I left the office with that line in my head: They say 2020 is the year of reflection. It rang true to me. In a major, impactful way, the twin pandemics in America (the coronavirus and our George Floyd-prompted racial reckoning) forced us all to start from scratch on long-held beliefs and values.  

Our lives and routines were shaken up as well. Many of us had more time on our hands, or at least different kinds of time. We got out into nature more. We intentionally stepped away from our screens. We got more sleep. We indulged in more individual leisure time. These new habits allowed us to enter a reflective mental space more often than we did when our lives were heavily scheduled, and resulted in some of the big life decisions that many, like my doctor, are now making.

Reflection is a vital part of feeling at peace with oneself. It’s also necessary for growth. Without reflection, we cannot know where we’ve been or where we’re headed. We cannot live with intention or set ourselves on a better path. While 2020 will eventually end, it benefits us all to keep reflection as part of our daily, weekly and seasonal routine into 2021 and beyond. 

So how do we make reflection a lifestyle fixture?

Facilitate a Reflective State

I recently found myself on an unexpectedly long line. (Okay, yes, this was an early-voting line.) My phone battery, never reliable, chose to die with about an hour left to wait. I thought I’d go crazy; instead, I found myself in a pleasantly restful mental space. I wasn’t being productive, but it didn’t seem to matter, because I was where I needed to be. Time passed in a lazy way. As I waited, my mind drifted naturally to self-reflection. I thought about how many times I’d voted in the past, how much the right to vote mattered to me, and how my vote was upholding my values. By the time I reached my destination, I felt as though I had traveled farther in my mind, and the experience of voting itself seemed much more meaningful.

To facilitate this reflective state, intentionally create the circumstances involved during that long wait. First, disconnect from screens and other distractions more often. This takes a bit of effort. Consider a full-day tech sabbath, where you don’t check work email or social media. You can also eliminate or dial back on social media together. My strategy is to keep Facebook off my phone and use Facebook Feed Eradicator on my laptop browser. That way I can still access the groups I like, make posts of my own, and see my notifications, without succumbing to mindless scrolling. 

Second, practice mindfulness. When you’re disconnected from screens and work, try to stay completely present. Use your senses to explore the sights, sounds and smells around you. Focus completely on the person you’re with or activity you’re doing. If you’re having trouble, take ten slow breaths. You can also play a fun game that connects you to your senses: tell yourself to name five things you see; four things you hear; three things you feel; two things you smell; and one thing you taste. 

Take steps to encourage your reflective mindset, and you’ll find yourself slipping into it more often. 

Make Reflection Part of Your Routine

How often is reflection beneficial? The answer will vary depending on your personality and temperament. In my case, I find a brief daily reflection, a longer weekly reflection, and an intensive seasonal reflection helpful. 

For my daily reflection, I answer a few questions in my journal each day. These mostly pertain to my state of mind and are intended to help me focus on my mental health. But I also have a few that are more practical, such as “What have you created today?” and “How did you connect to your family today?”

My weekly reflection takes place both in my journal and in my bullet-journal style planner. In my journal, I answer a series of questions about my health, family, work life, and writing life. Those answers help me see whether I’m on track with my goals and prioritizing my personal values. In my planner, I think about what I’ve achieved in the past week, and what projects I’d like to take on in the coming week.

Every season, I sit down for a few hours and consider what I’d like the next few months to look like, based on my efforts in the previous season. Sometimes I set a word or intention for my time. Sometimes I prioritize work; other times, family or holidays. I use the why/what/how process to set goals for myself. I always feel proud of my growth and excited about more to come. 

It takes effort to make reflection part of your routine, but its benefits are clear: a life lived intentionally, and with deeply-held values, that will bring you greater joy and peace. 

Leanne Sowul is an award-winning writer and music teacher whose work has appeared in such places as Juxtaprose, Rappahannock Review, Hippocampus, Mothers Always Write and Confrontation; her live readings include Read 650’s “Gratitude” show at Lincoln Center. As an elementary band director, Leanne can play every woodwind, brass and percussion instrument (just don’t give her a cello!) and has directed over two hundred student performances. She also coaches adults in the art of creative practice through her newsletter, The Joyful Creative. In 2017, Leanne won both the Scott Meyer Award for personal essay and the All-American Dream Champion Award for music teaching. Leanne lives with her husband and two children in the Hudson Valley. Connect with her at www.leannesowul.com.

