Human Needs

We often consider actions taken to assure self-care as selfish. On the outside, we perceive this fatal character flaw in others who take care of themselves. Selfishness is after all, a bad and horrible thing. Only selfish people put themselves first. Only selfish people say ‘No’ to a friend.

There’s no argument here that selfish people put themselves first from time to time, or that the “selfish” characteristic can be ascribed to those who can say no. But why does selfish carry such a negative connotation? Human characteristics are only good or bad in accordance with how they’re perceived by the larger part of polite society.

It’s interesting to note that in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the needs of esteem and self-actualization come after the need for inclusion, and community. According to Abraham Maslow, his model for motivation shows a map of human endeavor from one goal to the next.

Once we’ve substantially met the needs of one step, we move on to the next, keeping in mind that if anything in the realm of security and physical needs fall, we fall back to reestablish those foundations (Maslow, 1954).

But why do the needs of the “self” come after our social needs?

Remember, we don’t have to completely fulfill each need to move on to the next, we only have to mostly fulfill each need. It’s almost like Esteem and Self-Actualization are desires more than needs, or at least that’s what it seems like for a lot of people.

We like our social structures, our significant others (SO’s), and being included. It becomes a measurement of how good a person is, and it mutes the feelings of loneliness- but only mutes.

Interpersonal and Intrapersonal

• Interpersonal relationships involve other people.
• Our Intrapersonal relationship is the relationship we each have with ourselves.

Yes, our social structures often come first in our needs, but we cannot sustain interpersonal relationships in a healthy way unless we each have a good intrapersonal relationship with our self. It’s just that simple.

Put another way, if you were to go a week without a shower or brushing your teeth and generally just don’t tend to basic hygiene, then your co-workers, your friends, and your family wills start to complain- possibly loudly. Personal hygiene affects the people around us so taking care of the self in this way is not only okay. It’s encouraged.

However, taking the time to focus on your intrapersonal relationship can be construed as selfish in the way selfish is defined as being focused only on the self (Websters II New Riverside University Dictionary, 1984). The negative inference here comes from the fact that selfish is marked by only being focused on the self.

So, let’s step away from the idea that some of the steps necessary to building a great relationship with yourself are negative or bad. Let’s look at the commitment to yourself that will be fundamental in this process.

Boredom and Loneliness

We seek out social structures and significant others because that community we’ve built for ourselves mutes the loneliness. Once we’re alone, though, that feeling of loneliness comes back doesn’t it? Or, because we’re bored, we fill our time with tasks, either physical or mental. Being bored and being alone are the two most difficult tasks any of us can do. But they’re necessary.

Recent studies have shown that being bored can be beneficial especially when we have a specific issue or problem nagging at our consciousness. The constant task of filling our time also fills our brains, and sometimes, it ends up feeling like a spam box.

When we take the time to allow ourselves to be bored, with nothing else to do, our brains have the ability to wander and daydream at will. This increases creativity, which can lead to helping with problem solving skills (Treanor, 2018).

In times of boredom, we also meet the one person we tend to neglect the most. We’re confronted with the possibility of loneliness because we’re alone. Loneliness is known to have many negative physiological and psychological effects but being alone doesn’t have to equal loneliness.

Learning to sit with yourself for a time, without the beat and rhythm of other people, and allowing yourself to be bored for just a moment every now and then allows you the access your need to get to know your inner-self: The person you most need a great relationship with. This is where you with a new commitment to create that awesome intrapersonal relationship you need so very badly.

The next question that undoubtedly popped into your mind is, “What do I do when I’m being bored?” or something to that effect right?

It feels like an odd question, but it’s a legitimate point. We’re creatures of purpose. Because of our sentience, we have the ability for abstract thought and actions beyond achieving a singular goal. So, when someone suggests boredom as a task, we often wonder how we can achieve this task as we would with anything else.

One thing you can do is to simply sit on your couch and try to forget everything on your to do list today, but that’s often easier said than done.

• One focus which works achieve that active boredom and purposeful aloneness is Mindful Meditation. Meditation is, by many, considered to be a practice that brings stillness to the mind. It’s been proven to have many beneficial psychological and physiological side effects like: Lowering blood pressure
• Regulating the heart rate
• Boosting the immune system
• Assisting in creative efforts
• and Improving breathing(Orson, 2018).

However, despite popular belief to the contrary meditation is not about reaching a state of nirvana where your mind becomes empty, and your thoughts become blank. We call that being unconscious.

Make no mistake; that doesn’t mean sleep. Even in REM states our brains are active. That’s why we dream. But, for some reason, this idea of emptying the mind where it’s a total blank has purveyed among popular opinion of meditation. Meditation is a practice that takes time to master.

