Journaling Rewires the Brain for Resilience: Dr. Juna With author Bianca Turetsky

Can journaling be better than therapy? Not always, but sometimes it's exactly what your brain needs. A UCLA study found that putting your feelings into words actually calms the emotional part of your brain, and it activates the area responsible for focus and self-control. Therapy has many barriers. It's not always there when you need it. It can take time to find the exact right person. In fact, one of the most important things about getting successful therapy is having the rapport. That you need and the connection that you have with that person. Also, saving problems to talk about therapy, I mean, that could be useful in some instances, but reliving unpleasant experiences just because you have a therapy session coming, that can actually have negative consequences. So journaling is always right there for you. It's private, it's instant, and it's backed by science. You can do it anytime, anywhere. There's certain ways to do it that might be more useful than others, And we'll dig into that a little bit deeper on next week's episode when I talk about the neuroscience behind journaling, and we'll look at one particular technique. And most importantly, journaling is a skill. And when we put in the time to build skills of resilience, it's there for us when we need it. We can bounce back faster and higher than we were before. Journaling is a skill that pays back for a lifetime. When you have these skills of resilience, it could help us prevent problems in the future. And you know I'm all about prevention because let's face it, prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that is the absolute truth. Hi there, welcome back to the Mind Body Space Podcast. I'm Dr. Juna Bobby MD, and this is where we explore how to raise resilient, curious, emotionally grounded kids and how we as parents can grow right alongside with them. If you're looking to step up your life, journaling might be one of the easiest things that you can do. But how to get started and how to keep going? Well, that could be a challenge for all of us. I've tried to journal many times and I found it to be a challenge to get started and to keep going. So today I have a special treat for us. We have Bianca Turecki. She is a renowned author of children's books, including the Time Traveling Fashionista series and co-author of the Magic on the Map chapter book series published by Random House Kids. She was the Associate Director of Programs at Writeopia Lab, a nonprofit that fosters joy, literacy, and critical thinking through creative writing. She also serves on the Education Committee at the Guggenheim Museum, and she recently completed her Master's in Education in Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where we met and became fast friends. Bianca is gonna share with us tips and tricks on how to get started journaling, one of the most accessible ways to increase our mental resilience. Stick around to the end because we have a downloadable PDF for you that includes all of the prompts that Bianca shares with us.

Yay!

Awesome.

Hi, Juna. How are you? Great. So nice to see you.

Yes, I'm so excited for you to be here. How's everything going up there?

Oh my gosh, Cambridge misses you. I miss having you here. You have to come back. The weather is finally perfect and it's really nice.

So anytime you want to come visit, And Bianca, you are an amazing children's author.

Thank you.

Yeah. And I know that you are very much into journaling.

Yeah.

You have been journaling since you were a kid. Yes. Yeah.

A long time.

It fascinated me because journaling is one of those things that, you know, everybody thinks they should do and they don't, but it's got a lot of science-backed evidence that it is really important for not only stress reduction, But even self-awareness and just building self-observational skills, which is really big part of resilience, also can be an emotional anchor because if you write about your emotions, if you name your emotions, there's so many benefits to writing. I'm sure you could tell us more about that. As far as the brain goes, writing, journaling, reflecting, going over things, whether it's emotional things or just trying to figure things out. It gives you that metacognition where you can just step away from yourself and be able to solve problems better, all kinds of things, right?

So many good things. It's cool to hear your perspective from the brain and the science background. All of it, it's been true in my life and, and I've been, so it's been fun to explore the research and see just how good journaling actually is for you and for kids too.

Yeah. And so you were going to talk to us about how to get started and maybe like the benefits and how to even do it for someone who's always tried to. Like, I, I told you I buy so many journals all the time because, you know, there's so many pretty ones and Moleskine. I always say Moleskine.

I always said Moleskine, but I think it— no, I don't think it is. I think you're right. Actually, I heard someone say it the other way and I was like, oh, I have been pronouncing this wrong my whole life.

