A biweekly newsletter for dreamers, builders and creators to achieve (get things done), heal (fix what’s broken) and discover (learn something new). I am a licensed clinician, purposefully provoking security in others.
Dear Diary, Be My Therapist- AHD Issue #18
Achieve, Heal and Discover Issue #18
A biweekly newsletter for dreamers, builders and creators to achieve (get things done), heal (fix what’s broken) and discover (learn something new).
In the absence of a therapist, your journal can do the work.
Therapy surfaces unspoken and unresolved issues with precision, it leads you towards insights that give you a pathway forward.
Metacognition or the ability to think about thinking is the fundamental skill that makes therapy possible. Introspection and self reflection are gifts. Therapists use it to heal you and you can as well through journaling.
This issue will cover:
How to start journaling and never stop (Achieve)
Storytelling + Journaling to Heal Your Soul (Heal)
Cheat Sheet to Journaling Approaches (Discover)
Achieve (Get things Done)
How to start journaling and never stop
Here are 2 principles that keep me going and 2 hacks that keep me interested:
Principles
- Thinking of problems over and over again is poison to your wellbeing. Write them out! Humans are not good at solving problems internally, we have to externalize problems to manipulate them into solutions.
- Don’t try, just show up. Sometimes we overthink journaling. All you have to do is show up and let it flow. Journaling automatically creates beneficial outcomes through a clearer mind, better insights and mental rest. All just from showing up.
Hacks
- Habit Stacking is a habit forming approach that focuses on pairing a new habit with a current habit. Tie journaling to something you already do each day. My cue is opening my computer at the beginning of the day which automatically cues me to open my journaling app.
- Networked Thinking makes journaling feel less wasteful and more productive. Note taking apps like Roam Research, Obsidian or RemNote allow you to tag words in your journal that you can refer back to at any time. For example, if I found myself upset with my #wife and entered it in my journal. All I have to do is click on the “#wife” and my journal will pull up every past entry that proves my wife is an angel and that I am probably at fault.
Heal (Fix What’s Broken)
Storytelling + Journaling to Heal Your Soul
Many great stories use the Three-Act Structure, which creates a natural cadence of swelling chaos that flows to calm resolution.
It goes like this:
Act 1- The character wants something
Act 2- The character faces conflict
Act 3- The character overcomes
Throughout my years of taking hundreds of people through a therapeutic process this story arch looks very similar.
I am currently combining therapeutic modalities like Narrative therapy, EMDR and Cognitive Behavioral therapy AND Three-Act Structure to create a course on helping creatives make journaling productive and create some core soul healing.
Here are the bullet points from the lesson:
Act 1
1. Vomit into your journal. Write raw emotions/thoughts into your journal. This stage requires purposeful disorganization
2. Find the hero. You are the hero here. What do you really want? There is a version of you that wants to live outside of the chaos that you just described.
Act 2
3. Rip it into pieces. Who told you what you think is actually the truth? It is time to look at where your definitions come from. Isolate the way history, culture, society, relationships have imprinted their definitions on how you perceive the problem in your story.
4. Find treasure in the rubble. You may come across new perspectives, insights and sobering truths. Save them!
Act 3
5. Embrace and Declare the new. Embrace the version of you that defies the definition of the problem. Declare and affirm how you will continue to defy the problem.
I'll be editing the course this week! Let me know if you are interested😃
Discover (Learn Something New)
Cheat Sheet to Journaling Approaches
There are many approaches to Journaling. You just have to find the best format for you. Here are a few approaches. Dive in and decide what is the best format for you.
Journal you heart out!
I’m grateful for you!
Edvardo Archer
P.S
Whenever you are ready, I created a course for you: Mood First Productivity: A System to Flow With Your Mood Into Productivity. It will help you build a system so your tasks and objectives can serve your mood and mental state. It's only 20 minutes. You can watch it along with any other course for free with your 30 day trial.
Check it out here: https://skl.sh/3QU9aNf
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Achieve, Heal and Discover
by Edvardo Archer
A biweekly newsletter for dreamers, builders and creators to achieve (get things done), heal (fix what’s broken) and discover (learn something new). I am a licensed clinician, purposefully provoking security in others.
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