Learning How To Use Journaling To Center Our Lives

I have kept a journal since I was a child. I used those back and white composition books. I did not even know it was journaling. Writing things out just helped me.I have never been very organized in my journaling. I have about 30 or more journals saved and I don't know how many I have lost. I have read up on various ways to journal and used many methods. I do think that journaling is helpful in developing us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Every person has to develop his or her own approach. There is no cookie cutter method but many methods are worth attempting.itHere is one that I think is worth an experiment. It is called "Topics Du Jour" or "Topic of the day".First make a list of important aspects, concerns, or issues in your life. Don't make more than 30.Examples of this would be:1. My relationship with God2. My relationship with family3. My financial situation4. Learning5. Loving6. Laughing7. LegacyYou get the idea. By the way you get to choose your important aspects, concerns, and issues. They will be different than anyone else's list. Your list is the right list for you.You don't need to do 30. But don't do more than 30.Once you have your list then dedicate 10 minutes and no more than ten minutes writing about this issue every day. It can be a paragraph or two. What ever you can do in 10 minutes. Set up a timer on your phone and just stop with your last sentence for ten minutes.Only do one aspect a day and a different aspect every day. This means that if you had 30 you would touch on each of these aspects each month. If you have less you would recycle them over a month. But every aspect would get some time and this does focus your journaling on one topic.You can also make this part of "spiritual journaling" by talking to God about each aspect of your life and writing in the presence of God. You can write out prayers on each aspect. This is very powerful.You can also have a "life-centering day" in which you go out with your list and spend 10 minutes on a topic and then switch to the next. Don't do more than three at a time and then take a 10-minute break. Give yourself a good lunch. Walk around and just muse about what you have written. If your had 30 aspects of life this would be journaling about 5 hours but it would help you get started in every aspect of life.So give it a try. This may give the many aspects of your life more focus and avoid only thinking about them in crisis. It also helps us avoid the "popcorn" experience where we try to think about all of these aspects at one time, which is more than we can handle.Let me know how it works for you.Send me your experiences and thoughts to normwise@bellsouth.netFor more reading on this check out: https://litemind.com/topics-du-jour/