Episode 17: Confessions of a Journalist

Hey, good morning and welcome to Stand Sure Coaching. My name is Rob Anderson and I'm the host of Stand Sure Coaching. I have been finding opportunities To have fun again. Now let me, let me, let me talk about that a little bit. I actually went to my wife the other night, and it was one of those really vulnerable moments. And it's one of those vulnerable moments that you can only share with someone who you are deeply connected with. And I felt like it was a state of emergency in our relationship, and really, you know, me as a person. And what I shared with her is, I know for us, you know, I know how You and I, I know how to take us out on a fact date. So I came across this article, Fact Date Versus Fun Date, and I started looking back at the number of times that we might go grab dinner and we grabbed the laptop so we could work on the business. Or We would go out and sit in a coffee shop to figure out finances. As, you know, as we've gone through this big financial change. We're doing planning around a dive trip. And It hit me that I stopped taking her out for fun dates. What wound up happening, great conversation, and I was begging her. I was almost to the point of tears, and I was begging her, please teach me How to have fun again. And it was something I was even taking into my journaling life, my prayer life, my meditation life. And this weekend, it all opened up. So, on Saturday, we went out. And went to downtown Boise. And they've got these Lime scooters. If you live in a large city, you've seen where you can rent these battery-operated scooters. Sometimes they've got battery-operated bikes. Anyway, we got some battery-operated scooters and we toured downtown. Now, it had been years since she had been to downtown Boise. She grew up here. Well, she grew up in Boise, but it had been years since she'd really toured downtown. And I've got an office that I work out of that's downtown. So I've learned a little more about downtown. But we just spent the day touring on scooters. I took her to one of my favorite taco places. We went over to the craft market that's held in downtown Boise. We just did a lot of these different activities. And man, we had a blast. Grabbed some dinner on the way back home, watched a movie. About 7 o'clock or so, neither one of us really ready to hang it up for the night, so we went out to the backyard, started, you know, doing our routine of watering all the plants and everything. And it was just cool enough, which is odd for July, but it's just cool enough that I started a fire in our fire pit. We sat out there for 4 hours just talking, just hanging out, just enjoying each other's company. And it was just a whole wide range of topics from music to— Teenage life to parts of my early military life to things that, you know, really she let me just babble, which was nice. And you see, that's where our relationship was founded on, was just hanging out and talking. We could get, you know, we would head for a dive trip to go down to Utah. And this is in the days where we were just friends. And we would talk for hours. The reason I can remember all of that and add more to that story is because of journaling. You know, life moves really fast. And sometimes It moves too fast. For me, journaling is one of the few ways I found to just slow things down enough to actually catch up with myself. And when I journal, it's not— I'm not being poetic. I'm not writing a college thesis. Sometimes I don't journal in paragraphs. Or sentences. Sometimes I journal with mind mapping. Sometimes my journaling is grabbing the ticket stubs from a movie we went to, or a ferry ride we took while we're on a scuba trip, or the scuba park paper pass that they give you. An airplane ticket receipt, and I might write something down about that. And sometimes it's just cataloging what it is. Sometimes there's some deep thought and reflection that goes around it. It's not about writing perfect sentences; it's about making space. It's space to think. It's space to feel, to remember, to actually listen to what's going on inside. You see, journaling became really important to me during different seasons of transition, times where I felt stuck, I felt uncertain, maybe I was overwhelmed. And honestly, it's helped me get clear on what I care about, what I need to let go of, where I want to go next. It's like sitting down with a version of yourself who's maybe a little wiser, because once the words are out and they're out there on paper, you see things differently. I've also found that journaling works on every level. I use journaling a lot and teach it a lot for my divers. I don't teach dive logs. So switching over to the Scuba Rob component here, but I don't teach logging dives. I think that's boring and people give up on it. But if you take your dive logging and you treat it as almost like that diary that Indiana Jones carried with all of his different adventures and the clues and— You know, the Grail diary he got from his father. And you can see in all the episodes of the Indiana Jones series, he's always referring back to something he's learned in the past. And so I introduced that into diving. And I introduced it into diving because it was things that I had used in adventure. Previously. But whether you're a diver that's logging a dive and processing what that experience meant to you, or you're just wanting, you know, you're just writing about a conversation that you had today that stirred something up, it all matters. And the practice, it's not just about capturing memories. But it's also about looking at the mindset. It's about showing up for yourself with curiosity instead of judgment. So if, if you've never journaled, or it's been a long time, let me share with you 3 simple tips to help you get started and get back into it. So tip number 1, don't edit yourself. It's not a college essay. It's not something you're going to submit to