People say that practice makes perfect right?

No. Perfect practice makes perfect.

You can practice meditation all you want with the goal of emptying your brain, but this will only lead to frustration when you can’t achieve this goal. Perfect practice implies practicing something the way it should be performed – this is why musicians practice scales and fundamentals over and over or practice a difficult piece in a beat and rhythm much slower than it’s intended to be played during a performance.

In this case specifically, perfect practice implies practicing Mindful Meditation with the purpose of being bored and alone for those few minutes.

The Mindfulness part of Mindful Meditation is the part where we meditate for the purpose of focusing on what’s going on physiologically. There is no bliss state in meditation, or other worldly experience. There is you, and your intrapersonal relationship.

The purpose of Mindful Meditation is to focus on being fully present, aware of your surroundings, what you’re doing, what your body is doing, and not be reactive to what’s going on around you (Chua, 2018).

During any type of meditation, we focus on breathing. This is because the purpose of meditation is the breath. Mindful Meditation is very simple and is important to understanding yourself when you’re bored and alone.

• Meditation is about self-exploration, not emptying your mind.
• You don’t become thought free and undistracted.
• Your mind will wonder which will open up unique and interesting doorways of thought and creativity.
• It’s about venturing into the interworking’s of your mind, and deeper personalities to explore yourself.
• It gives you the ability to focus more on external factors like a gust of wind, a certain smell emanating from somewhere else in the house.
• It’s about focusing on your emotions: what you hate, love, or want more of in your life.
• You will eventually develop the ability to spend this alone time without judgment so you can explore your own curiosity.

Researchers believe that the part of meditation that is so beneficial is the point when you realize that your mind has wondered. This creates a bit of cognitive awareness that can eventually lead to physical awareness (Chua, 2018) because you’re focusing on the fact that your mind has wondered, and your breath that will carry you back.

Building a great relationship with you is a long-term goal, and a life-long journey.

After all, you’re going to grow and change just like everybody else. Understanding your thought processes on a deeper level, which is helped by meditation, allows you to recognize those changes as they happen.

This part of developing that intrapersonal relationship also develops that commitment to you because establishing a habit of purpose driven boredom, alone time, and Mindful Meditation is a commitment in and of itself.

Your Story and Self-Talk

You’ve done it. We’ve all done it. You’ve been caught talking to yourself, and the person who caught you very likely looked at you like you’ve flown off your rocker.

First of all, talking to yourself is not a sign that you’re unhinged; as your peers or significant others may have made you feel in the past. On the contrary, a recent study has found that “relevant verbal instruction” is not only a sign of sanity; it’s a sign of good health.

Most of the time when we talk to ourselves, we’re bored, or we’re trying to achieve a specific task. This same study found that when its participants talked themselves through a task, their performance far outreached the performance of those individuals who were specifically instructed to remain silent, or who were prevented from having a conversation with themselves (Kirkham, Breeze, & Mari-Beffa, 2012).

There is one important factor for all of this that needs to be directly addressed: Self-talk needs to be positive and purposeful. The only way to take full advantage of this is to edit your internal voice. That voice that serves as your constant critic, and who tells you things like, “you’re just not good enough,” needs to take a long hike to the tall side of a cliff.

That probably feels rather rude, but seriously, that inner voice is a representation of your intrapersonal relationship as it currently stands. Your inner voice is your self-confidence, your motivation, and your company when you’re bored or alone.

Remember how earlier we established how detrimental loneliness is to the body and mind? This is because loneliness comes from a place of negativity, whereas the ability to be alone is a sign of a healthy intrapersonal relationship that is always being developed and worked on.

All of this said- some amount of feedback is important, but as Tim Grover said: “The only difference between feedback and criticism is how you hear it.” Any time we experience a hardship, we hear that inner voice yelling at us.

Both are a fact of life and a part of growth. However, it’s important to understand why your inner self is telling you something like, “you’re just a failure,” instead of, “get up, dust yourself off, and try again.”

With your significant others and social network, if someone tells you that you’re a screw up, you can’t control the words out of their mouth. Nor can you control their opinion of you in a realistically immediate way.

All you can really do is chose how you react, which we’ll get into in a moment. On the other hand, that voice- that part of you that you’re trying to develop a healthy and great relationship with- is something you do have complete control over, and that control is something you should exercise.

Mindful Meditation has been shown to enhance creativity and pathways for critical thought. Its purpose is to create and develop an awareness of the self; this includes biofeedback and self-talk.

When you spend time with yourself you start to realize when you’re talking to yourself, analyze what you’re saying, and recognize what you’re feeling. This awareness is the only path to beneficial and real change or growth. Once you realize how you’re talking to yourself, and how you make yourself feel, you can begin to edit your self-talk.