Well, sadly, most of my journals have like a few pages written in 'em and then most of the rest of it blank. And a lot of times I feel like, oh, I need to start a new one, you know? And then I just get another book, but it never gets filled up. And the saddest part is when I had kids, I was gonna write down all the things they were saying and things like that. And I did start, but I did not. And this was before we videoed and photographed everything they did.

So it's never too late. Yeah. And I think just there's some hesitation, like there's a right way to journal and there really isn't. Like it's just, there's no one way to do it. So if you find a specific notebook you like, it doesn't even have to be in a notebook. Like I find myself writing on the back of paper napkins if I'm waiting in a coffee shop or on my Notes app a lot of times.

So it's just— iCloud Notes app.

Yes. Especially if I'm traveling. If I don't have my notebook, I just find anywhere to put stuff down. If you're not doing it every day, it's totally fine.

There's so many layers of failure for me with journaling, which I know failure is not a dirty word for me, so it's fine. But like everything you mentioned, yeah, like if I write it on a scrap piece of paper, if I'm, you know, somewhere, I feel like that's not right. I need to get a book. If I don't have the right book, I'm not going to do it. What's the most effective thing you can do?

Well, I guess if we're talking about effective, like what is the goal you want out of it? For me, it's a lot of it is just processing emotions and working through problems and just getting things out of my head. Or else I just kind of get stuck in these like thought loops and cycles and I just need to get it down. So sometimes just the process of getting it out of my brain onto a piece of paper is effective. So like not having that piece of paper. For posterity, it doesn't really matter. But I do have boxes and boxes of journals. I mean, things get lost, but I do try— if, if I'm feeling very organized, I will try and like put everything into journals or put it on a doc or something. But so much gets lost, and it's, it's okay. I didn't realize how many journals I had until we moved to Cambridge, and I had these like boxes of just my whole life from between, you know, when I was a kid till now. And Someday I need to deal with that and figure out what to do with that.

Wow, so you have everything. So tell me, when you started to journal, did you have one of those little diaries with the little locks on it?

With the lock and the keys?

Okay.

Did you have one of those?

Then I bought a bunch for my daughter too.

They're so fun.

Yeah, because if you're gonna write about your thoughts, that's the other thing. Like, what if somebody picks it up and looks at it? There's this TV show I was watching, Younger. It's like a—

it's—

oh yes, I don't know if you saw it. It's a guy who produced Beverly Hills 90210, by the— and so it's very entertaining, but there was this one scene where this woman wrote notes about everything about her boyfriend. So she wrote like daily notes. I don't know if you remember the episode.

Yeah.

And he finds it.

Oh, I did not see that.

That's a nightmare.

Yeah.

She put like stickers next to every day, like if he made her happy and like, okay, that's a nightmare.

That has not happened to me. Well, I grew up, I was an only child, so I didn't really have to hide it from siblings. I had privacy. So yeah, no, that would be a nightmare to have your boyfriend find all of the things you're writing about him. Because it should be unfiltered and you're not writing for an audience. So I do need to have a big bonfire of these journals at some point.

I mean, it's true. Like our thoughts are so— if we are unfiltered, like there's that book, The Artist's Way, where you're supposed to do morning pages and you just write indiscriminately all of the thoughts. Supposedly we have about 60,000 thoughts a day, maybe more, and most of 'em are repetitive and obviously a lot of thoughts that we would never even act upon, or even they're not even true. Like there's a lot of thoughts that go on in our brains that aren't true at all about how we feel, cuz we've changed. And like I tell my students all the time, like our brain makes thoughts like our GI system makes gas. So it's just like, just all the time spewing out thoughts and you can kind of pick them out and sort them through.

Yeah, for sure. There is— I do a lot of would you rather with my students, and we always do like, would you rather have mind reading or flying? I'd never want mind reading. I don't want to know anyone's unfiltered thoughts, but it does help writing them down and processing them that way. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of big feelings. Kids have big feelings. I mean, if you look at my journals from when I was a kid, you would think I had this terrible life. I hated my parents. I was always in drama with friends, which was not the case at all, but that's what you write about, right?

