#5 - Mindfulness in Your Life Part I - Journaling

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

journaling, present, trisha, life, tools, thoughts, brain, noise, head, goals, guided, feel, episode, journaled, toolbox, journal, paper, frustrated, totally

SPEAKERS

Trisha Barita

00:02

Hey there, I'm Trisha Barita. I'm a mother of twin girls, a wife, an entrepreneur, a psychology major, a lawyer, and a coach. With all these different roles in my life, in the past, I truly struggled with limiting beliefs in my ability to adequately juggle all these roles successfully. I often would be frustrated that time and again, I let my goals and dreams always take a backseat to everything else I was trying to do. And those dreams always seem to be on the horizon, just out of reach. Until I discovered tools and thought work to help me tackle and learn to balance all of it. Now, I don't let these titles define my limits. I define my balance in life, by how I choose to show up for myself every day. Am I perfect? Hell no, far from it. But I do work every day to believe in myself, and to be present with whatever I experience in this life, The Good, the Bad, and The Really Fucking Ugly. to own my truth and own my thoughts. I created this podcast to talk about how that noise gets in the way of our goals as women. And now I help women and teach them tools to cut the overwhelm of noise in their life, preventing them from getting the balance they want. If you like this podcast and want to take my free course to get started on designing your balance, and saying fuck that noise, go to TrishaBarita.com/FreeCourse. Now let's get after it.

02:07

Hello, fabulous friends. So in the episode right before this, I talked about journaling, some of the thoughts or the noise in your head that you may have about how you show up as a parent, how you show up as a mom for your kids, if you have kids. I even offered you a freebie worksheet with guided journal prompts to help break those thoughts down for yourself, which you can still grab in the episode show notes on my website, TrishaBarita.com, for Episode Four. But for today, I want to expand more on the concept of journaling. And what it has to do with the bigger picture of saying fuck the noise in your life. I believe and I coache that to access this bigger picture requires a big part of you to choose to take action to be mindful in your life, to be present to what that noise is. Now this is a series of podcasts that I'll be doing. This is the first, that I'll be doing on mindfulness. So for today's episode, I'm covering two big topics. Number one, what does it mean to have mindfulness in your life? And number two, what the heck does journaling have to do with it, anyway? So let's take those in turn. So starting with what does it mean to be mindful in your life?

03:45

For me, the easiest way to break it down and how I talk to my coaching clients about it is that you seek to be present, rather than to not be present. Now wait, though this does not mean you will always be present. I know you're like what Trisha? I mean, the goal is to get good at seeking to be present and being as present as you can be in the moments in your life, rather than not being present. But you won't probably be 100% present all the time because well, your mind is a curious thing. And it often takes you away from being present, to seek false joy or pleasures, to buffer feelings you maybe don't want to feel, to seek protection from your own failures, to just wander out of habit, or because it's easier than being present, or really any number of things. When I talk about mindfulness, it is that you practice leaning into being present for all that life has inst for you. Remember, this means the good, the bad, and the really fucking ugly. So when your brain wants to pull you away from being present, you seek to be pulled back into being present. Now how you get there is really a journey that you must choose to take for yourself.

05:22

But why would you do all this? Well, because research suggests that being fully present and engaged can be a source of happiness. Now granted, remember, life is 50/50. It's not a bowl of Lucky Charms, marshmallows, feeling all the feelings, well that shit can be uncomfortable. Of course, that's why your brain is like, hey, let's go the other way. In fact, sometimes your brain is like, or at least my brains, like, let's go anywhere else. And feeling this uncomfortableness. It's like the it's like that scene in The Wizard of Oz. I don't know about you guys but if my brain was totally in charge, I would never have gotten into the poppy fields and the horse of a different color if I were Dorothy, you know why? Because when the trees started throwing apples, and the flying monkeys showed up, my brain would have been like, oh, hell, no peace out. I'm out of here. But that's the thing. If we follow the primitive survival reasoning with our brain, we wouldn't do anything that scares us or feels uncomfortable. And we would never find out also, that what we are truly capable of handling.