Your Story

We all have a story. We all have a past. For some of us, some parts of our stories are not so great. Many people have a past that includes neglect or abuse in some way. Others have a past that includes only happy memories, or some sort of confined trauma that affects us years later.

Regardless of what’s in your past, your past is your story. You can’t change it. At the time, you may not have been able to control it- even if you knew then what you know now. All you can do is take responsibility.

This doesn’t mean that you take the blame. Accepting blame and accepting responsibility are two completely different things even though they seem to be synonymous in our current society.

• Blame is to be held at fault
• Responsibility is something for which you are responsible.

These two words aren’t even synonyms.

• Blame: Criticism; Censure; Culpability; Guilt; Charge; Reproach; Condemn(Morehead, 2001)
• Responsibility: Duty(Websters II New Riverside University Dictionary, 1984)

Accepting responsibility for how you react to others, situations outside of your control, and how your story affects your everyday life means deciding for yourself the kind of person you want to be.

It means recognizing your emotions when your inner self tells you that you’re no good and deciding that part of your intrapersonal relationship just isn’t healthy and needs to be re-focused. It means hearing someone call you a name and consciously deciding how to react. It means editing your story and self-talk in a way that is beneficial and healthy.

Editing your story should never include lying to yourself or changing the view of events from reality to fantasy. It means accepting what has happened to you or for you and deciding for yourself how that is going to impact your life and intrapersonal relationship.

Forgiveness

Another factor in editing your story and self-talk is forgiveness. It sounds a little cliché, but the truth will always remain constant no matter how much we hate hearing it. The fact of the matter is that if you have a hard time spending time alone, accepting boredom, or focusing on Mindful Meditation, it’s time to ask yourself if you’ve accepted responsibility to the point of blaming yourself for something.

We all do it. Whether it’s a dog that was abducted over Thanksgiving break when the family was out of town, a lost loved one, hateful last words, or an accident that resulted in an injury, constant and un-ending punishment is not healthy.

People say, “Forgive and Forget,” but that’s not healthy either. Choosing to forget does not necessarily mean you’ve forgiven yourself. It only means you’ve edited your story in an unhealthy way and substituted reality for fantasy. There is something like this in everyone’s life. We all have it.

The difference for some is that healthy individuals who have a great relationship with themselves are able to forgive themselves. They’re also able to forgive others. Forgiveness does not mean something wasn’t your fault. It just means that, for yourself, you’ve come to a point where you can forgive.

It’s important to remember that forgiveness is always about you. When it involves you forgiving another person, it’s still about you because it’s ultimately for you. Forgiving another for something horrific does not mean you’ve absolved them of their culpability or crime, nor does it always repair a broken relationship.

That’s not the purpose of forgiveness. Its purpose is to allow you to move on with your life in a healthy manner where your story and self-talk are positives instead of negatives.

Burying hurt or damaged feelings is never healthy, neither is ignoring them. This is why forgiveness is so important. It’s also important to accept reality, feel uncomfortable emotions, and let go when necessary.

There is a vast difference between burying negative emotions, ignoring them, and letting go. By accepting reality, you can recognize when you’re taking part in maladaptive behavior like burying or ignoring emotions rather than recognizing them and letting them go. False forgiveness only leads to animosity, and it hurts your interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships.

The Company You Keep

Once you’ve reached this point you should be able to cultivate your interpersonal relationships and cull the negative and toxic relationships.

Yea, that sounds really harsh, but up to this point, you’ve read about being bored, participating in Mindful Meditation, accepting responsibility, editing your self-talk, and being kind to yourself. But, none of that will do any good if your social needs aren’t balanced. Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy? This is the time when you evaluate your social network, and significant others (SO) matrix.

Consider, for a moment, that you are a person with a specific circle of friends. Yet, none of those friends share your interests. If your circle of friends is into going out to the bar every Friday night, or to Karaoke night every week, but you’re interested in getting up at sunrise to start a 4-day hike across the Ozark Highlands Trail, or the Pine Ridge Mountain Range; you know- for fun, then your interests and the interests of your social circle likely aren’t balanced.

It’s okay to have friends whose interests vary significantly from yours, but your social network must include people whose interests mirror yours in some capacity. A social network is meant to provide balance. That’s what we seek in Maslow’s Hierarchy.

We all need community and to be included. To that point of inclusion, if you have friends who have a significantly negative impact on your life, it may be time to re-evaluate those relationships. Re-evaluating a relationship does not necessarily mean culling the relationship.

