Prayer & Journaling – Part 3
Practice isn’t perfect. That’s not the saying I heard growing up and I’m guessing you didn’t either. The problem is, “practice makes perfect” leads us to believe perfection is possible. But setting those kinds of expectations are a recipe for quitting before you even start. The prayer and journaling practice I’ve developed over time is called a “practice” for a reason. Beginning with this one small statement – practice isn’t perfect – in mind, allows me the freedom to believe there’s no right or wrong way to show up for this practice. With a clear mind and no pretense, I’m able to freely engage in the present moment, knowing whatever is meant for me in that session will show up at the exact right time. This is what I want to share with you today. Ease, grace, and a commitment to show up are the only requirements for creating a prayer and journaling practice that works for you. I’m glad you’re here.
Hi! Episode six.
Today is the last part in a three-part series about prayer and journaling.
The first part, in Episode Four, was all about prayer and the evolution of my relationship with God. Episode Five was all about journaling and the practice I’ve developed over time and how it impacts me – how I see myself and how I see the world.
Today, in this last part, I want to acknowledge that creating a new practice is hard.
When I first started, it was really sporadic. Sometimes I would pray, sometimes I would sit in the quiet, sometimes I would journal, sometimes I would do all three, sometimes I would just say, “forget it, I have way too much on my plate. I don’t have time for that today.”
But over time, the more I did it, the more I wanted to come back to it as a practice. And no two days looked quite the same.
I don’t know if you play sports or if you’ve ever taken yoga or done anything that required you to come back to it again and again and again. When you’re engaged in something like this, you never get the same outcome twice.
I play a little bit of golf. Every time I step up to the tee box on the driving range, my swing feels like it’s never quite the same. I’m always tweaking and trying to improve. The same is true with yoga. Every pose you do, every movement you make, you might be stretching a little bit farther this class than last.
This is no different. It is a practice. There isn’t a right or wrong way to do it.
I also want to acknowledge that it will feel strange, perhaps, when you first start to sit down with a notebook and a pen or sit down to talk to God about whatever’s on your heart. It’s new. And it might not be something you’re used to doing. You might not even know what to think or what to say. And that’s okay.
The point is just to create the space – to create your own container to hold all your thoughts. To jot things down as they come up. To have a continued and ongoing conversation with God about what feels right in your life and what feels all wrong. And to tell him what you’re grateful for.
We’re human. We make things more complicated than they need to be all the time.
For instance, as I’ve been creating this business, I’ve gone down several different avenues and tried several iterations of what feels right – What I think I want to be a part of the business and what I don’t. What I want to be working on and what I don’t. Who I want to be working with, etc.
Sometimes I get all up in my head about what feels right and what doesn’t. I go down all these bunny trails that aren’t actually serving me.
Yesterday was one of those days where I just felt like I was spinning in circles. I had a task I wanted to accomplish, but my brain was on overload. I couldn’t quite figure out exactly what it was I wanted the outcome to be.
I had sent out an SOS to my business coach, then reached out to a friend of mine for advice, and when I got home from school drop-off I thought, “You know what, I just need a minute.”
So I grabbed my journal, and made a fresh cup of coffee. I sat down by myself, with my puppy lounging by my side, took a breath and asked myself some questions.
“What’s going on right now?”
“Where am I feeling angst?”
“Where do I feel stressed out?”
“What am I really worried about?”
“Does any of this really matter?”
What do I want this to look like?”
“If I could wake up tomorrow and it was already done, it was already in place, what would I want it to look like?”
In those moments, when I’m asking myself those questions, the questions themselves are incredibly simple. They’re simple because it makes the answers bubble up easily. Answers that are authentic and genuinely what I think.
The idea isn’t to have some profound beautiful thing to say, it’s about giving yourself the space to say it.
How often do we have all the thoughts swimming around in our heads, or we feel the stress, or we feel the overwhelm, and we’re not sure what to do about whatever’s happening around us … but we never give ourselves the time to stop and say, “What do I want? What’s important to me? If I could change this situation in any way, this is what it would look like? If I could have the outcome be whatever I want it to be, this is what how I would paint the picture.”
At the end of my two journal pages yesterday, when I was mapping everything out and trying my best to be the most “business-y” self I could be, what I really, really wanted in that moment, was clarity. That’s it.
All the thoughts that had been swirling around. All the ideas I’d been playing with – I could make this or that and make money doing this, or whatever. All it came down to was, I just wanted to be clear about what feels good in my heart.
That same desire for clarity could be used 1000 different ways in our life. That’s a key ingredient for me, no matter what I’m doing.
It sounds so silly, but whether I’m choosing an outfit to go somewhere, or I’m making a major life decision, like where to buy a house. Clarity is at the center of all those decisions. And clarity starts by sitting with what you think.
Marie Forleo has this great quote … and I don’t know if it originated with her or not, so please don’t go crazy if I’m not quoting the original person, but I heard it on one of her shows or podcasts … “clarity comes with action.” It’s true. You can’t answer a question until you start to move in the direction of the answer in order to get the clarity that you need about whether or not that thing that you’re moving toward is right or wrong.
BUT, I also know for me in creating and adopting this practice, clarity oftentimes comes in the stillness. That’s where it starts.
I want to encourage you to just take a minute. That’s it.
It doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out journaling session. It doesn’t have to look a certain way. You can jot three words down on a post-it note or put a question in your notes app on your phone to contemplate later.
You don’t have to know exactly what you want to say to get started. You just have to be willing to start.
It’s always amazing to me how much better I feel walking out of my practice than walking into it. In fact, there are days when I sit down and I’m like, “Yep, I’ve got nothing. So I guess we’ll just sit here.” And within just a few seconds, something will come to mind and I’ll just start writing.
The writing, the prayer, the stillness … it’s all so good. But really, to get started, all you need is to simply be willing to give yourself space – a minute – to sit down in a chair, on your sofa, at the edge of your bed, or in the front seat of your car, and turn off all distractions.
Set a timer on your watch for a minute and just breathe. That’s the best beginning to this practice. If you get into the habit of just giving yourself a minute, your mind and your heart will start to crave more than a minute and that is when your practice will take off.
I promise you there is no right way or one way to do it.
I hope this is helpful. I hope you can see that the practice itself is as personal to you as it is to me and no practice is going to look the same.
I really do hope you try this for yourself. If you have questions as you experiment, please reach out to me. I’m here. I’m available. I’m listening. I’m so happy to answer anything that bubbles up to the surface for you. You can reach out to me via email at hello@bestillwithbobbi.com.
Thank you for listening.