Or upset. So it's like—

When you're upset.

When they— well, they're not kids, but like when they call you with things that are upsetting, but they might not always share things when they're great or normal.

Exactly. Yeah. So I think if for kids, it is a great way to help with emotional regulation and just being able to, you know, name feelings, process them.

Mm-hmm.

Except for kind of like have a little distance from it, being able to read about it. Ways that help with resilience.

Yes, definitely. I just wanted to make a point of what you said about thoughts. Like you wouldn't want that train of thought. You don't wanna read other people's minds. You know, one of the most valuable things that a lot of my students who are now much older now tell me that they learned was that you shouldn't listen to every thought you have. Can you give us your take on that as an author? And you know, you write fiction, right?

I write fiction, but there's hopefully a lot of emotional truth in it and you can be a little more honest with fiction, maybe because it does that. I write some personal essays too, but yeah, every thought you have doesn't have to have the same amount of weight or you take it seriously, or you can just let things like pass through, acknowledge it, let it go. For me, I can't let things go a lot of times until I just like get it out. And that's often not talking. To— I would more likely write it in a journal than call my mother and tell her about it. And that's just because I maybe am more introverted. That's how I deal with those kind of thoughts.

Or a therapist.

Yeah.

So when you write things down, you're like looking inside of your own brain. So you can almost— you know, when you listen to other people's problems, it's so much easier sometimes to see what's going on. Yeah.

That distance.

Is that what you find with journaling?

It is similar to that. It is almost looking, well, especially looking back on my old journals, it feels almost like another person, even though that person is still part of me. And you are able to recognize patterns and maybe see why some things are triggering for you. And it does give you a bit of distance and also, I think, a lot of empathy. Like when I look at my younger self, the writing of my younger self, I just really kind of wanna give that person a hug and I feel for her and I feel like in my day-to-day life I'm maybe more hard on myself and just like, you know, more critical. So I try and keep that empathy in the present. It's hard, but I find that journaling, it does kind of have that ability to just give you that distance and separate yourself.

So when, when you're looking back at what you wrote in the past, you have more empathy for yourself. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah.

Uh-huh. Because they're looking at you as another person.

Yeah.

Okay. Very cool.

Even though it is me, I'm so different from who I was at 20 or 30 even.

It's older students that went through the program together.

I know. It's a good club.

Yeah. So tell us how you would recommend starting to journal if you've never journaled before, or if you have any tips and techniques. What are the, what are the benefits, you know, that you think kids when should they start?

I mean, my first journal was probably when I was in first or second grade, that one with the lock and the key. So, you know, it can start whenever, but I think, as you said before, there's so many cool-looking notebooks, like make it fun, make it something you want to open up, like get a great gel pen or a glitter pen or a cool notebook, make yourself a cup of tea, make it something that feels like cozy and inviting, and also try and shut off like that perfectionist mindset. It should be a place where you just feel like safe and free and creative, hopefully. Um, make it fun, make it into some kind of ritual that you look forward to. And for kids, if they don't know where to start, you can offer up some prompts to get started. That's been the book I've been developing. It's just like a month of prompts to get kids excited about journaling and creativity and—

You're writing a book, another book, but it's a journal.

But it's a journal.

That's so exciting. So tell us about it.

Yeah.

Tell us your motivation and—

I've been thinking about it for a while because it's something that I've done my whole life, every single day. It's the most consistent practice that I have.

Wow.

And it's helped me so much with anxiety, with creativity, with discipline, I think, with everything, with focus, even with sleeping. And so going into this program we did— the program we did at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I went into it with— through looking at it through the lens of creating this journal and how I could take what I was learning in those classes and incorporate it in this project. And I was actually surprised how much reflective writing we had to do as students.