06:45

Processing the negative emotion and working through that can get you to so many places that are amazing. It can grow you to have connections with your loved ones that are deeper and beyond where you are, are when you're distracting yourself. It can also grow you to enjoy physical activities and intimacy in a ways that you can't, when you let yourself not be present. It can also help you to go after goals that may be scary. You know, it can, it can put you in that place, you know where you can start to believe it's possible.

07:30

I'm not saying you can't enjoy a glass of wine or champagne, binge out on Netflix, scroll social media, exercise like mad at the gym, spend a night out with your besties or enjoy a plate of nachos or chocolate souffle, okay? What I'm saying is that you don't need that shit to make you feel anything. Period. When you're working on being present, you don't keep seeking out the need to say this sentence, I need blank. Fill in the blank there. Now you choose these things, but then you also choose to be present with why you chose it. And then you enjoy it. Not use it, whatever, whatever that it may be to escape feeling something else.

08:19

So I guess that's my introduction to what does it mean to have mindfulness in your life? Switching to the second topic. What the heck does journaling have to do with it? Well, it's a tool to help you be present. To be mindful. Now, I've journaled for a long, long time. Most of my life for sure. Yeah, my early journals from when I was pretty young, through my teenage years and my young adult life are all over the place. I would  run across one and read it and be like, oh my goodness, maybe I could sum it up with three b's, I probably overwhelmed was journaling about butterflies, boys and bitches. And that last one, I just mean for the most part, I would complain about why I don't understand why stuff wasn't going my way.

09:11

I think I think when I started my psychology courses in college, and even a touch of philosophy courses, I was exposed to those different viewpoints about why are we the way we are, you know, with with all the different theories in psychology, at least, it could be genetics, that is what makes you what you are, or it's all about your surroundings. Do your dreams mean something more than just being dreams? And how did your parents influence who you are? I think my journaling evolved at that point with all of that going on and it became a little more focused on thoughts about these things. Probably starting to identify my internal noise versus external noise for the first time in my life, asking myself big questions about whether I was happy, why I was happy? Or why I was sad. You know, why did i why did I make that decision? Why was I frustrated with this? Or that? You know, I asked myself questions, or does this relationship or friendship bring me joy? And all of that is a big part of trying to figure out how to be mindful in your life and be present with your thoughts and in the feelings that you have. And because of this practice of learning my thoughts on paper over many years, I recognize that it may come easier to me to journal about whatever about travel, loved ones, day to day frustrations, goals, not making goals, and the list goes on for me. And I also recognize that journaling may not come as easily to you, as it doesn't always come easily to the clients, my coaching clients. And, and that's okay, that's totally okay. You know, you have to start somewhere, if you want to do this work, and I think that some of it comes from when, you know, if you haven't made a practice of it, it wasn't part of your life, for whatever reason, I think that it's because sometimes, you know, you take out a, you take out a blank piece of paper and a pen and you think, shit, what am I supposed to write down now? Like, what, what exactly should I be journaling or feeling or whatever, like, it has to be some sort of like, perfect thing. And sometimes, I don't know, we overthink it, right? Anybody can overthink it. I mean,

11:46

you know, the first step really, is to just start. And sometimes when I've struggled to, like access thoughts that I'm I'm trying to understand or something that's frustrating me, you know, a mental block or something, it can be helpful to have a subject that I'm going to be focusing on are guided prompts to focus, you know, what it is that you're journaling about.

12:14

I've done both free and guided journaling over the many years. But I think if you're, if you're really trying to identify like obstacles to your goals, or even just test the temperature of your week or day, guided prompts can really help focus you, you know, so you don't, go on some tangent talking about something else. Not that there's anything wrong with that in journaling. But if, you know, if you're trying to kind of focus on something, it can be helpful to have some sort of guided questions for you to be sort of answering.

