The Power of a Question

“She hears voices.”

“He talks to himself.”

Until recent years such observations conveyed suspicion of ... insanity! Or maybe the dazzling brilliance of an eccentric genius. Few people want to be thought of as the first or qualify for the second. Could that be why so few people know about this powerful journaling technique?

Posing questions in your journal and then writing down the answers may be the single most powerful tool available for insight, healing and problem-solving. The more you use it, the stronger it grows. This technique is recommended by all leading journal experts for developing insight, solving problems, enhancing creativity and more. Let’s take a quick look at a few Power Questions and how to use them. Later posts will explore specific questions in more depth.

The first step of the simple process is to describe a troubling or puzzling situation, then follow it up with a question like one of these:

What can I learn from this?

An ideal question to pose after recording anger, hurt or fear arousing incidents and events.

Is this true?

This simple question is an offshoot of The Work of Byron Katie. Whether you are writing or obsessing, it’s a great way to break your chain of blame and negativity. It’s also a way to protect yourself from overoptimism.

What would (insert name) say about this?

Some variation of this question opens the door to understanding other points of view that may provide the key to resolving differences, or removing thorns from sticky situations.

What would I rather be doing? 

What gives me the most pleasure? 

What’s my payoff for continuing down this path?

How do I really feel about this?

The more often you pose questions to yourself, the more easily they will come to you. The second step is to start writing answers without any conscious effort to find them. Set your Inner Critic aside and just write. Let the words flow. You may be surprised at some of the answers that appear on the page. Don’t settle for the first answer that pops out of your pen. There may be many, and the most productive may lurk at the bottom of the bottle.

Where do these answers come from? Some say the creative subconscious. Others may claim they come from Spirit in whatever form you understand it. Maybe imply The Universe. Who cares? They work. Do yourself a favor and give them a try.

Write now: briefly describe a puzzling or emotionally draining situation. Begin a new paragraph with the question, “What can I learn from this?” Spend at least five minutes freewriting answers without conscious thought on your part. Read the answers and continue to drill down with more questions about juicy answers. Finish with a simple “Thank you.”

Photo: Wikimedia

Blowing off the Dust

When I saw this picture in a viral PowerPoint going around the email universe, it was love at first sight. Perhaps that's partly because I just returned from a couple of weeks of studying colonial New England history and it came alive for me in ways I'd never expected. My world became larger when I “blew off the dust” from pages of history I'd never explored.

In this picture I also see the potential for my own volumes of writing to be stored away on a shelf (physical or virtual) for decades — maybe a century or longer. This picture gives me hope that at some point, someone will blow the dust off those words and they will enrich the future just as olden stories enrich my life today.

Who knows? I write primarily for my own enjoyment and edification, and then for the enlightenment and entertainment of family. Should future generations derive unexpected value, so much the better!

Write now: explore some old pages. If you are fortunate enough to have family history documents, take a look at those. Pull out old letters. If you don't have such documents at home, check out biographies or historical accounts of bygone days and listen closely to the messages those old words hold for you today. Write an essay or story about your reaction.

It's All in How You Look at Things

Old woman or young girl?

You know how sometimes the same information keeps coming at you from all sides? The classic illusion puzzle illustrated above has taken over my life lately. It began as I wrote in my journal yesterday morning and realized that I could look at a situation from 180º around for a point of view my  more to my liking, then I could clearly see both points of view. "It's all in how I look at things," I wrote.

That reminded me of another favorite illusion, and rather than finding it elsewhere, I made my own. Notice how the bars and word look shaded? Click the image for proof they're not. 

Click and wait 4 seconds for alternate view

Within the next twenty-four hours, I noticed references to this sort of reframing several places. Unfortunately, the notes I made on the sources were mental, and like most great story ideas that aren’t written down, they vanished. (Note to self: write things down!) One was in a book I read. Another was in a blog, and the third in an email newsletter. I even found a link to a webpage with some amazing illusions, and video explanations. You can explore it on your own.

The relevance for us is that things are not always as they seem, and in many ways, everything we see is an illusion. We can often choose how to view it, and these choices can lead to inner peace and healed relationships. That isn’t always easy, and sometimes assistance like you’ll find on the Yoism website is the only way you’ll be able to make the shift.

Here are a few tips to use while you write in your journal or ponder a knotty question in a story. Look at a specific aspect of a situation and ask:

• “Is this true?”
• “How else could I explain things?”
• “What is the hidden gift here?”
• “How might (the other person) see this situation?”
• “What can I learn from this?”

In each case, write your answers down. Don’t be disappointed if you don’t experience an immediate shift in outlook or attitude. You may need more data or practice at alternate view and explanations. Whatever the case, you’ll get some great mind exercise and keep your mental muscles limber and lithe. You may find this exercise is a lot of fun, and even humorous. It may yield a story idea or few. You may feel more creative as a result. You may even become a more forgiving, grateful and accepting person.

Write now: if you’ve ever had a dramatic reversal of attitude write a story or essay about that event. If you haven’t think of a puzzling situation and use freewriting or your journal to practice looking at it from different angles, using one or more of the questions on the list above.

Lifting the Clouds of Depression

“Lifting the cloud of depression is one of the documented benefits of expressive writing, aka life writing, especially in the form of journaling, rants or freewriting.”

