Tips for Journaling and Self-Discovery

078. Are your emotions a tangled web that you're struggling to unravel?

Imagine if you had a tool, a key that could unlock the mysteries of your mind and heart.

 In this episode Marijanel was privileged to have artist and coach, Jackie Ranahan, as a guest, who navigated us through her personal journey of journaling. Starting from her childhood scribbles to her conscious flow journaling during the hard times of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jackie illustrated how journaling can be an invaluable tool to self-discovery and healing.

How can you make journaling personal? Does it seem daunting? Jackie didn't just stop at sharing her inspiring journey, she also provided nuggets of wisdom on personalizing your journaling practice.

From embracing your unique language or symbols to creatively addressing privacy fears, we navigated through the practicalities of journaling, and even touched upon the exciting possibility of creating a memoir through your entries.

 To top it all, we explored how journaling can be like your personal problem-solving guru and a steady hand, guiding you towards self-accountability. Be it creative tools or establishing an accountability system, Jackie has an arsenal of tips to aid you in your journaling journey. Let's begin this transformative journey towards self-discovery and healing.

✷ Website → https://marijanel.com/

✷ Companion YouTube Video → https://youtu.be/n9avHAT_bes

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✷ Support the Show → https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Marijanel

✷ Music → https://www.epidemicsound.com/

✷ Jackie Website → https://www.jackieranahan.com/

✷ Jackie Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/jackieranahan.artist

Transcript

Marijanel: 0:00

Good day. I am here with artist and coach Jackie Ranahan, who has experienced firsthand some incredible life changing benefits of journaling, and we're here today to talk about that and hopefully inspire you in your daily journaling practice as well. Jackie, thank you so much for being on the Mary Janelle Show. Welcome.

Jackie Ranahan: 0:22

Thanks for having me. I'm so excited, so excited.

Marijanel: 0:27

Yeah, so you and I sparked up this conversation on Instagram of all things, where you shared with me that journaling has literally changed your life. Can you tell me about that?

Jackie Ranahan: 0:38

So you know, you asked me when we first started chatting about getting together today. You had to ask me when. When I started journaling and I really at first I thought COVID, it was a COVID times 2020. That was when.

Jackie Ranahan: 0:54

But then, when I started to really think about it, I had been journaling and have been journaling on and off since I was a kid, starting with the diary, then moving through love letters to two boys that I never sent them to to you know, creating journals for my kids when I was expecting both of them. So it actually has been present in in my life for most of my life, and so the reason I got back to it during COVID was, like everybody out there, covid had a monstrous impact. My husband and I owned a sport business, owned, still own a sport business that was heavily impacted with the lockdowns that happened in Ontario and I needed an outlet. I needed, not that I couldn't speak with him, but we were both on the same frenzy. So I needed something that wasn't in a frenzy and I bought a book and just started writing and and yeah, so I've been writing ever since.

Marijanel: 2:05

And so did you have any prompts or starters to help you get going writing in the journal, or you just you said you bought a book and started writing. Was it that easy for you? Did you have any holdbacks, to get the pen and thoughts flowing on into the journal? What was that like?

Jackie Ranahan: 2:22

So I started as a great question. So I started out with a daily intention. So I would write down a word usually word, sometimes it was two or three, but usually a word of a daily intention that I wanted to remind myself of throughout the throughout the day, and then a couple of bullet points as to what that intention meant. Oftentimes I'd even write what the weather was that day. I'd say it was raining, or you know where I was specifically, and then that turned. So it started out like that and then it just got into more sentences and a bigger intention and then after a while I ended up dropping the intention and just writing. So just starting out with how I felt, and it's now part of my morning routine. So I get up in the morning fairly early, make a cup of tea, sit down. Oftentimes I'll meditate and then I'll journal after that.

Marijanel: 3:18

Okay, so what is an example, a random example of an intention? Did you, did you just come up with these yourself, or did you have some kind of prompt book with intentions, and what's an example of one?

Jackie Ranahan: 3:29

An example might be focus in terms of specific words. Focus I steady.