anyone else. Let the words be messy. Let them be raw. Let them be real, because that's who you are at that point. Sometimes the best clarity comes from the stuff that's hard to write at first. I'll write something down in my journal. I may go back 6 months later. I may go back 6 days later. And as I'm reflecting on it, Modify on a different page and point out that, you know, I said this, but maybe I really meant that. Or I said, you know, I made this comment, but I meant something else or had other thoughts about it. Sometimes that best clarity comes from the stuff that's really hard to put down on paper. All right. Step number 2, start with a prompt. And I just got a brand new journal. And I, now I've carried a lot of different journals for different purposes, stuff for diving, stuff for when I was teaching survival, stuff when I would go out into the woods. But my favorite journal was one that my mom got for me about 25 years ago. And it has stayed by my side all the way through it. But it's really starting to show its wear, and I wanted to be able to preserve it. So it's got its keepsake place right now. What I love about it is it has refillable pages. For the past 2 or 3 years, I've looked to replace that journal. And I finally found one from a company called Moonster. It uses A5 replacement pages, and they're blank. But looking at those blank pages can be intimidating. So give yourself a starting point. And you can always try forming your own questions, like, what's been sitting heavy, you know, on my heart lately? What's on my mind? What's keeping me awake at night? What did I learn today? What am I avoiding? Those are all prompts that can open the door. Over on standsurecoaching.com, under resources, this week I am putting in a downloadable journaling prompts Just to get you started. Later on this year, I'm launching a journaling prompts book. So be looking forward to that. But you got to start somewhere. A lot of times for those blank pages, I start out with a mind map. If you don't know what that is, over on StanSherardCoaching.com, there's a mind map video. Number 3, make it a ritual. Don't make it a task. Because if you get into that mindset, I've got to journal today, I have to do this, it impacts a totally different part of your brain. And it's not the part that's going to help you really release what's in there. Create a ritual. Sit by a fire, grab a drink. If you need to, light candles, go to a special coffee shop, drive out to a special place. Make journaling a moment. Don't make journaling a chore. The more that it feels like a gift to yourself, the more likely you are for showing up. So something I did a long, long time ago is the only time I would drink caramel lattes Is when I was journaling, so it was like a reward or something I would look forward to to sit down and journal. Now, by the way, I do a lot of impromptu journaling as well. My journal stays with me; it's in my backpack. If Brooks and I are out shopping, sometimes I'll just get a moment. I pull off to myself and go through my journal. Make it something that's a gift to yourself. You know, the other part of this, and maybe this is actually tip 4, I said I'd do 3 tips, but tip 4, your journal has to be inviting. I look at a lot of different journals. Mine happens to be leather-bound. It's refillable. It's got lines. I can't write on blank paper. I saw some really interesting journals this last week at the Boise Capital Market where somebody was taking old books, stuff that we love in childhood or even our teenage years or even adult I found a really cool journal. Now, I'm not going to get it because I've got the journal I love, but what he did is he took a 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook, and basically he unbinds the book, then he puts lined pages And intersperses those through parts of the book. So like the player profiles and the different races and rolling the dice and all like that, that's all interspersed with actual journaling pages. And he did that with so many other different books. You know, Curious George was out there. There was stuff from Star Trek. There was— I mean, you name it. If you think of any old book, what he does is he goes out and he finds these old books, unbounds them, and then rebounds them with lined journaling paper in there. And interspersed throughout the lined journaling paper is parts of that book. And so it brings back a lot of memories, especially if you're fond of books. You can use just a notebook. I've seen people do journaling online. They'll go in, they'll form a WordPress site, they lock it down so it's just them, or if they want to share, they'll open it up. But make it something that speaks to you, something that's inviting to you. Journaling is very, very personal. And so however you capture that, Has to be personal as well. So yeah, this is why journaling is important. It's a major component of my life. It helps me tune in, slow down, and it helps me connect all the dots, whether I'm writing about a dive I just took or the direction I want my life to head. In journaling, the page is always going to meet you where you are, and that is a powerful place to begin. By the way, I'm launching 2 courses. One is going to be locally here in the Treasure Valley area out of Meridian at my fire pit. I'm doing a journaling workshop. I'll post the date down in the comments, but I'm also launching an online journaling workshop. And so we're looking forward to that. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this, and I hope to see you around the proverbial journaling campfire. Thanks, Rob. Thank you so much. Oh hey, by the way, for more information, I should always be saying this. Go out to www.stansurecoaching.com, and you can also catch me out there on social media. I've got very low subscribers, so I could really use your help. I'm on TikTok as well as Instagram. We'd love to see you out there. Okay, that's it. I'm out.