I got sidetracked after I wrote that sentence and before I sat back down to finish this blog post, I checked my e-mail. There I found the latest edition of Amber Starfire’s stellar Journaling Through Life Ezine. The first sentence in her feature article reads, “A recent article on health said that feelings of helplessness and lack of control are significant factors contributing to depression, particularly for women.” Well, hey! You know the saying, “Great minds run in the same channels.”

Back in the ‘70s when I was a psychology grad student, Locus of Control was all the rage, and research papers and theses (including mine) in psychology departments all over the country incorporated Rotter’s Locus of Control Inventory. A strong correlation was found between a strong external locus of control and depression.

Translated to Plain People Language, that means that the less control you perceive yourself to have over your own life, the more likely you are to become depressed.

Back in the day, I scored high on internal locus of control. I just found a self-scoring version on the University of North Carolina’s psychology department site. I don’t recall finding the test irritating thirty years ago, but today my preferred answer would be “neither one” for most questions, rendering my score personally meaningless. My path to that change of perspective could make a excellent personal essay topic.

In spite of being out of sync with questions on that scale today, I still subscribe to the message of Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning that others can control every circumstance of our lives, but they cannot control our attitude. To me, that’s the ultimate in Internal Locus of Control. To date, the most powerful tool I’ve found for maintaining attitude control is “root writing”, a term I introduced in my Tree of Life Writing post.

By root writing I mean rants, freewriting about puzzling situations, and journaling in general — personal writing best done “underground” and left unshared. This writing helps synchronize head and heart and maintain that sense of personal control.

Which brings us back around to the well-documented value of expressive writing for lifting the cloud of depression. Or maybe keeping it from settling in to begin with. There’s nothing like a good session with my journal for maintaining serenity and optimism.

Write now: click over and take the Locus of Control Inventory, then journal or freewrite about the thoughts you have about your score. If you are subject to depression, try using James Pennebaker’s formula for exploring some of the “out-of-control” circumstances that may be contributing factors.

The Tree of Life Writing

The Tree of Life Writing  

Since a picture is worth 1000 words, the picture above should represent about three blog posts worth of insight. I first recognized the interrelationships among the various aspects of life writing over a year ago and included a simpler graphic with a post, The Life Writing Progression, on July 5, 2009.

Sarabelle gifted me with this picture last month while I was preparing material for my Writing for the Health of It class. I’d been thinking about the core Story (capital S) that defines us, and how everything we write grows out of that Story and expresses aspects of it. I was considering how some of our writing is deeply personal and earthy, best left out of sight and unshared. That root writing leads to insight and imparts power to our words and voice as we write publicly visible stories and essays.

When I began pondering the role of memoir in tying together the loose ends of life, and recalled that memoir is composed of the brush strokes of smaller stories, Sarabelle whispered, “You're thinking of a tree.” Sure enough, the image of a tree came clearly to mind. After I studied it a few minutes, she whispered again, "Now, draw it." That advice seemed a bit odd since I don't pretend to be an artist. But I began doodling.

One more element appeared as I worked on the picture. I had not realized that the soil the tree grows in also plays a role. That soil is composed of memories. Our root writing draws nutrients from raw memory, converting them to the empowering energy required for the tree to grow, forming branches and leaves above ground and more roots below.

The longer I think about this tree and the organic wholeness of the life writing process, the more excited I get. We grow individually by writing about our own lives, and we grow collectively as we share stories and provide safe spaces for affirming and supporting each other. As the seasons change and the tree matures, its leaves compost into the soil of memory for future generations, helping life go on.

So there you have it — the Tree of Life Writing. Ponder it and let it speak directly to you as it has to me.

Write now: do some writing practice on the way your life writing fits into this tree concept. Are you limiting it to certain forms? Would your writing and your life benefit from branching out into other forms? Try a form you haven’t explored lately or at all.

1000 Ways to Describe a Feeling

Would you believe there are more than 1000 words and phrases to describe feelings. 1000? That's right. And most are single words. I've compiled a list of that many. The list does not include any metaphors, and undoubtedly there are at least another hundred words not there.

The list has history. It began in June 2007 when I read a blog post that prompted me to ask people to send me lists of emotion labels. Results poured in as friends and readers submitted lists with hundreds of words and phrases. It took a bit of doing to compile them all and eliminate the duplicates. I was fascinated to see how little overlap there was among the various lists. I've since had several classes make lists as an exercise, and the master list continued to grow. Now that it has reached the 1000 mark, it's ready for public consumption. If you think of any words not listed there, please send them to me so it can continue to grow!

You may wonder why it matters to know all these words. Generally speaking, it doesn't. But it's an amazing thing to read over this list and realize the infinite variability of both the English language and our ability to experience nuances of emotion. Reading the list will surely heighten awareness of your internal state, and that's a good thing. Research has shown that labeling emotion calms the brain and helps the stories form that make sense of our experience.

Increased awareness of emotional state will also give you more response options, widen your perspective, and prompt greater levels of personal insight.

As icing on the cake, all those extra words will make you a stronger writer by adding variety and precision to your stories and depth to your perception.

Who can afford to ignore this list? Right-click this link to download the file.

Write now: write a story about an emotional event and use several new words to describe your feelings in exquisite detail.