Hey, before we dive in further, I have a really exciting announcement to make. Brain Builder and Brain Boss is the subscription series that I've been working on all year at Harvard and MIT for families to create a language of brain talk that can decrease the drama and increase resilience. So I'm continuing to build the tools, and for that, Brain Bun, the adorable plush doll, was born. Brain Bun teaches kids and families alike to have this language of neuro-literacy and brain talk that you can use in everyday life that increases physical and mental resilience. Look out for Brain Bun and Friends coming up in a new YouTube channel launching in August. It's for preschool kids, and I'm going to have a subscription series for families. We also have one of the friends here, um, meet Zen Cloud here, and you can get on the waitlist for both Brain Bun and Zen Cloud. They will be launching in late fall, early winter of 2025. Now back to the interview.

Just because to be a good leader, you really need to know yourself. You need to know your strengths, your weaknesses, your triggers, all of that. And so that just made me realize that I think this could be a great thing for kids as well. As you were saying, a lot of kids don't know how to get started and what to do. So this book would be just a guided month of getting started and prompts. For instance, a prompt that I did a lot with my kids at Writopia, which is the nonprofit I taught. W-R-I-T-O-P-I-A. Yeah.

Cool.

Um, it's called a dream ramble. And so you just like set a timer for 5 minutes and there the only rule is you can't stop writing. And so you can't go back, you can't erase, you can't look at what you've written. It's just like a total stream of consciousness that often helps shut off that perfectionist mindset, which I mean, I know when I open a blank notebook, I often feel intimidated and like, what's the perfect first sentence? And so it's, I stop myself before even getting started, or a blank doc to start a new book. So just having that 5 minutes of just silliness and like writing, like, and if you don't know what to write, you write, I don't know what to write for 5 minutes. But usually that leads to something else. So that's a, that's a good first one to get started.

So how long do you journal for every day now?

I, I would say a half an hour every morning.

Do you put a timer on?

I don't put a timer on. Okay. I don't have a number of set pages I have to do, but I do it every day. Even if traveling, even if we've got, I have work, I do it every day. I feel the difference when I don't. I get a coffee and then I do it. Yeah.

Wow. So it doesn't matter what time you wake up?

It doesn't matter what time. Yeah. So I do—

That's amazing. You don't skip a day. That's amazing. And you can feel the difference in your mood or your clarity of thought? I can feel it.

Both.

Meditation for you then?

Exactly. Okay. It's like a meditation. Uh-huh.

Yeah.

And I don't meditate, so this I guess is the closest thing I get to that.

Cool. Like, do you have a whole format for yourself?

I don't have any kind of format. I write whatever is coming. I often find myself writing, you know, little moments of gratitude or goals that I wanna accomplish for that week or that day. Any lingering problems from the day before, I try and kind of work out a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

But there's no set format. And some days if I wanna just write a list of things I need at the grocery store, that's also fine. Like, it could be anything.

Okay.

So, and some days I'll do, you know, 10 pages of actual writing. This is before I start writing any other things, like any fiction or anything like that.

So it's like your warmup. It's like a warmup.

Yeah.

It's a warmup. You know, I did that, you know, that morning pages I told you about with The Artist's Way by Julie Cameron. So I tried that for a while.

Right.

And I actually call it the brain dump. I usually have my students before going to bed. You said it was helpful for your sleep.

Yes. Yes. So if I'm going through a really tough time, I'll also do it again at night.

Oh, I see. Okay. So when I was doing it, this was my problem. So I would do the whole, I would just ramble and when I'd go back to read it, I was like, oh, I'm a crazy person. Like, what is all this I'm writing? So what do you, what are you supposed to do with the gibberish that comes out? Do you read it again or do you leave it?

I mean, go back sometimes like years later, but I don't go back tomorrow morning. I will not read what I wrote this morning. Okay.

That's good to know.

So I just try and not, because then you get like the judgment as you're saying, like, what am I talking? This is ridiculous. That's kind of what stifles creativity and it prevents you from moving forward and starting a practice. So try to give yourself a little grace and not judge what you did. And I do that by not reading it right away until I have that distance of some time. And then I look back at it and have that empathy. But I won't read what I wrote the day before. Okay.