Marijanel: 3:38

Okay, so it's like you picked a word, yes and the word prompted what you wrote about.

Jackie Ranahan: 3:44

Yes, yes.

Marijanel: 3:46

Wow, okay. And then that, having starting with a prompt or a word, led you to what I call conscious flow journaling. There's all different names conscious stream or free flow where essentially you just take pen and paper, just let out all your thoughts, no particular order, no particular theme, whatever's on your heart or mind that day, is that? That's essentially where the intention led, the intention word led you to conscious flow journaling.

Jackie Ranahan: 4:11

Absolutely, absolutely. And I first was introduced to what what you're calling conscious flow journaling when, back I would say in the 90s, I was at a trade show in PEI and I bought a book called the artist wave by Julia Cameron and her she calls the morning pages, so her conscious flow is morning pages, and so that was a opened my eyes to just the fact of writing. I don't necessarily write, do morning pages all the time. I do them when I'm particularly feeling I need to work through something, and oftentimes I don't even know what the something is. So that's a morning pages or conscious flow journaling is great for is if you really don't know what it is and you just need to get it out. So you just write and write and write.

Marijanel: 5:05

Yeah, I love that you pointed that out, jackie, because when I share with my audience how much journaling has impacted me, empowered me, become like the birthplace of my ideas and just really kept me I'm gonna call it on track in my life like helped me to focus, helped me to sort things, become a wholehearted person, I can't go on, I can go on and on about the benefits, but what's really interesting is that when I open up the pages and begin to write, I don't always have prompts or anything to get me started and I actually don't know what the something is.

Marijanel: 5:41

So that is really key, because, as I've been developing mentorship programs and leading people through journaling practice, I feel like I want to give them guides like this is how you could flip the narrative of fear, or this is how you could get yourself started working through a relationship issue.

Marijanel: 6:04

But the truth is, a lot of times we don't know what the something is. We actually are a little lost. We go something's bothering me or something's bothering me about this. We might be able to fill in the blank in a general way like something's bothering me about this friendship or something's bothering me about this in my you know entrepreneurial life, but we don't actually know what it is, and what I found is that journaling allows me to just stream the thoughts down and suddenly there's like an answer on the page, or at least what it is like. I uncover the problem by journaling and then a lot of times I answer the problem through journaling, and it's very hard to teach that, but it's actually quite possible for everyone. It's not out of anyone's reach to be able to journal them, what I call journal yourself whole.

Jackie Ranahan: 6:57

Absolutely. It's like. It's like having a conversation with yourself really is what you're doing and you are working through. So, as you said, sometimes you find the answer. Well, the answer that just says that the answer was always inside of you from the start, but you just had so much stuff to weed through before you got to what it was.

Marijanel: 7:21

I know, I know and you know you said there that the answer is there inside you and having this conversation with yourself. And when I encourage people to journal, a lot of times they don't want to because they're actually scared of themselves, they're scared of the thoughts that they're going to have, or they don't want to deal with the grief that they know is buried in there, or the anger or whatever. Because sometimes we can have some real negative things that are pent up in our hearts and we know if we sit down with ourselves it's going to come out on those pages. And so people are afraid of like taking a look at that truth. And yet I do like to still encourage them to do that, little by little, because we, if we want to live a wholehearted life, authentic and confident, the only way to do that is as a whole person, without all the the, what you were describing, even the noise and the clutter, but then also the stuff we're afraid to look at.

Marijanel: 8:19

And so by journaling and I always say it doesn't replace therapy or counseling, but it's a tool that we can use to start to sift and sort and have those conversations with ourselves. What's interesting is that we're the safest people to be with like, although we can be our own worst critics and sometimes we can be pretty hard on ourselves. If we step aside, like if we put that part of ourself aside and release the self compassion and the grace and the understanding and just be with yourself in that way and get to know yourself, have that safe conversation with yourself. The journal is a beautiful tool and way to work through a lot of the stuff that then you can take that to your counselor or to someone that you talk to or confide in. You can use it as a tool to heal, and so I always say don't be afraid of yourself.