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To combat this lack of creativity and creative motivation, I’ve been dipping into the parts of my imagination that I don’t engage with during waking hours — sometimes my dreams just illustrate things better than I can. Whether it’s a concept that my mind’s been trying to work through for a while or a whole world yet to be explored, the little snippets that I’m able to remember in those first few precious minutes when I wake up can sometimes fuel my creativity for days.

Keep a journal and pen by your bedside to record your dreams.

This was a piece of advice that a previous therapist of mine gave me several years ago. We had started talking about my dreams, mostly recurring ones, in our sessions, but at a certain point it was clear that some of the details of them were missing. So, to see if we could try filling some of them in before we sat down to really examine the potential meanings of those dreams, she encouraged me to put a journal and a pen next to my bedside and use it first thing when I woke up. Not the notes section on my phone or anything electronic, just a pen and a piece of paper. That way, I would still be able to slowly enter the waking world but still manage to hold on to as many details of my dreams as possible before those first few minutes were up and I forgot everything.

Admittedly, given the state of things right now coupled with my heightened anxiety, my dreams have been a little darker lately. Recording them has been a little challenging because they usually involve trying to escape something or someone, either in an area I’m completely unfamiliar with or one I know well, like my childhood home and neighborhood, where the buildings are just slightly warped, which is usually how I know I’m in a dream.

At the end of each week, parse through and pick the ideas that speak the most to you. 

Depending on what’s on your mind during any given week, your dreams might be trying to help you work through an issue or call attention to something important that you might be overlooking. For me, this usually manifests itself in the form of themes that arise in my dreams. It may not always be the same exact dream or circumstances, but there’s usually a definitive throughline that connects everything.

For example, in the eight to ten months leading up to me actually making the decision to tell my boss that I was leaving my job at the end of 2018, I had a series of dreams that all had to do with choice. Whether it was about which hallways and staircases to take to get out of my old high school or one of the old shopping malls I used to visit as a kid, or whether or not to scale along the side of a dangerously high mountain, the choice was always the apex of the dream. It was the thing I spent the most time dwelling on before I eventually made the decision to leave. After making the announcement of my departure from my job, the choices in my dreams were made much quicker and easier, as my imagination had moved on to trying to solve the next thing.

See what you can build from what you find.

Though my dreams didn’t quite lead me to the conception of the world I ended up building for my novel–I’d created that world long before quitting my job in 2018–they did help hammer home one of the novel’s most important central themes: Choice. From the very first pages of the story, you get thrown right into the middle of the consequences of a single choice my protagonist, Abigail, makes that sets the tone for the rest of the piece. What I used from my dreams was that constant ruminating over the choice. Though Abigail makes hers almost immediately, she’s left to dwell on it again and again and again. Almost like she’s trapped in a dream until the very real consequences begin to catch up to her. My own helplessness as both a participant and observer in my dreams served as an excellent foundation to build upon the helplessness that the reader is supposed to feel when observing Abigail make hers.

Times are strange and rough these days, and for a multitude of different reasons. But in trying to safeguard your creativity and your imagination, try diving into where your mind goes when it’s not attempting to get through another day of its new normal. You might be able to glean a few lessons or a few story ideas, or just something to get those creative juices flowing again.

Jenn Walton is a writer, editor and storyteller based in Washington, D.C., whose fiction works are housed mainly in the speculative genre. She has completed her first novel project that explores, through the lens of a failing utopia, what happens when society gives in to its fear of the other. She previously wrote for a communications firm where she drafted and edited sponsored and organic content for top-tier academic institutions, Fortune 500 companies and leading philanthropic organizations that has run in The Washington Post, USA Today and the Atlantic. For more from Jenn, please visit her at her website or on Twitter.

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Then someone close to me asked this question: “Do you still keep a journal?”

The answer was, “No.” Although I journaled all through high school, a habit that kept me surprisingly sane while coping with thyroid cancer, I had stopped once I got to college and went into remission. By 2009, I hadn’t written a word outside of work in years. But I remembered how journaling had helped me before, and thought it might prove beneficial again. On my 28^th birthday, I created a new file on my computer simply named, “Journal.”