If you write something that like you're so worried anybody would ever read, and then so would you just throw it out? And what if you're afraid to throw things out? Like what if you wanna keep things?

These are great questions. There are a lot of things I should throw out.

Think about it.

I mean, what's the worst that I'm trying to think of the worst case scenario.

I, I mean, I guess you could lock it up until like 10 years later.

Lock it up. Yeah. Rip it up. Also, like, most people aren't as interested in you as you are in yourself. Like, I cannot imagine my stepson wanting to go through my journal. Like, he would be so bored. It's— I feel like no one really cares. As much as I'd like to think everyone's dying to read my journal, I don't think anyone really cares.

Okay, so hang up number 1, just hang up. Number 2, if you're afraid people are gonna read it, just throw it out. Throw it out. So that's your advice?

Just do it and then deal with it later. So if it's something that you're like, if anyone saw this, this would ruin this relationship, Rip it up, tear it out. I think it's— you don't really need it later. Like, it's, it's just the process of doing it that really matters.

How would you get somebody started if it's a kid or mom or adults?

Well, for an adult, like for you, I would say ditch the perfectionism. Don't judge yourself. Just like try and tap into that like playful, playful childhood impulse. Like, just have fun with it, basically.

Just do what's in there.

I guess that's the same thing for, for kids. Yeah, like, have fun with it. Make it special. Like, you don't want it to feel like homework. No one wants to come home from school and feel like they have to write a personal essay. That sounds horrible.

Like, what's in it for them? Tell us some research. Like, when you go in, you go into schools, right?

I go into schools and I do mostly creative writing and some memoir writing with the kids, but I think, like, Also give them privacy because, you know, they, this isn't something that they feel like they have to share with you. This should be kind of like a private, safe space for them to process their feelings. You know, maybe some of the feelings are about you. My poor mother really got a lot of it in my journal. And so what I have written, if I'd known she was gonna be like correcting it like homework, I never would've. I think it's just giving, making it like very free and giving the space getting some cute pens. I feel like aesthetics are a big part of what gets kids into things. So a cute notebook, cute pens, and soon you'll have— I'll have all of my prompts available to get kids started with. If a blank notebook is too intimidating, which I totally get, just fun points of entry.

When I think about our brains and the way we process things, and the more we know about how we process things, when you're journaling and you're only writing about maybe things that are upsetting or annoying, or, you know, it could become like a negativity fest kind of thing. Uh, I wonder if there's a way to balance it out and like maybe using prompts, not only focus on things that are annoying you, but obviously like the gratitude journals exist and all that, but maybe really just balancing it out because it could become an extension of your perpetual complaining mind or whatever.

Right.

And then that just reinforces.

Yeah.

So you do start writing about your mom or sister and it's just like you can get into this whole pattern of reinforcing your negative thoughts about them. So if there's no correction, like, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, for example, there's notebooks with CBT now. So maybe that could—

Oh, really?

They could guide your thoughts to like, oh, well, what do you love about this person? Even though they're annoying a lot of times. Right. I'm just wondering, you know, because if I just let myself ramble, I'd probably complain a lot on paper. So I think I would have to like kind of reel myself back and say, let's make sure that you're doing some positivity stuff too.

I think you will find yourself rambling into that too. With the book I'm designing, there are several prompts of just reflecting on small moments of joy, of awe, of gratitude, because I totally agree with you. I think sometimes it's easy to overlook those moments. And so I have kind of naturally do that in my journals where I make myself write, if I'm having a hard time, 5 things I'm grateful for, grounding exercises. Kids don't necessarily have those skills yet, so the journal will scaffold in those prompts so that they start to develop those habits.

Nice.

So it is a place to rant, but also a place to dream and be hopeful and appreciate the little moments of beauty too.

Which is nice, which is why it's so nice to have your intentioned prompts in this journal instead of just maybe having a blank journal. Yeah.

I think ideally at some point you won't need these journals, but at the beginning to get started, it's great to have someone who's intentionally guiding you through a month, through research, through experience, and then you can kind of jump off from there. Although maybe I'll do two months.