Jackie Ranahan: 9:13

Absolutely, absolutely. It's that inner. You know you hit the nail on the head with using that saying is that it's the inner critic, is the thing, the person inside of you. That and I found not that I go back, because that's actually something I want to bring up is I don't necessarily go back and reread my journal. It's very interesting.

Jackie Ranahan: 9:37

I often, you know, I have this thought in the back of my mind that maybe someday my journal will become a memoir and that's when I'll go back and read through it. But it's not like I write and then the next day I go back and look to see what I wrote. Oftentimes it's a move forward type of motion, it's not a going back kind of motion. So your inner critic does come out sometimes in your journal. You have this conversation or this battle with yourself as you're going through the pages, and it may not be resolved on one entry. It may then carry on to the next entry. But again it's that thinking of moving forward. So it's not necessarily, for me anyway, a moving backward. I don't review what I've written necessarily.

Marijanel: 10:23

Yeah Well, because I've journaled for so many years and I usually have at least one full journal per year, if not two, or if not broken into different topics, I will often reread a year or two back. I find if I reread too close to what I'm going through, I might get in a muddle again about whatever it is and then I will just not have the clarity as if I move forward like you're suggesting. So sometimes what I find to be encouraging is to actually read where I was a year or two ago and I find then I'm reflecting at wow, I've actually come a long way, or oh, I forgot about that problem and it's not a problem, and look at how it worked out. Or I'll see that, oh, I used to have.

Marijanel: 11:14

For example, I do journal a lot about my creativity and my artistic pursuits. That takes up a huge amount of content in my journals. I really work through my creative self so that it doesn't drive my husband crazy or that I'm not dumping on the kids all the time, but I will work through these things. So I'll look back a year or two or three ago in a journal and say, wow, I really did battle with imposter syndrome or I was really comparing back then with other people's art. And then now I'll look at where I am today and think I have made progress, and just knowing that you've made progress is sometimes just enough to make that next leap forward. So I do find the journals and the reread of them does encourage my soul to move forward, but I have to be careful not to look at the entries that are too close to proximity of where I am now.

Jackie Ranahan: 12:10

Yeah, I think it's such a personal thing and, as you mentioned, getting people and giving people prompts to get started. It's such a personal thing and it has to evolve as you evolve, right, Like it has to. So, starting out with the daily affirmation or starting out with just a couple of bullets if you really have a little bit of fear around journaling, starting out really small, Don't make this. You don't have to write a full page, you can write like. When I look back at my original journals, I was like a third of a page a day was how I originally started. It was just getting the thoughts out and then a third of a page became half of a page and half to a whole, et cetera, et cetera. So it's got to become and evolve and be personal to who you are.

Jackie Ranahan: 13:01

And I know there's a lot of fear. A lot of people have fear around journaling that somebody might read. What if somebody comes and reads my books? My family sees me journaling and it's and they're very respectful that I think that none of them have opened up. But my journals aren't locked and they're not tossed away. They're usually beside the bed or beside my reading chair in the morning and my approach, and I do appreciate that this is my perspective. And there have been people who have had their trust betrayed in the past and I completely understand that. My perspective is that I'm okay if one of my family picked up my journal and started reading it, because I have that trust in my family unit, Because I think if they were to read it they just know more about me. They just know more about me.

Marijanel: 14:00

Someone. Reading your journal is actually a big hold back for a lot of people to journal and I do offer a few tips. I really like what you suggested, that often we feel comfortable with our trusted ones around us, and I completely identify. I leave my journals laying all over the place. If they read it, good for them is what I think If you wanna know that much about your wife and your mom good for you, Maybe the first day at mine.

Jackie Ranahan: 14:28

I was so upset the other day.

Marijanel: 14:30

Exactly like. Maybe I'll explain a few things inside this journal and you'll get the message. So that's my take. But I do like you mentioned.

Marijanel: 14:40

I do understand that there's some who are holding back expressing themselves in a journal because of the fear or concern that someone would pick it up and read it. And I do have some really practical suggestions that I offer in my journal class resource. That's more like a discovery I call it a class or a course, but it's more like a discovery program and where we discover journaling ourselves whole. And one of those suggestions is to even give yourself your own language or code or some symbols. And I do that Like.

