Rituals for Living Dreambook Journaling today is Chapter Seven of the Rituals For Living Dreambook, Psychological and Spiritual Health. Questions 7-9. Answer the questions as your future self three years from now, as though you have attained your goal. A prompt for future self journaling.
7. In what ways do you express love to yourself, to others and to your higher power? I love to observe people. Specific to this question, watching how people you care about interact with you and others reveals character and desire. It’s fun for me to see if I can determine a person’s love language. It took a while to dig through my own love language, as it seemed I greedily needed all of them. Truth is, it really can depend on which needs are being met at a particular time and stage in life. Through self examination, I found there is genuinely only one love language that stays a primary need, no matter what I am going through in life.
So I wonder about others. I watch, and listen. Then I speak the language they seek, within the abilities I have practiced the past few years. It is critical that I care enough about what someone else needs, and not what I think they should need. As a bossy firstborn who cared for her younger siblings, a person who often jumps into any leadership vacuum (thanks military), the “strict” parent and just a reformed pedantic know-it-all, it’s more of a challenge that I’d like to admit. I am accumulating successes in this regard, meeting the needs of others without tainting things with my desires for them. I am speaking love languages that make me uncomfortable, likely because my skills require more practice. And that is life.
I show love to myself by kindly communicating boundaries and being forgiving of my mistakes as long as the general direction is forward. I show love to myself by recognizing when things feel particularly directed at me, or I mess up, that we all mess up and my mistakes get put in the stew with everyone else’s. The spotlight is not as glaring as it feels in the moment. I love myself by doing the work, and acknowledging that my mistakes, while formerly epic, are getting smaller and less meaningful over time. I love myself when I keep promises to myself.
As for a higher power, I express gratefulness and acknowledge the gifts bestowed upon me throughout my waking hours.
8. How is your life affected by cultivating a more peaceful and loving experience? Wow. Well, this is an easy one. Peacefulness is cultivating a circle of friends and acquaintance that mirror my values and support peace. People who are friends to a healthy marriage. People who water the green grass of my educational and personal growth. I am calmer, busier and spend more time nurturing others. The circle of people I offer support to is large, yet the circle of people I allow to disturb my inner peace with vulnerability is small. I am far less reactive and my generosity also gives me peace. My space is protected.
9. How do you connect with your Higher Self and the Universe? What does it feel like? Gratefulness, throughout my day, years and life. In written form, out loud and specific to people who make me feel so very grateful. Acknowledging the good. We all need to hear it, including the universe. I talk to my food, and my plants, beyond the people in my world. I smile and wave and strangers, and I seek out the lonely and those in need, to provide. The universe isn’t a bucolic vision. The universe is finite, bursting with all life and energy and quite human.
I connect using Acknowledgement.
Grateful For:
-A get-together I was dreading was worth the dread. It was lovely. And delicious! It challenged my assumptions and thankfully overwhelmed them.
-everyone loved my grandma’s cookies!
-I made myself available to some very important people and they accepted.
Godspeed y’all!
This content was previously written to ensure this was a true series, and to share insights.
The journaling is part of a 30 Day Challenge I started over a year ago. I consider that a component of the Future Self Journaling process. The gratefulness notes near the bottom of each self improvement post is also a specific and helpful part of Future Self Journaling. The Rituals for Live Dreambook was given to me by my children, so why not add this to my blogging/future self journaling time?
The End