Denver, CO.
IÕm very excited about this Conference – an opportunity to meet with my mentors in the journal world. Best-selling author, speaker, psychotherapist and visionary, Kathleen Adams, LPC, RPT will be presenting the conference exclusively devoted to journals and their people.
Her first book, Journal to the Self, is a classic that opened the gates to the current cultural phenomenon of therapeutic writing.
Join an international gathering of writers, therapists, health care professionals and others who know the power of writing to heal. Features four of the leading theorists and thinkers in the field of therapuetic writing -- Dr. James Pennebaker, Dr. Tristine Rainer, Christina Baldwin, Kathleen Adams, and Sue Meyn -- as well as dozens of pre-/post-conference workshops and breakout sessions with other authors and experts.
Conference workshops are tracked along six themes -- Writing in Community, Writing for Healing and Wellness, Memoir/Life Story Writing, Writing for Spirituality, Therapeutic Writing, and Writing for Creative Self-Discovery -- that can be mixed-and-matched for a fully customizable conference experience.
WednesdayÕs Pre-Conference Day includes A Taste Of ProgoffÕs The Intensive Journal¨ Method -- created by Dr. Ira Progoff, who Kathleen calls "the founder of journal therapy." and whom I credit for the inspiration for the founding of both my companies, Day Runner and Tools With Heart. Workshop presenter, Sr. Maureen McCormack is a trained Journal Consultant who offered Progoff workshops for more than 25 years.
To see the program or to register, click one of the links below. For more information, call 888-421-2298
General info | Program | Registration
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
GUEST CONTRIBUTORS
Our journalers had a lot of fun with using the metaphor exercise in their writing. Here are excerpts from several different writers:
Rhonda Snyder from Cleveland Heights, Ohio used a living breathing growing entity that leaves differing trails or tracks behind them – a garden slug, that sticky slime you come across that is impervious to just about anything but lots of soap and water – if her writings were like that slug trail, slowly but effectively survivingÉ"I see those trails in all forms – new and shiny, after the sun hits them they dry out and become whitish but even more visibleÉquietly coming out in the shadows of evening, yet when the sun blares down, the living thing is goneÉjust the hint, just the trail gives witness. Was it destructive during the night or when activeÉor did it just Ôtake enoughÕ to survive and move on? The trail will tellÉthe trail can be followed and readÉjust like my journal."
Brandy Gregory of Nashville, Tennessee says, "I am a fast reader. Give me a good, new to me book and I gulp down the pages like a starving person. I let time and housework and almost everything else go and sit reading. When necessity forces me to leave my comfy chair, I take my passion with me, glancing up from the pages just enough to keep from bumping into furniture or people. When I finish my new Ôbest book I could ever imagine,Õ and turn the last page, it is as if I have wakened from a dream. If the book is good, I may re-read it immediately. I am discovering that, in many ways, I treat myself like one of my books. I may leave myself on the shelf, foregoing self-care, self-reflection, and self-love, while putting out the day-to-day fires of life. But then, something gives me pause and I find myself lifting the inner me off the shelf, settling down and revisiting the comfortable, familiar old friend whose company is as transporting and entertaining as the greatest of the great books.
Jacquie Fleming, of Portugal Cove-St. PhilipÕs, NL Canada, is like a birch tree – smooth and layered on the outside and on the inside continues to grow and live. " Even in the cold, hard times of life, there is always something alive in me, just waiting for a chance to move on."
Melissa Ellen Penn contributed these Haiku:
New Year's Day Ð 2008 Ð Marin Headlands
A miracle! We see the sun rising;
20 years we've waited.
Awe.Waiting
The rain's battered
the trees. Now
the branches
prepare for spring;
new buds grow.Peace
Two hummingbirds dance
mating begins,
for now
they are not attacking.Odd
Where I live
seasons compete;
fall leaves, spring flowers
'neath dark winter skies.Birth
Acorn Woodpeckers nip
at seeds in suet;
since spring
there's been a third.MEP 1/13/2008
And finally, Barbara Lazorony of Pacific Grove, California, wrote a poem using metaphor of her backyard and her thyroid cancer.
The Backyard
Year 1 - A dust bowl, an awkward slope drainage ditch
Year 2 – Hand shoved gravel forms the base, then black plastic laid down; the addition of a flagstone patio; sod lay between each stone and the open space
Year 3 – More greenery fills the landscape and koi pond added and even fish enjoy their new home
Year 4 – Some things die, others take hold; more greenery added; the trees are trimmed for the first time
Year 5 – The swing shows signs of rot and a new one is put in its place; the lilacs bloom for the first time
Year 6 – The sprinklers are too low, new ones are added to reach over the plants that are growing well
Year 7 – A new coat of yellow paint on the house is an excellent backdrop for an ever-blooming yard of green, purple and white
Year 8 - Five baby kittens are born under the rosebush; they frolic and play on the trellis
Year 9 - The fish disappear. We determine it was a result of the big cranes we saw swooping
Year 10 – Overgrown – In dire need of attention – but still the best on the block. The foundation is good, the roots are hearty, itÕs justÉcosmetically it needs tending, replanting and May sunshine.
Thank you to all our contributors!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A REFILL FOR YOUR THOUGHTS – FREE GIFT
How has a travel experience changed you and why?Send your musings to: felice@toolswithheart.com
All respondents will receive a refill of your choice – Rage Pages, Blue Notes, Worry Lines, Passion Sheets, Summer, Spring, Winter or Autumn Pages. Please let us know which one!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
HOW TO BE TAKEN OFF OUR NEWSLETTER LIST
We hope you enjoyed receiving the Tools With Heart newsletter. However, if you'd rather not receive future editions, we will gladly remove your email address from our list. Take yourself off our list by replying to this email and typing remove in the subject field, or go to the Subscription page on our web site.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Felice Willat writes the Tools With Heart newsletter. We encourage you to forward it to your friends and family who may benefit from it. We only request that you keep it intact including our contact and copyright info.
Or you can send them a free subscription by adding their e-mail addresses on our Newsletter page.
Copyright 2008, Tools With Heart. All rights reserved.
1-888-2-JOURNAL or 1-888-256-8762