Marijanel: 15:12

Sometimes I will develop a certain symbol. If I'm working, let's say, through a relationship and I don't want to be using the person's name in my journal, even for the reason that my kids might pick it up and I don't really want them to know I'm working through that, I might come up with a little symbol or a little kind of like a nickname or something, and I'll almost write in code for myself, but I fully understand it. So don't write in code that you don't understand, but something that you can understand. And I'll write shorthand and I'll write in a way, and I've developed this over a year, so it takes.

Marijanel: 15:50

It would take a while for you to write your language, but I believe you could write a language to express yourself, whether it be symbols or codes, and write the story.

Marijanel: 16:01

Even if it needed to be in a picture form of you know something a bit more like a picture, word picture, you could still express what you're going through and uncover truth and take a look at deeper things in your life by journaling, without giving up all the names and scenarios and everything to be exposed in the journal, and so if you're able to interpret it, that's what matters. The other thing is they make safes. They make like easy to lock up, pretty nice looking little suitcase safes or you know, just keep that by your bed and have a little key tucked in your phone case or whatever. If I find with anything in life, if there's a will, there's a way. If you really want to express yourself in a journal, you're going to find a way to do it and still feel safe, and so I would encourage people to take a look at those options if that's what's holding you back.

Jackie Ranahan: 16:59

One of the things just going back to the morning pages in Julia Cameron's book, the she suggests for morning pages is to throw them away when you're done, Don't reread them. So I think it's her suggestion is three full pages a day and that you don't reread them. You throw them in the trash or you can burn them which is another?

Marijanel: 17:22

Yeah, Right.

Jackie Ranahan: 17:23

Shredding them, even burning them, is safely, is a is another way to complete almost the cycle of writing something down and then releasing it. So that's also a thought too. If you're you know, just write it all down and rip them up, throw them in a public garbage can, somewhere, and, and you know, get, get rid of them. And at least you started that conscious flow.

Marijanel: 17:49

Yes, I agree, and that would be step one for sure. I've always had a hard time doing that personally, because I do have the sense that I want to leave a memoir and I've always hoped, as you mentioned in the beginning, that that perhaps the journals would lead to the memoir which they essentially did. When I had the Curiosity's Apprentice podcast, the first 50 episodes of the Mary Janelle show were stories of my life which I actually did end up taking a big portion of those stories from my journal. I rewrote them and reworked them for the podcast and audio. But I got the inspiration from previous journals and without the previous journals I don't know if I could have totally done what I did. And so I've seen the value of having, like not getting rid of my writings.

Marijanel: 18:34

But morning pages are slightly different. If the way Julia Cameron suggests the morning pages is really just to get out even randomness that's on your mind that you wake up with and I can see how those could be tossed in the garbage because you're just sort of venting. I do a little bit of that venting in my conscious flow, journaling, but a lot of times I do have a good point to make, like I get to a point. I'm like you know, if there's anything like speaking of prompts and and how to get started, I love to give journal prompts and I love to give questions to ask yourself as you work through a particular challenge in your life. So, for example, if someone's particularly developing their intuition, I have a whole list of questions that they can ask themselves to begin to develop their intuition and pay attention to their, what their gut is telling them. That is, you know, a scenario of having good prompts and questions. But if you threw all prompts and questions aside, like you did, they just weren't available for you. There was never a resource out there. I feel like there's like four questions that you could ask yourself every single day to get started, and two of them are actually repeats.

Marijanel: 19:57

So the thing, and I asked myself, what is it like when I sit down and I open that journal? Because I have no hold back. I've been doing this for 35 years. It's part of my life. Like you said, you make your cup of tea, you sit down, a journal, I make my cup of coffee and I sit down with my cat, actually, and I begin to journal and I will just open it and there's no hold backs. And so I've been starting to think through the hold backs that other people are having and that they don't know what to write. And I asked myself, mary Janelle, what is it you're asking yourself to start Like to that second that the ink hits the page? What have you done there that could help someone else do it? And I realized it's the first thing that I start to write is what's happening, like it's just what's happening in my life in that moment, or in my brain in that moment, or what I'm feeling. And that's the next question is what's happening and what am I feeling? Like what do I feel about what's happening? And somehow those two simple questions get me going and I just begin to write what's happening and what I'm feeling and what's happening, what I'm feeling. And then it leads me to what's happening and what am I going to do about it. So you know that, what am I going to do about it?