Looking back six years later, I can honestly say that one tiny action changed the course of my life. Before then, I was on track to be miserable in my job and struggling with my sense of self. Keeping a journal helped me change my perspective, gave me a positive outlook, and even began to dictate my future.

Tips for Keeping a Journal

If you want make a journaling habit stick, give careful consideration to when and how.

When depends on two things: the time of day when you have the mental energy for free-writing, and/or the time that a free-write will be most beneficial to you. For me, journaling fits best first thing in the morning, as a warm-up to my bigger writing projects. I’m both fresh and preparing for more writing at that time, so it fulfills both qualifications. The only downside is that I end up writing about things that happened the day before instead of the day of. This works for me, but if you’re the kind of person who likes to empty your mind of stressors and recalibrate at the end of the day, evenings might work better for you.

How usually takes a little trial-and-error. Many people insist that a journal must be kept by hand because thoughts flow better from your brain when you’re writing longhand. I personally find it clunky and uncomfortable; my hand can’t keep up with my thoughts, so I prefer keeping a journal file on my computer. When I was a teenager, though, I kept my journal in giant sketchbooks and wrote with markers, because that pleased me. The right approach is the one that feels most comfortable for you.

The Past: Dump The Negative, Savor the Positive

So you’ve set up your time of day and gathered your materials. What next? You can use a writing prompt to get yourself going, but I recommend simply chronicling your time since you last journaled (an incentive to write every day). Writing about what you did generally leads into writing about how you felt at that time, and soon you’re exploring deeper places within yourself.

Once you’ve gotten used to this process, you’ll begin to experience that metaphysical ability to watch yourself write as if from a distance. You’ll develop an extra voice in your head, a journaling voice, which will point out to you when you’re complaining or being super-negative. Use that voice for good; let it guide you toward bringing out the positive in your life. You’ll be surprised at how well this works. Start by dumping all of your negative thoughts on the page, and as you write, you can reframe the negatives into positives and encourage yourself to move forward.

The Present: Get Into A State of Flow

“Flow” is the state first documented by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly that is the goal of every artist and athlete: the ability to become so engaged by the activity that you’re unaware of time passing. Trying to get into a state of flow can be wonderful for journaling, in part because it helps your writing feel more natural, in part because it helps you practice your writing voice for other projects.  There’s no “secret sauce” for obtaining flow; you’ll know it when you see it.

The Future: Make Lists to Inspire Passion and Excitement

I often like to end my journal entries with things I’m looking forward to that day or the next. If your next few days don’t look very enjoyable, you can try ending with a seasonal bucket list (“things I want to do this fall”), a list of books you can’t wait to read, or just a few things that make you feel good about yourself. Ending on a high note will help you emerge into the real world stronger, happier and more secure with your sense of self.

Reflect On The Past

An oft-ignored step of journaling, but the one that leads to the most personal growth, is reflecting backwards. Once you’ve amassed several entries, look back at the first ones. Do you notice a difference in your content or style? Are you more or less positive, focused, emotional? Looking back will help you to see patterns in your writing, and even give you that extra perspective you need to make changes in your life.

The act of journaling has helped me understand so much about myself and the direction of my life. It was journaling that first led me to understand how much I wanted to be a writer, and it continues to be the place where I pour out ideas, good and bad, for my writing future. It also helps me to put life events in perspective, to see the big picture when warranted, and to accept the things I can’t change.

Journaling has changed my life; it can change yours too. By releasing negative past experiences and honoring the positive ones, being mindful and flowing through the present, and re-thinking your outlook on the future, you can literally re-write your life.

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Leanne Sowul writes historical/literary fiction and teaches music from her home in the Hudson Valley, NY. Aside from journaling, she stays healthy and sane by practicing yoga, biking, and attempting to force herself to stop reading and go to bed early. Her blog Words From The Sowul is a haven for writers, readers and lovers of words. Connect with Leanne at her website, via email at leannesowul(at)gmail(dot)com, or on Twitter @sowulwords.

The post Re-Write Your Life: Tips for Keeping a Journal appeared first on DIY MFA.