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Wednesday Journaling Writes: Journaling Paradise

Some additional information in one line
Mari L. McCarthy October 4, 2012

katerhaIf you’re in business, you’ve probably heard the lectures about how you must have a business plan. And when you create your plan, you start by articulating goals, where you want to be a year or three or five years from now.

That process is powerful and actually a lot of fun, because it’s not often that we let ourselves dream about the future. We all have vague hopes and sincerely want to become richer, healthier, better loved, more influential, or whatever. But most of us don’t spend much time on the details.

And what about the majority of us who are not business owners or project managers, but normal people with work to do and families to care for. How often do we devote our thoughts to a future ideal? Mostly, it’s all we can do to make it to the weekend.

Journaling, however, is a practice that allows time for visualizing. And visualizing is the first step to making it a reality. If we don’t have a clear picture of where we’re going, there’s no telling where we’ll end up. But if the vision is spelled out, it’s far more likely to materialize.

I know that sounds like a circumstantial connection – or magic – but in my experience, it is the truth. Write out your dreams to make them come true!

Try it! Spend your next journaling session writing with great specificity exactly what your life will be like in a year, or ten years, or whatever time span seems appropriate to you. Close your eyes and imagine yourself in the full context of that life. Then let your pen reveal the details.

Then, at the end of your next regular journaling session, take a moment to re-read your future life entry.

Of course, to prove my point, you’ll need to remember to go back a year (or ten years) later, and compare your projections to how things actually turned out. If you do, you’ll be amazed.

Now, here’s the main thing: if expressing your dream in writing truly can help make it come true, isn’t it a good idea to express our ultimate dreams in writing and thereby hedge the bet that we’ll actually get there?

I’m talking about dreams of heaven, of divinity, of the soul when it survives the body. I’m talking about your idea of paradise.

How many of us spend any time at all on what we want for ourselves in the ultimate sense? Yes, we want to go to heaven, or live forever; or maybe we expect there is nothing at all after we die. But do we ever go further than those hazy opinions?

I’m not being morbid, really. Rather, I’m suggesting that we can brighten our lives now by imagining, picturing, and describing what we hope eternity is like.

  • What is the overall atmosphere?
  • How do you feel?
  • What happens there?
  • What do you do?
  • What do others do?

If this is just too strange for you, try one of the following:

  • Approach the topic with humor and exaggeration, just to see what’s there,
  • Describe your picture of an ideal place, a “heaven on earth,”
  • Detail an ideal life for you,
  • Read Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones and then attempt the exercise again.

Journal writing to get closer to your dreams is remarkably effective – and fun. Hope you’ll try it soon.

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Here’s a profoundly practical way to make dreams into realities: my new ebook, 7 Days of Journaling to Goal-Getting Success provides a sure-footed guide to where your dreams are leading.

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