Marijanel: 21:14

I think is where we problem solve or we lead ourselves to a solution through journaling. And that's what I love about calling it. Journaling yourself whole is like you. You go through the feelings and they might be negative, they might be positive. They are going to be what they are. They are what they are and you go through them and then in the end, if you teach yourself to journal long enough, like to journal yourself through the process, not just to close the book and be like I have all these horrible feelings or I went through this horrible thing, but to actually push through the solution, your next part of the questions to yourself is going to be like what am I going to do about it?

Marijanel: 21:53

And that's, I think, crucial tool to journaling is giving yourself a solution, because we said earlier how the answers are in you.

Jackie Ranahan: 22:03

Yes, it's the one, the why and the how. Right. So what am I feeling? Why am I feeling? And then how? How am I going to get myself out of this?

Jackie Ranahan: 22:13

how am I going to move, move along. I love that having a way to just even starting with how I'm feeling. Today I have this really cool app that prompts me three times a day to say how I'm feeling, and it's a really neat sort of check in to say this is, this is how I'm feeling. I'm feeling, you know, mellow, I'm feeling relaxed, and you can sort of start to see, you can see what's the word. I'm looking for patterns in in sort of maybe week, week, days of the week, certain things and who I'm with, and and those kinds of things. So you can even use use those and going back to if, if writing is not an easy thing, just bullet, just do bullet points, just write bullet points and start with that. Writing will come. You don't have to. There's nobody marking you. There's no, this is not an English assignment. There's nobody marking you. So if writing and writing is difficult, then just make it simple for yourself.

Marijanel: 23:19

Yeah, ask yourself what can I do to achieve this? Because a lot of people and achieve might be the wrong word, because that sounds like we're getting marked or getting graded. It's not an achievement. But what can I do to be successful at getting my pen into the journal and writing? What can I do to do that? It's as simple as like solving that for you, like asking yourself what's holding me back and what can I do about it. And because a lot of people desire that practice. They really do want to record their thoughts and feelings and work through things in this way.

Marijanel: 23:54

We live in a very such a distracted time of life where we spend so much time on devices, there's so much media and information. I think it's harder to journal than ever before. When I started the practice and I was a teenager, I don't even think emailing was a thing. There wasn't. You know there wasn't. There were computers in the computer lab in the schools, like that's it. We didn't have them at home and we had telephones on a cord. You know that the whole family had to share and it was a party line you know so it was different.

Marijanel: 24:29

My journaling really was maybe my only way of really expression and communication with myself. It was like a lifeline to me. But I discovered that young, at a time when there was less distractions, and I guess now I I think that there's still a way to preserve and hold on to the beauty of that for this current generation, that the kids, the young people, the teens, the young adults could still have this. Like you, you take your device, you set it aside, put it on silent and just decide to be with yourself for that period of time and make the effort to quiet yourself from all that clutter and noise and see what happens. And even if you have to set a timer for 10 minutes, if it's like super hard for you and you have like attention challenges and you just say, okay, I can do this for five minutes so quiet the house. Or go to a corner, go to your walk-in closet and close the door and sit down with your journal and be like I'm here for five minutes. So this, this relates, but it's a little bit different.

Marijanel: 25:40

I watched the interview with Seinfeld, who I Jerry Seinfeld I highly respect because of his discipline.

Marijanel: 25:47

Not only is he hilarious, but he has a discipline and extreme laser focus through his career and he had a rule for himself that when it was his time to write because a big part of being a comedian is just writing and writing down everything that interests you and then finding funny ways to frame it and he had a rule for himself that when it was time to write, he would set aside the writing time, like set aside the environment that he needed to write, and his rule was that he didn't have to write but he wasn't allowed to do anything else.