Few months.

A month might be, it might, maybe I'll do another month afterwards. I, I love getting prompts still to this day, so it's just like—

Oh, where do you get your prompts from?

I mean, I make them up for myself now. That's part of my job is making up prompts for kids. So I just make them up and use them for myself as well.

So what was the prompt for today?

For today, I didn't have a prompt, but some prompts I've used in the past are, I mean, I've written letters to my future self and my younger self. Oh, future self. Which is actually really fun. So, you know, kind of envisioning where I wanna be in 5 years, what I'll be doing, who I'll be surrounded by, what I'll be feeling like. Those are fun prompts that I like to do.

Nice. I've done those, the future ones. Also, I have these two founders of, they're founding this AI app for the future self and they're coming on in a couple weeks.

Apple?

Yeah. They're called Kaima. I met them at MIT. How cool. But so it's like your future self talks to you, but it's an AI, and you train your future AI to talk to you. But I don't think I've ever really written anything to my past self, which I've been thinking about more recently. Tell me about that.

You should try it, Juna.

Yeah. Give me a prompt for my past self. I'll do it today.

So I think you should start with what age do you want to reach out to? But I mean, on the other hand, like, would your past self listen to anything your future self has to say?

I would say like 5 years old, 4 years old.

Yeah. Well then you could think about like, what, what was it that you liked then? Who were your friends that like, try and remember that time and then tell your, like, would your 5-year-old self even believe like where your life is now? I feel like mine wouldn't, but it would be really cool to be able to give them a sneak peek as what's coming up.

Nice. Interesting. You know, I've done this kooky thing recently when I'm feeling really unmotivated or if I'm having some negative thoughts about myself or yeah, whatever's stopping me, making me procrastinate, for example. I don't know what happened. Like I must have listened to something or read something. I can't remember, but I talk to myself in Korean, which I haven't spoken. Please speak Korean. I only know like baby Korean. I have So interesting. I spoke Korean was like when I was in first, second grade. Yeah. Because we never really, you know, spoke it after that. So then I wasn't adopted or anything, but basically I was Americanized and I, I did not really speak Korean. So, yeah. I thought it was really interesting. The things like my mom used to say to me when I was little, you know, like her pet names for me or things like that. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And it was, it was interesting.

Like, I'm not like crazy, like talking to myself in the mirror. I'm just saying like just little words of encouragement. Um, that time. Yeah, it's kind of a fun exercise. It's like a little goofy.

And did you feel like a protectiveness over your past self or like a love or empathy or?

It felt, it, it worked. Like it made me feel I could get up and start doing stuff. Oh, you know what it was? I was listening to David Goggins. You know David Goggins? Mm-hmm. Uh, he curses a lot and he's like, he's like this crazy ultra marathoner. G-O-G-G-I-N-S.

Okay.

He has a book called Can't Hurt Me. He's a Navy SEAL.

Okay.

He had a terrible traumatic childhood and he talks about like his awful childhood and he talks about this one thing called a cookie jar. Whenever you feel down or demotivated, you can reach for that cookie jar where you have all the little things you've done in your life that you've overcome. So like for us, we could have a cookie jar of like going back to school, getting our master's in education.

Yeah.

When we're like so much older than the rest of the students, me more than you, but so that could be something in your cookie jar.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah. So I think that's why I did, you know what? That's, that's what I spun that into like a little exercise for myself where I would call myself like a baby pet name that my mom used to call me or something.

I love that so much.

Isn't that weird?

I feel like I wanna turn, it's, it's great. I think it's so healing and helpful and motivating.

It works.

Yeah.

It's so funny. I bought this, and I'm going to buy your book too when it comes out, but this was interesting because this is like a 5-year diary, and you just open it up. Yes. And you open it up to whatever date it is, and there's like 5 paragraphs. You just write a paragraph, and it's like 5 years worth. So you can just open it up to whatever day you have.

That's great.

I've done like one, but I'm going to do it now.