Sometimes, for a primary or secondary relationship that has a negative effect on your life, all you need is to figure out why that relationship is so negative and address the issue. Other times, however, if the relationship – or the presence of the individual- has become toxic and is beyond repair, it’s time to cut ties and move on.

This is often difficult with primary relationships that have a familial bond component. But, it’s sometimes necessary, and it’s important to hone the skill sets you need to recognize this, and to recover from the loss. Even if a relationship is toxic, and is hurting you in an unmeasurable way, culling the relationship will be a loss that you will need to mourn should you decide to.

Sometimes, in our SO matrix, we have people who are tertiary relationships but with whom we have a very positive relationship. When this happens, it may be beneficial to cultivate that relationship into a primary or secondary relationship or friendship.

The company you keep will have a huge impact on how well you can meet your needs for esteem and self-actualization. You’ll want to surround yourself with people who are genuinely trying to achieve the same in their lives.

There is strength in numbers, and when one of you falters by negative self-talk, the rest of you are there to call them out and address the problem as a group. If you surround yourself with people who are constantly negative, their bad habits are going to eventually wear off, and wear you down.

Unfortunately, there are people in our lives who we love, and who we cannot discard, but who are pathologically negative. When this happens, and it will happen, you’ll need to find a way to balance that relationship with your other relationships, and with your intrapersonal relationship.

Remember, friends don’t come by the hundreds. Love, though a renewable and infinite resource, does not just pour in from nowhere. Your true friends and loved ones are people with whom you feel safe, can be yourself, and make you feel empowered and supported (Kassianos, 2018).

You find your friends through shared experiences just as you grow with your family from your shared experiences. This is no different when you commit to yourself and develop a great personal relationship with you. After all, with all of your friends and loved ones on your SO matrix, you are the only one who is there for everything.

Your personal growth is dependent on your intrapersonal relationship. Your growth within, and maintenance of, your interpersonal relationships with your significant others is also highly dependent on having a great personal relationship with yourself. They’re interconnected and cannot be cut from each other.

Be Alone with Yourself without Loneliness

It would be easier to take a short-cut and chart out a simple info-graph about how to develop a great intrapersonal relationship and to commit to yourself.

There are literally dozens to hundreds of ideas and tasks that can be assigned in developing a healthy and great relationship with you and focusing on that commitment; and they’re all great ideas.

• Go for a walk
• Focus on self-love
• Laugh often
• Develop a routine of affirmation
• Start a gratitude list
• Pick up a new hobby that will bring you joy
• Take yourself on a date

However, none of them will do you any good until you can be alone with yourself without that negative connotation of loneliness in your life.

An awe-walk is a way to contact your inner child and bring that person out for a visit. You can go to a park you haven’t been to in a while or take a ride on a roller coaster. The basic idea is to spend time alone and look for something that activates your sense of wonder.

There isn’t much that’s more exhilarating than happening upon a nest of ducklings as one begins to hatch or reach the top of Birch Knob tower on a clear day with a blue sky and a high sun when the Pine Ridge Mountain Range has reached its peak color during fall.

But if you don’t like the person, you’re with- yourself- you’re not going to get much joy from it. This is something you do when you’ve reached a point where you like yourself and can be alone without necessarily being lonely.

Even the healthiest people with the best intrapersonal relationships get lonely when they’re alone, and when they’re with their social network. Loneliness happens because we want to share a part of ourselves with others. It’s a part of growth.

The key point here is being able to do something like an awe walk without always needing the rhythm of someone else’s heartbeat. The scenario posited here is fantastic to share, but it should also be fantastic to experience alone. The same concept applies when you take yourself on a date.

Focusing on self-love is another amazing idea. It’s a great task to explore while you’re working on Mindful Meditation, but this is not a standalone task. In one way or another, this is something that is incorporated with other tasks by nature.

Remember how self-talk is healthy, but only if it’s positive? This is one area to address in self-talk, when editing your story, taking responsibility, and learning to forgive. The same concept applies when you find that you need to laugh more, when you work on that gratitude list, or routine of affirmation.

All of these smaller components would fit nicely together on a beautifully designed and well-thought out graph that’s easy to look at with one glancing pass. But they are all part of a larger and more detailed image. It’s like comparing a fact sheet to a Picasso.

Definitely focus on self-love, affirmation, what you’re grateful for, etc. Go on those awe-walks because you never know what you may find. Take yourself on a date. Do all of this in your commitment to yourself but do these things as part of developing your mindfulness, perfecting meditation, editing your self-talk and story, learning to forgive, and understanding your SO matrix because that is how you begin to develop a great relationship with yourself.

