Sunday Journal Prompt

“When everything is up to date in your life, you live in the present time and can experience a real feeling of surfing with the energy of life.” 

– Karen Kingston, author of Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui

  

It’s hard for me to think of the last time I was totally caught up on everything—family commitments, work duties, freelance writing assignments, laundry, correspondence, clutter clearing, calls, bills, and on and on. Author Karen Kingston urges us to “do whatever it takes to catch up with yourself and then keep it that way. You will have more energy than you ever believed possible.” She refers to how children live in the moment—something she believes contributes to their vitality. When I am caught up on laundry and dishes, I always feel a sense of relief and an energy surge.

Because I love the idea of achieving an even greater sense of vitality, here’s how I approached her challenge: When my supervisor asked me to teach a summer class at the university, I gave myself permission to say “no.” Adding on more responsibilities was certainly not a way to catch up on those I already had. Instead, that summer I spent more time with my family and worked toward catching up with myself—recharging me for the following semester.

 

What request or task can you say “no” to in your life? What can you do today to begin to catch up with yourself? 

 

 

Sunday Journal Prompt

Happiness is in the doing.

 

My son Michael wants to be a writer. In fact, he is a writer. On a rare afternoon without homework, he returned to his novel-in-progress around 3:30 p.m. He sat on the couch with his laptop and wrote and wrote, smiling and laughing along the way in response to his characters’ antics. Unaware of the time going by, he was shocked when my husband and other son entered the house at 5:30 p.m. after track practice.

 

 

When is the last time you were so engaged in a task that you were unaware of time going by? How can you get back to that state?

 

 

Sunday Journal Prompt

“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand—and melting like a snowflake.”

– Francis Bacon, Sr.

 

It’s so easy to postpone what we want to do—be it calling a friend to schedule a coffee date, planning a trip, learning to paint, or writing a book. The thing is, there’s a cost. Those unfulfilled desires weigh on us. By not devoting ourselves to what we want to do, we deny ourselves (and the people around us) joy. By taking action, we energize ourselves.

 

What do you want? How can you commit to take action toward fulfilling your desire?

 

 

 

Sunday Journal Prompt

“Morning pages get us to the other side: the other side of our fear, of our negativity, of our moods.”

 - Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way

In The Artist’s Way, author Julia Cameron advocates for “morning pages”—three pages of journal writing each morning—as a way for writers and artists to let their life experiences feed their creative work. Legendary among blocked writers and artists, her book helps people foster “creative recovery,” and journaling is the primary tool to accomplish this. She refers to morning pages as a “brain drain.” Her take is that all that “angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down in the morning stands between you and your creativity.” 

Daily writing is a form of meditation, though often the content—the griping, the cranky thoughts—does not resemble what we perceive to be meditative vision. Still, Cameron assures us, morning pages are a “valid form of meditation that gives us insight and helps us effect change in our lives.”  

With whom are you angry? What frustrates you? Write it all down so you can close the book on those thoughts and move on with your day.