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Journaling Prompt – How Do You Tackle Everyday Chores?

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

How Do You Tackle Everyday Chores? Divide and conquer

[Digital products used: Fonts: Impact, Porcelain, Arial Rounded; Digital Kits: Shimelle Laine’s: Long and winding road and Starburst solids.]

Everyday chores – everyone has them and every person handles them differently.

Some hire help (which is what I used to do while I was working as a lawyer).

Some ignore them altogether until reality knocks on their heads (Been there. Done that).

Some tend to their household chores as a second nature (This is Martha Stewart’s group, if you’re intrigued…).

Some approach their chores in a declaration of war – I am on that group and I have a very rigid policy on the subject matter: Divide & Conquer!

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How do you tackle your daily chores? Leave a comment and share your trusted methods.

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Journaling Prompt – New Year’s Resolutions Series – Step 2: Contemplate

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
New Year's Resolution
[Photo by: Keven Law]

I love making lists. I make a lot of lists. Perhaps too many lists. Okay, I make way too many list.

However, a list of resolutions isn’t like any other list. It’s a special list, thus requires a special process ensuring each and every item belongs there and is feasible.

Therefore I am posting this special “New Years Resolutions Series”, to provide a surefire system to compile a successful New Year resolutions list.

Step 1

Reminisce.

Step 2

In this week’s prompt we are going to reflect on the memories we have gathered last week and contemplate.

Go over your notes or list from last week and write down under each resolution or dream:

  1. What had helped you to meet your resolutions in the past/last year?
  2. What had prevented you from fulfilling your wishes in the past/last year?
  3. What do realized resolutions have in common?
  4. What do unsatisfied resolutions have in common?

As you reflect you may come up with some new understandings and self revelations – write them down as well.

Step 3

List.

Step 4

Choose.

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What new understandings and self revelations have you come up with? Share your process by leaving a comment on this post. I love to discuss prompts with you!

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Journaling Prompt – New Year’s Resolutions Series – Step 1: Reminisce

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
New Year's Resolution
[Photo by: Kat]

December means celebrations, holidays and elevated spirits but it also means the year’s end. If we plan in advance we are already thinking about next year’s resolutions.

Last year I posted a special New Year’s Resolutions Series on Creativity Prompt – offering three different ways to come up with your new year’s resolutions: the traditional way, the clairvoyant way and the action based way.

This year I am posting another series, concentrating on how to choose the best new year’s resolutions.

Step 1

The system includes 4 steps and the first step is to reminisce.

For this step you may go back in time as far as you wish. Either look solely at 2009 or look at the past 5 years, 10 years, 25 years or even look back at your childhood years.

Review your past year or years and take notes. Write down lesson learned, missions accomplished, dreams fulfilled, goals met, etc.

At this stage all you have to do is bring up memories. Don’t analyze. Certainly do not criticize. Don’t replicate goals. Just write down what you remember – resolution-wise – from years past.

Step 2

Contemplate.

Step 3

List.

Step 4

Choose.

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Are you a resolution person? Have you conformed to your past years’ resolutions? Share by leaving a comment on this post. I love discussions!

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Journaling Prompt – Concentrate Your Thanks Giving On One Person Or One Thing

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Concentrate Your Thanks Giving On One PersonI have a million things to be thankful for. My family. My friends. My health. My readers. My life style. My adventures. My education. My opportunities. My dream coming true. I have so many things to be grateful for that I don’t even know where to begin.

Each item I add to the list brings happiness and joy and warms my heart. Names come up and places I have been at. Delicatessens I have tried. Sweet memories.

The thing is that when I try to come up with a list so many things flood my brain and my heart at the same time. Smile after smile, and at times – some tears, accompany all the great things I appreciate having or having had in my life this year and in general.

It’s a good thing. Don’t get me wrong. I am GRATEFUL.

But I want to give each item on my list the attention it deserves. So no list for me this year. I am trying to concentrate on one thing I am most grateful for.

Without further ado, if you are with me on that, concentrate on one person or one thing you are most thankful for this year and write down why.

Nadav, my dear husband.

I love you so much. You have been the light of my life.

You make me laugh. Constantly. Even when I’m blue or sick – you can always crack me up.

You make me think. You make me rethink and then think some more. You make me try harder.

You make me aspire higher. You make me better.

You motivate and inspire me. You make me believe in myself and you remind me time an again of accomplishments I have long forgotten.

You make the day brighter and the night more magical. Thanks to you I wake up with a big smile every morning.

I am so happy to have you in my life, Nadavi.

This year I am most thankful to have you!

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Who or what are you most thankful for this year? Share your gratitude by leaving a comment on this post.

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Journaling Prompt – Give Thanks To A Complete Stranger

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
A Complete Stranger
[Photo by: Derrick Tyson]

A week before American Thanksgiving lets try to remember together the kind strangers in our lives and give them thanks.

Think about all the faceless people around you. People you have seen once, never before and probably never again.

Think about the person who stood before you inline and after one glance at your stressed expression, or nagging child, gave you his place in the queue.

Think about the person who made you smile while you were upset, without even knowing.

It doesn’t have to be a recent encounter, either. It can be a person you had stumbled upon long ago but you can still remember his random act of kindness or the lesson you have learned from him while your lives had briefly brushed against each other’s.

Now, open your journal and write.

Document your chance meeting and what you have gotten out of it. Write down how the stranger has enriched you, even if just momentarily and express your sincere gratitude.

Start a gratitude journal and register these random acts of kindness regularly. Don’t constrain your thanks giving to your near environment, remember the strangers in your life too.

After all, every one we come across makes a dent in our life, leaves an impression and these accumulated marks are part of what makes us ourselves.