Once you get to a point where you can do this with some level of routine, and comfort, it’s time to continue keep doing what works; to continue perfecting your techniques as you emerge a better person with stronger interpersonal relationships because you’ve committed to yourself and you’ve built a great relationship with you.

Journaling is one of those activities that most people have the basic grasp of, but until they start doing, have no idea what type of benefits they actually get from it.

It used to be that journaling was compared to writing in a diary, and in many ways, that is still the case. You use the journal to write out your thoughts and feelings, write about your dreams, discuss your goals and life aspirations. You can also talk about things you are struggling with and what you are trying to work through in order to get a little more clarity.

It is almost impossible to list all the many ways journaling benefits your life. From using it for self-care and clarity, to de-stressing and easing your anxiety, it truly is a wonderful tool that everyone should be using.

Another way that journaling can benefit you is by helping with your creative side. Whether you are an artist or writer, someone who likes creative activities like different hobbies, or you want to be more creative in your everyday life, it is going to help you.

Keep reading to learn about how the simple act of writing in a journal every day helps you be the most creative version of yourself.

1 – How Journaling Helps with Creativity

Let’s start with the basics – which is why and how journaling can actually help with your creativity. Keep in mind this is not just for artists and writers, but all types of creative people, and people who don’t feel creative and want to explore that part of themselves more.

Here are just some of the ways journaling can help, but really this list could be miles longer. Starting journaling yourself is the best way to see all the many ways it can help you.

You Unleash What is Holding You Back

One of the first things you might notice when you start journaling, is that a lot of things come up you haven’t thought about before, or at least not in a while. This is where that magical “clarity” and “self awareness” comes in. These are two things that people discuss often in terms of how journaling has helped them.

The trick here is to be 100 percent honest when you journal. If you are concerned someone will find it and read your inner feelings, then keep it safe! Make your journal private. Don’t let anyone see what you write, and if you fear they might get curious, never write in it when other people are around. That way they have no idea you are using it.

By being honest with yourself, you tap into what has been holding you back and what you might be hiding even from yourself. This is what people are talking about when they say clarity. The mind and subconscious are powerful things, and often times you have thoughts and ideals far back in your subconscious that need a little coaxing.

These thoughts are shy and might take a little convincing, but once you start journaling to reveal them, something magical happens. You not only understand yourself a little more, but you discover what was holding you back in a creative capacity.

When you get to know yourself more and who you really are, you discover your inner creative soul and are able to express that much more freely.

You Can Sketch in Your Journal

Aside from just writing in your journal, keep in mind that you can also use it for creating the art itself. If you are an artist or want to be more artistic in your creative endeavors, use your journal! You can start creating different types of sketches on full pages of the journal, or just to describe what you are talking about.

Drawing in the journal provides additional advantages as well. When you are writing about something complicated, and find it easier to sketch your feelings instead of put them into words, journaling is great for that.

It can also help you to explore different emotions through your sketches, by seeing what direction your art goes under different circumstances. You can also use different types of art medium and materials to express yourself even further.

Ideas Come to Life with Journaling

Another amazing benefit of journaling for your creativity, which we will explore more in a later section, is that your ideas often come to life. You can explore them, get them out on paper, and either write or sketch them out.

It is not uncommon for your brain to be filled with different ideas, but with no real way to express them, they either pile up, or you end up forgetting about many of them.

Don’t let this happen! Start using your journal to write down every single idea you have, creative or non-creative, and you will be surprised by how much you can actually flesh out these ideas. They soon become something and you are able to let your creative nature explore even more.

It Becomes a Part of Who You Are

Journaling and creativity truly go hand in hand, and they just become a part of you. You put your heart and soul into journaling in the same way you do any creative endeavor. You become someone that is more free with their feelings, isn’t afraid to hide their emotions, and has found a new and healthy way to express themselves.

Clarity Often Precedes Creativity

As mentioned previously, journaling can bring you a lot of clarity. When you have more clarity and self-awareness, you know a lot more about yourself and what motivates you. This in turn can help to promote more creativity.

This process is gradual, so don’t expect a miraculous change overnight. However, the more you journal and really get to know yourself, the more you will see what motivates you to succeed, and where your inspirations for being more creative come from.

Maybe you understand when and why you like to write, and what you want to create with art or other creative aspirations. This can also help when you need to be more creative in your job, no matter what that job is. Or if you just want to boost your creativity in your everyday life.

2 – Try a Brain Dump of Ideas

Ah, the brain dump. There are few things that are more beneficial to anyone, especially those who crave some more creativity in their life, and a little less chaos. Here is what the brain dump is all about.