Marijanel: 26:23

So he could sit there and stare at the page and that was okay for the entire writing time, but he wasn't allowed to do something else. And I think about that in terms of our journaling practice, that if you were to give yourself five, ten, fifteen minutes where you know it's time to do this and you need to focus, well, it's okay if you don't write in that journal but don't do anything else. Just be with it, just be with yourself, and then that pen might start to move and the feelings might start to come out.

Jackie Ranahan: 26:54

Right, it's that accountability. So it's creating whatever works for you. That that's sort of accountability. Um, during COVID I, I signed on to a.

Jackie Ranahan: 27:06

It was a really interesting I don't know what it whether you call it a program or I think there were often on maybe 20 people that signed up. You would sign on at a specific time of day. People were all over the world. You'd sign on a specific time of day um to write and. But so everybody was on a zoom call and everybody was on the screen. There was a couple of little prompts and little hi, how are you? At the beginning. But then they set a timer.

Jackie Ranahan: 27:36

The, the person who managed it, set a timer and everybody just wrote, didn't talk, didn't we? Just all wrote. So it was really interesting because you had a whole bunch of people. You'd look up every once in a while and everybody had their heads down and we're writing things, and you'd look up again. But it was at accountability because it was I. I have set aside an hour to do this. All these other people are doing this at the same time that I'm doing it and you could write anything. So you could do, you could write your journal if you wanted to at that period of time.

Marijanel: 28:06

I love that. I love that. I want to provide that in my community.

Jackie Ranahan: 28:09

That's pretty cool. That would be fun, wouldn't it?

Marijanel: 28:11

Yeah, absolutely so, jackie, in leaving everyone off today with this inspiration. First of all, thank you for this rich, insightful talk about journaling and for being available to have this conversation with me. Could you let everyone know how to find you and what you offer, and some parting words today?

Jackie Ranahan: 28:34

How to find me. So my website is Jackie. I'm sure you'll have this in the show.

Marijanel: 28:39

The links will be below.

Jackie Ranahan: 28:41

Yeah, perfect, jackie ran a handcom is my website. So I am a coach. I'm a personal coach, one on one. Typically I do a blocks of six sessions and we just get people unstuck by getting to know yourself, by refocusing on who you are, what is that, what is the unique thing that you are bringing to the world? And we focus on that by looking at your strengths, what are the things that you bring? So it reframes where you are at in that specific time and then, through a series of tools that I've created over six sessions, we get you unstuck, we get you to that next step.

Jackie Ranahan: 29:24

So it might be starting a business, it might be something that's something in your personal life, it might be you're trying to advance your career, it could be lots of different things. So that's the one hat that I wear as a personal coach. The other hat that I wear is I'm also an artist. I have one of my paintings in here behind me and again, that's how you and I somewhat connected unbeknownst to you, but how you and I somewhat connected at first with over your other podcasts. And so if you go on my website, there's also a link to my artist page there, and I'm also on Instagram at JackieRanahanartist. Or.

Marijanel: 30:05

JackieRanahan and parting words. To leave all of these? Either avid journalers who love just listening to other journalers talk, or someone who's listening today, who's thinking. I want to give that a try because it sounds really beneficial. What would you want to leave us with today?

Jackie Ranahan: 30:21

Just try it. Just give yourself space. Tell yourself that you're going to do it. They usually say if you do it for a month, 30 days, it becomes a habit. Give yourself the space to do it and start off slow Again, remember I had said just a while back that mine was initially a quarter of a page. Just start off slow and let it evolve. Give yourself that space.

Marijanel: 30:50

So, so good. Thank you, jackie. For all of you who are tuning into YouTube, I'd love it if you hit the subscribe bell like give it all the love so that this show can be found on audio apps. Leave a review, hit the stars and give this podcast a little bit of love and share it around. So appreciate it. You know where to find me. All my links are below. Thank you, Jackie, for being a guest today. All of Jackie's links are below as well, and until next time, keep on in the full potential of you.