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Which stranger would you like to thank and why, participate in the discussion by leaving a comment on this post.

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Journaling Prompt – Narrate An Inspiring Picture

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Beauty holds great powers. One of its super-powers is to break through blocks, including the writer’s block.

When you look at an inspiring picture, the beauty in it so vast, so powerful, words start to come up by themselves.

At first you can only identify a few single words, scattered in the wind of thought, but the longer you look at the picture, the more you can keep up with the flying words and identify more and more of the words and string them together into beautiful sentences, portraying everything you see and feel while looking at it.

For this week’s Journaling prompt I urge you to look at some amazingly inspiring pictures and follow the word flood.

You will be amazed with the results this technique yields.

Don’t stop at other people’s photos. Take a look at the latest pictures you’ve taken or at your favorite ones and start writing.

Narrate the beauty and transfer it into words.

You can write an entire scene – what you can see in the picture, what is the sequence of events that has brought such beauty and what will happen next…

Then…

Let me read it (please, please, please!)

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Please share your narrated beauty! I’m looking forward to read about your beauty in the comment section of this post.

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Journaling Prompt – How Can You Treat Yourself Better

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Mommy and IThis week’s journaling prompt is inspired by my mom, who read to me in confidence something she had written in a time of change.

Let me backtrack a little bit, tell you something about my mom and tie it all in with Monday’s inspiration prompt.

My mom used to be a teacher. She was the kind of teacher who gives part of her body and soul to her students. She used to teach in schools whose students came from a social economic background that did not leave much hope – but my mom had given hope to her students, who had won national writing contests with her guidance and encouragement.

After many years of teaching children, she was injured while guarding a kid at school with her own body. Using her human shield she took on a kick aimed at a kid that had ruptured her liver and could have killed the poor kid.

My mom, the fortress of comfort and safety, became sick. Her body weakened and after a few more years she was asked to retire for medical reasons (after repeatedly winning educational trophies – each and every year).

The early retirement (just a few years before she was at the legal retirement age) hurt her more than the kick and its medical repercussions has ever done. She lost her ray of light – helping children reach their full potential.

Little by little, year by year, she started withering in a way that had broken my heart. She stopped thinking about herself altogether and only lived for others. Only cared for others. Only breathed for others.

Just a week ago she called me and for the first time in a long time she looked genuinely happy. She said she has decided to take a step towards accepting herself and loving herself again and she is going to do that through writing and painting.

Then she read to me.

And I cried inside.

She wrote about how writing makes her feel.

And I wept. Inside.

I am so happy for her and wish her only the very best. Hopefully her new teacher will be as wonderful to her as my mom was to her students.

I want to spread my mom’s educational spirit and encourage you to take the time and list what are the things you can do for yourself, what activities can you engage in, that will make you feel better and love yourself.

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How can you treat yourself better? leave a comment below and share with me. I love hearing from you and I almost always reply.

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Journaling Prompt – Write About A Real Life Spooky Experience

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
A Real Life Spooky Experience
[Photo by: THOR]

Halloween is right around the corner (for those of you celebrating this holiday).

This holiday had started as a Celtic New Year ceremony and evolved along the years to a festival of the dead.

In north America houses are being meticulously decorated with spooky decorations and jack-o’-lanterns.

For a different spin on the traditional holiday journaling about “Trick-or-Treat” adventures, the evolution of a costume or transforming the house, try to foster the holiday spirit by registering a real life spooky experience you have once had.

  • Have you ever been through scary circumstances?
  • Has a scary looking person ever come across your way?
  • Have you ever stood up close to a scary animal?
  • Have you ever experienced a scary incident/event?
  • Have you ever had to do something scary?

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Have you had a real life spooky experience you’d like to share with us? Share by leaving a comment on this post.

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Journaling Prompt – Borrow An Opening

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Writing technique: Borrow An Opening
[Photo by: Eduardo]

The beginnings are the most difficult step in journaling (or any type of writing). Staring at a blank screen, a blank paper or an empty journaling tag can be very frustrating.

After the first sentence is drizzled onto the paper, the rest usually follow in a potent stream.

Having said that, the beginning is many times the most important part of our journaling. The opening words are like a welcoming committee, inviting the reader to keep on reading.

I have a great technique that solves the “opening-syndrome”.

Instead of desperately looking for the right words to come out, borrow the opening sentence from your favorite book, or the book currently on your nightstand, and go on from there.

To help you with this technique here is a list of the 100 best first lines of novels.

Now let see if you are up for a challenge – try to write a complete entry in your journal (or a short story, or journaling for a layout) using ONLY opening lines of other books.

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Have you tried this technique? Was it helpful for you?

Have you challenged yourself with the extreme version of this technique? I’d love to read it, so please share by replying to this post.

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Journaling Prompt – Let The Pictures Tell The Story And Your Words Set The Tone

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Let The Pictures Tell The Story

This series of photos I took a year ago conveys an entire story. The story of my niece trying to have it her way and disappointed at failing to do so. I was visiting home and wanted some alone time with my sister (her mother) and she wanted to keep her mom at seeing distance…

Any words will take a way from the story which the photos depict succinctly.

For this week’s journaling prompt try to accompany powerful photos with a series of powerful words that set the tone. No more. No less.

  • Don’t use whole sentences but rather single words.
  • Use adjectives.
  • Try to add a powerful verb.
  • Concentrate on the mood and setting of the story.

I would support the series of pictures above with the following words:

  • Negotiating.
  • Disappointed.
  • Hopeful.
  • Winning…

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Have you tried this journaling technique before? Do you feel less pressure when writing a bullet-point list? Share your thoughts by living a comment on this point.

To set off this technique share a list of words that describes your day today. I am looking forward to hear about your day!

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