About Brain Dumps

It is exactly how it sounds – you are dumping all those thoughts in your brain, onto paper. This serves a few purposes. First of all, it helps to get through all the overwhelming chaos of multiple thoughts that often happens. This happens to everyone, but tends to be worse with people who have busy lives and demanding jobs.

Another benefit of the brain dump is that it can help you come up with ideas you didn’t know you had. This is really useful if you want to be more creative and give yourself time and freedom to be creative.

How to Do a Brain Dump

The simplest way is to just start writing down your thoughts in your journal. You can start anywhere, but typically once pen hits paper, you already know what direction you want to go. Don’t think about it too much; just keep writing until you feel relaxed. You will notice the moment when you have gotten all the most important or worrisome thoughts out. It feels like you can take a deep breath again.

Organizing Your Thoughts

If you are like most people, the thoughts will be extremely scattered, one bouncing off another. This is when you want to take your thoughts and start organizing them to try and make more sense of them. Take your journal entry and make notes or re-write some of them on other pages if you are using categories. This will of course depend on
what you have written down.

Now What?

This is not something you necessarily need to do anything with. Sometimes, you will come up with ideas or even have a creative spark during a brain dump that inspires you to start a new project. Other times, it is just done to clear your head so you can focus on other things.

Try to do brain dumps in your journal on a routine basis to get the full benefits of them.

3 – Journaling Tips for Writers

Journaling for creativity is incredibly useful for everyone, no matter what creative endeavors you have. Let’s start by talking about how it can help writers. This can be for any type of writer, whether you are an author (published or not), write poetry or long novels, are a blogger, technical writer, or just like to write as a hobby.

When you are a writer, you are similar to an artist. You give a part of yourself to this form of art, so by journaling, you are able to unleash what you have hiding deep inside. There is a reason experts often tell you that your first novel should be about what scares you or be about something you have personally experienced – because your own truth comes down as passion on the pages.

Here are some different ways you can use journaling for your writing.

Start with the Brain Dump

Yep, you guessed it, we’re starting with a brain dump! You already know how beneficial this is from the previous section, but let’s explore this a little more with writers specifically. The brain dump is going to really channel what you have going on inside. It gets out not just your ideas, but your thoughts, feelings, feels, insecurities, and passions.

These can all be put down on paper when you begin writing again, but for now, just
write it all in your journal and see what you end up with.

Write Down All Your Ideas

The next step after you have finished the brain dump is to write down any other ideas you have come up with. This is where you aren’t just dumping all your thoughts in the journal, but specifically your ideas for what you want to write next.

Remember this can be anything, depending on the type of writer you are or want to be. If you like writing for your blog, but are a little stuck, just write down some ideas of what you might be able to cover on the blog, and see if you can flesh out those ideas.

For poets or story tellers, write down just some basic ideas. Maybe you don’t know the entire story yet, but you have an idea for the main plot, some of the characters names, or just where it is going to take place.

Flesh Out the Ideas

If you haven’t done so already, flesh out these ideas that you have written down. Maybe as you were writing down a location and decade for your story, you thought of a few townspeople that you believe with add something to the story. Just flesh out any ideas you have written down and make notes for anything you can think of.

This is all part of the creative process. Writing a book is not linear. It will be a lot of note taking, back and forth, changing things up, and going through many edits before it’s complete.

Do Some Personal Journaling

Journaling for your creative writing spark isn’t just about journaling what you want to write, but journaling for yourself. This is also very important to channeling your inner creative soul. Personal journaling is when you do a simple stream of consciousness, where you just write down whatever comes to your mind.

It is not necessarily a brain dump of all your thoughts, but you just naturally let your pen tell you where you want the journaling to go. You might be stuck on one thing bothering you in your life and need to write it down. Other days, you just draw a little sketch of how you are feeling.

Use Journaling Prompts

You are going to get some examples of journaling prompts to use in the last section, but one thing to know now is WHY you should use them. Journaling prompts are often used by people who want to write in their journal, but tend to get stuck on what to write about. Perhaps the first few weeks you did great, but then your brain kind of got stuck on what to journal about.

This is where journaling prompts come in. Prompts are simple statements or questions that tell you a topic to write about. Some are simple and only require journaling a sentence or two. You can leave it at that, or use prompts to really think about the topic and explore it more in your journal.

Write Poems or Short Stories

Lastly, journaling can help writers by actually writing some pieces of work right in your journal. Not just brain dumping or writing ideas, but using the journal as your creative space. Make sure you save these journals to look back on later!

Try just writing a little short story that is no longer than a page or two, or writing a poem about any topic on your mind. These are not only great exercises to get back into the habit of writing, but are a lot of fun! They can be very therapeutic for anyone who wants to journal and be a writer at the same time.