That solves the storage problem.

You have 5 years in one One book, except then it's like a problem cuz you have to fit it into the paragraph. No more excuses.

It wouldn't work for me cuz I need a lot of space and I don't like feeling like I just have to fit it all in one tweet.

Link this to a bigger book.

Exactly.

Okay, so leave us with a few tips, maybe just a few prompts we can work with.

Yeah.

Or anything else you'd like us to know?

Well, I mean, there's just so many. We talked about a lot of the benefits in metacognition. Is really something that, like, when kids start to see, like, what they're thinking and why they're thinking that, that's super helpful. But I think, um, but I think, like, framing it in the way of, like, for your kids, of, like, oh, it's metacognition and identity development and emotional regulation, like, no one would ever do it. That sounds so boring. So it really is just like, here's a cool book, here's some glitter pens, take, you know, take 15 minutes and just like sit down and write, and I won't interrupt you. And you could do— I mean, we were— you could even start with a would you rather, like, would you rather be able to read minds or be invisible? Like, start with something like that and just see where that takes you.

I had a rather question. Don't interrupt, go.

No, go for it. No, keep going. I want to do your would you rather.

Oh, so I was asking my family, if you had to go to a brand new planet, would you rather go with Trump or Elon Musk?

Oh my gosh. That, see, that could start 10 pages of a journal entry.

Yeah.

That's impossible.

You have to go with one of them. You have to go with one of them.

Oh my gosh. You have to pick one. That's impossible.

It was a funny conversation starter.

But yeah, so anything that's like a fun conversation starter can also be a fun internal problem, you know, because you really are just having a conversation with yourself. And that's like, so making it fun, making it special, making it pressure-free, giving them space. Those are all tips I would have. Be less judgmental. If you skip a day, it doesn't matter. You know, just the next day is a new day and take 5 minutes. 5 minutes is better than nothing. It doesn't have to be a half an hour like I do. It can be 5 minutes. When you wake up or before you go to bed. And it can be on your Notes app, it can be on a napkin, you know, whatever you have access to. But you've got the notebooks, so use one of those beautiful notebooks and just try tomorrow and see what happens.

I'm gonna try it today, and I'm thinking about it as sort of reaching inside into your mind and kind of untangling your own mind. Kind of—

I love that.

Taking a look at your own mind.

Yeah.

Exactly.

That's a beautiful way to look at it.

Sometimes you might not want to look thin. Who won't all want to look thin?

Sometimes it's easier to look than others. And if you're writing, modeling it, you know, for your kids. Like if you're doing it and you mention you're doing it for 10 minutes, modeling it yourself always helps too.

Got a nice, um, make yourself a cup of tea. Yeah. Sounds good. You've convinced me. I'm definitely gonna start.

I'm gonna be your accountability partner here.

And I know all the scientific benefits, which actually I'll cover in the next episode after this one. So yeah.

Fantastic. Okay.

Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so glad I got to see you.

It's really fun.

But please tell everybody where they can find— spell out all the websites that you want them to go to and your books and also where they can find you if they want you to come to their schools or, you know, what you're—

Oh yeah. I love doing school visits. I love going to schools and talking to kids about creativity and writing and how to write a story. All of this is on my website, which is just my full name, Bianca Turetsky, B-I-A-N-C-A-T-U-R-E-T-S-K-Y.com. And then it's @biancaturetsky at Instagram, Twitter, or X, I guess. Most of the time it's Instagram is what I use the most.

So if they want you to come to their school or something, just reach out to you on Instagram?

Yeah, that works.

Okay, awesome. And we were gonna try to go into some schools together.

Maybe we should definitely get together and make that happen. I'll journal about it tomorrow morning. I'll put it on my vision board. That would be really fun too.

Awesome. Hugs.

Miss you.

Yeah, I miss you too. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Head on over to mindbodyspace.com/podcast to sign up for our email list to get the latest tips and to send us your questions. While you're there, check out our courses and products on time, brain, and stress for kids. And parents. Thanks for joining us.