12:46

And so if you, if you have taken my free Starter Guide course, to designing your balance, which is on my website, right now, then you already know I talk a lot about how you have to start identifying the obstacles to your goals that you're trying to achieve. And one of the big tools to do that, I believe is journaling. And guided journaling can really help bring that out. Because there truly is something about getting it out of your head on a paper, or your iPad or laptop if you prefer. But getting it out of your head, it's something about it makes it more real. It allows you to come back to it and look at it with a fresh perspective. Many, many times I've played a scenario or event out of my head, I'm like spinning out about it, like just playing it over and over again, something conversation that I had with somebody or the way something didn't go the way that I wanted it to. And you know, I put it, I put it down on paper, and then you know, I walk away and I come back to it. And it can look different. I can see how it was just when it was all over my head focusing on one point of view, or how I was making something mean, I had to feel a certain way.

14:03

And for the most part, I think it's it's good to just get started and not put too much pressure on yourself about what it what it needs to mean. But just to sort of get it out of your head first. And overall, I want you to take take away this. If you if you haven't journaled a lot, I mean, don't complicate this shit. All right, if you want to have the tool of journaling, and really some focus journaling, than just start practicing. I mean, it does not have to be these long, complicated things that you're creating, it just is a practice of sort of dumping some of the thoughts out of your brain onto a piece of paper or like as an electronic device if you want.

14:48

I've actually included a free and basic journaling template you can use to journal about your week. If you're just trying to get a temperature on your week. You know, any obstacles you have felt to the goals or things that you were trying to achieve. I did create a freebie and this one, this podcast episode and I put that along with a link to one of my favorite inexpensive journals that I ordered off Amazon, if you if you want to have an actual journal rather than just paper, you don't need that, but paper is fine. But you can get all of that for this episode at www.TrishaBarita.com/podcast/5. So go ahead and grab that if you want to get started journaling or you want some guided prompts, I put one in there that I think is pretty easy to follow. And I followed it before and found it really helpful.

15:38

So if you haven't taken my free course Starter Guide to design your balance, when you're on that page, you can also see that link up there in the right hand corner. Alright, so now I mentioned that you know how you get more mindful and present in your life is really a journey that you must choose to take for yourself. You have to decide to invest in yourself. And as a coach, I get to guide you. But ultimately, it's your journey. And some ways of being present... like journaling, will speak to you more than others. And get this some ways of you know, accessing being present.. some tools will speak to you differently, depending on how are what you're trying to be present for, what issues are presenting themselves to you, or what noise is coming at you.

16:35

Journaling, I believe is just one tool. Think about it like this. If I tell you that I need you to go to my house and put together a piece of furniture. I don't tell you what it looks like. I don't tell you how many pieces it is. And I don't I don't tell you how big it is. I'm just like go to my house and put together this piece of furniture. Are you really going to say to me, Trisha, I'm fucking good with just taking the hammer. I'm sure I can do anything with the hammer? Or are you going to take the whole toolbox if you could? I realized that, you know, that may feel like a bit of a dude analogy to some of you and I'm sure my husband Peter would have some thoughts about the right tool or whatever. But hey, I have my own real legit toolbox. It may be pink but it's all got all kinds of MacGyver problem solving stuff in there at my house and, and geez, I watch HGTV and YouTube and women use toolboxes too. So it's not too dude - ish. But anyways, plus Martha Stewart has tools. Alright, so anyway, I'm totally digressing. But I hope you get the point. In the scenario of you finding your path to designing your balance to saying fuck that noise. To be more mindful and present in your life. I think you want the whole toolbox friend you really do or as many tools as you can handle, as you learn how to use them. So consider this the first piece of learning how journaling can be a tool for you. And I will leave you with that. Now go get after it. No, seriously, go get the free stuff I mentioned in this episode. Why not? It's free. Go get your journaling on and remember fabulous friend, you got this.

18:30

Hey, thanks for listening today. If you enjoyed this episode, and are a woman ready to say fuck that noise, so you can start designing the balance in your life. Go take my free course to get started at TrishaBarita.com/freecourse.  Now, have an awesome day and I'll see you next week.