4 – Journaling Tips for Artists

Maybe you aren’t a writer, but your creative aspirations are more along the lines of a more traditional form of art, such as painting, drawing, doing digital art, or the many other mediums that are now available. Journaling can be equally as beneficial for your creative soul!

Your entire heart and soul goes into your art or creative hobby, no matter what it is, similar to writers. Even when you don’t realize it, what you choose to create and the entire creative process is related to how you feel and who you are. This is why journaling can impact your art so much. It can channel different parts of your subconscious and allow your art to go in brand new different directions.

Here are some ways to use your journal for different forms of art.

Doodle on the Pages

The first way you can use your journal for artistic purposes is to start doodling on the pages. This might seem like such a simple thing and that it wouldn’t make an impact, but it does, especially later on. Whenever you write in your journal, just make a little sketch or doodle on the page or the section between each different topic.

What happens is you get a visual to go along with what you’re writing about. What you choose to draw, whether or not you use color, the size, shape, and everything about it matters. People often think they just draw or create what they like with no thought behind it, but this is often not true.

Your subconscious knows what it is doing. You are making all the decisions with every creative endeavor you take on. Each piece is a part of who you are, and as mentioned before, the journal is just helping you do that more succinctly.

Experiment with New Art Styles

You can also use your journal to explore and experiment with different styles of art. This begins with just journaling about the types of art you want to do, then writing down why. Some people can’t just keep all of this in their head and really need to get it out on paper.

Once you do that, grab some art supplies and try doing it right in the journal. You can also use a sketchbook or even a painting pad as a journal, as the pages are strong enough to handle paint and charcoal, and whatever else you want to use.

Write About Your Art

Lastly, artists can use their journal to write about their art. Do this before, during, or after you create something. It is great to have a journal specifically dedicated to your creative endeavors. Write down what you want to create and why, kind of fleshing out the ideas like a writer would.

You can then make little sketches in your journal or sketchbook, and when you get stuck while creating something, come back to your journal and write about your experiences. Keep writing in the journal during and after it is done, and you are able to see the entire journey right there.

5 – Journaling Prompts for Creative People

Here are a few examples of journaling prompts that work great for creative people:

• What do you want your first story to be about?
• Is there something getting in the way of you being creative?
• When you think about creating something, what is the first thing that comes to mind?
• Go to your favorite outdoor place, and write down everything you see in great detail.
• Come up with a new character and describe everything about them.

Is your emotional baggage weighing you down? It’s a fair question that each of us must consider at one point or another in our lives. We all have some emotional event or episodes in our life that influence us in the way we engage with the human race. Unfortunately, we are rarely able to drop our baggage at the doorstep and leave it behind when trying to move forward in life or upon entering a new relationship.

Instead, we often drag that baggage right through the doors of our next relationship or life experience. Emotional baggage can be a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing if we fail to confront it head-on.

It seems our negative emotional baggage shows up at the most unexpected times, pulling us down into an ocean-filled abyss of misery and despair like two cinder blocks shackled to our ankles. How we manage that emotional baggage is key to our sanity and health of future relationships.

What is Emotional Baggage?

You have probably heard this age-old metaphor used time and again, but you may not know what it means to be carrying around emotional baggage. In simple terms, emotional baggage is a representation of all of the negative experiences you have encountered in life, and within your personal (romantic and non-romantical) and professional relationships.

Just like the weight of carrying multiple suitcases on a trip out of town, so emotional baggage weighs us down, and makes our travel through life much more difficult.

Robin Hoffman writes in the Huffington Post that we all have emotional baggage. How we allow these experiences to influence our lives is what makes us different. We experience and respond to the highs and lows of a relationship in different ways.

Some of us can shed the negativity like a snake sheds its skin and leave it behind and some of us carry these adverse events with us like a turtle wears its shell.  Not only do we bring positive aspects of a relationship away with us, but we also take the negative dynamics away as well and over time, the negative experiences can begin to outweigh the positive.

Most of our experiences come from relationships with parents, siblings, friends, lovers and even our employers that may haunt us for years or even decades. In time, this collection of heartache and heartache can block our path to positive things if we let it.

Whatever we have not dealt with thoroughly and efficiently can become baggage that brings us down throughout our lives.

4 Common Types of Emotional Baggage

Regret

Regret, one of the most useless emotions that leaves us stuck in the past, typically worrying and mulling over situations over which we have no control and cannot change. It can make us afraid to take risks and doubt our own judgement and intuition.

Shame

Shame, or more importantly unprocessed shame can have detrimental effects on your mental, and emotional health. Carrying shame around for prolonged periods can lead patterns of self-sabotaging or self-punishing behavior.

Guilt

Carrying guilt around for prolonged periods can lead to depression, anxiety, reduce self-esteem and non-supportive or worse yet self-sabotaging or self-punishing behavior.

Anger

Unresolved resentments and anger can lead to self-defeating behavior, depression, eating disorders, addiction and other issues which are detrimental to your emotional and mental health.

Anger can affect your current relationships and future ones you may have. For example, consider the woman or man who is still angry over a past relationships that did not work out, and now feels that all “men or women are no good.”

This belief is obviously false, but in a state of anger and resentment, the person experiencing this emotional baggage cannot see that, so even if a good person comes along, they will miss opportunity to connect because the assumption that “he or she is no good” will get in the way.

How Do I Know if I Have Emotional Baggage?

Psychoanalyzing ourselves can be a major challenge, but sometimes we must slow down and do the work. While some types of emotional baggage may be the direct result of a traumatic experience that lives in the forefront of our minds like a death or a loss of someone significant in our lives, physical, mental or sexual abuse, other experiences are buried deep in the recesses of the brain.

Some of us may suffer from depression, or another form of mental illness that affects the way we engage with other people or perhaps, in our past has changed our relationships negatively.

If you find yourself projecting these past events onto your new relationships, keeping your guard up in vulnerable situations, ripe with distrust, holding back in a way that is self-preserving or projecting your demons onto others, there is a chance that you may indeed be carrying around a few suitcases of emotional baggage.

7 Ways to Rid Yourself of Emotional Baggage

The good news is that you are not stuck with this set of luggage forever. You can ditch your emotional baggage at some point in time, but as with most things, you will need to invest a great deal of time and energy to yield results. Here are a few options to consider.

1 – Consider Therapy

First, consider getting professional help. Sometimes we all need to discuss our problems with someone who can offer expert guidance. While your friends may have an excellent set of listening ears, unless they are licensed professionals, most do not have the necessary tools or resources to help you properly unpack that bag of issues.

Instead, you should consider seeking the support of a professional therapist who can spend time with you helping you reconcile your emotions and come to terms with each of the things that are following you throughout life.

2 – Independent Actions

You also have the option to work through your issues independently. While you may not be able to navigate all your problems, you may be able to remove some of the weight from your shoulders with these tips. Here are a few independent steps you can take to get started.

3 – Dump the Denial

It is time to vacate your state of denial. You will have to confront a few apparent issues that are tainting your life head-on to reach some degree of acceptance. That’s right! You must acknowledge that your emotional baggage does exist!

Denying that you have any emotional baggage will get you nowhere. You will have to unpack your bag one negative experience at a time. Also, you will have to be vulnerable and share with others in your life who are impacted by your emotional baggage.

4 – Own Your Feelings

You have a right to your feelings. No one has the right to discount or deny you your right feel the way you do. You no longer have to pack those feelings away and hide them from the world.

5 – Identify Your Negative Experiences

You will now have to dig deeply into the crevices of your life to recognize the things that have brought you to this place in life. What are the pivotal moments in your life history that make you behave or respond the way you do when confronted with a particular individual or situation?

6 – Identify Your Emotional Triggers

What are the events and circumstances that trigger your emotional responses? Take some time out to examine and identify those triggers so that you know how to cope with them the next time they arise. Make each experience a learning lesson and improve upon each one so that you carry the good and ditch the bad.

7 – Find a Path to Forgiveness

Find a path to forgiveness. Forgiveness is a powerful tool to get you over the hurdles of heartache and heartbreak. Forgiveness affords you the opportunity to grow and move past that negative thing that brought you to this place in your life.

Find compassion in your soul for the imperfection of others and the hurt others may have endured to bring them to hurt you. Learn what you can from this experience in your life and push forward with your life.

Finally, take things slow. You did not collect this pile of emotional baggage overnight. It will take some time to see results. Do not give up hope when you find it difficult to let some things go. Start anew as this acknowledgment of emotional baggage will be a transformation of epic proportions.

Remember to also forgive yourself.

What Keeps You from Striving Forward

Besides emotional baggage that has built up from the past, there may be situations, people or even your own dysfunction that keeps you stuck.

• What in your life keeps you down?
• Are you letting problems build up and stand in your way?
• Are unhealthy relationships keeping you down?
• Do you sabotage your own success?
• Are you emotionally dysfunctional in that you don’t know how to process your feelings in a healthy way?
• Is poor self-esteem a problem for you?
• Do you deal, or do you run?
• What roadblocks exist in your life that need to be eliminated?

Think about these things and do a thorough inventory.

You cannot move forward when you are stuck in the past lugging around emotional baggage and building more up along the way.