Nurture Your Creative Mind Through Journaling

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Nurture Your Creative Mind Through Journaling

Journaling can really help you to nurture your creative mind.  Whether you’re a photographer, artist or writer, your creativity is crucial to your ability to carry out your job.  Therefore, it consistently needs to be nurtured. So, how can journaling help with this? Below you’ll discover how to nurture your creative mind through journaling.

First things first – Choosing the right journal

If you want to get the most out of your creative journal, you’re going to need to make sure you actually enjoy using it.  As silly as it may sound, the first step to this is to ensure you like the look of the journal.  You will notice I mention this in almost every post.  I can't tell you how many journals I've stopped using because I didn't like the paper or pens bled through all of the time or it had lines.  Whatever.  #papersnob - what can I say?

How the journal is presented can make a surprising difference on how inspired and motivated you feel to use it. So, take your time to browse through the various journals on the market and choose one which speaks to you.

The benefits of a dream journal

There’s a lot of ways you can use the journal to inspire creativity. However, one you may not have considered using is dream journaling.  Many authors, artists, and musicians have discovered dream journals can help nurture their creativity. Dreams take on many different forms and can, therefore, be used to inspire creative ideas.

The lead singer of the band “Train”, famously opened up in an interview that the smash hit “Drops of Jupiter” was written after he had a dream.  So, if you are stuck for ideas, recording your dreams can be a great way to unlock your creativity once again.

Learning to trust the authority in your voice

When you start to keep a creative journal, it trains you to trust the authority in your voice. So, what does this mean? Well, it basically means you learn to stop double guessing and questioning your creativity.  A creative journal doesn’t have rules. Instead, it encourages you to write or draw freely. There are no corrections made to anything and nothing you put in the journal is ever wrong. So,  you’ll start to trust your creativity, rather than question it.

Growing your thoughts and insights

Creativity often stems from thoughts and insights. After you’ve jotted your thoughts down into the journal, you can go back to them another day and expand upon what you wrote.  Look at the ideas you’ve written down and see how they can be expanded. Often, it’s just the initial ideas which are the hard part. Once they’re written down, you should find it easier to expand upon them.

As you can see, nurturing your creativity is pretty simple if you follow the above ideas. The key is to use the journal every single day. You may need to force yourself to use it some days, but the effort you put in will definitely be worth it.

What to Do When Mental Health Becomes a Disability

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When we think of mental health problems, we tend to look at the symptoms of given conditions, but don’t really take time to consider how they can impact an individual’s day to day life and navigation of the world. They can actually become a serious disability, negatively impacting the quality of someone’s life in various ways. So, if you feel that you or a loved one’s mental health problem is becoming a disability, here’s everything you need to know!

When Does a Mental Health Issue Become a Disability?

When people are dealing with mild mental health concerns, they may be able to carry on with their day to day tasks uninterrupted. However, if you find that the symptoms and experience of a mental health issue are interfering with your day to day life and making day to day activities difficult to carry out, it is likely that it has become a disability. Some mental health issues are more likely to interfere with your general functioning than others. Conditions to note include:

• Dementia
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• Depression
• Bipolar Disorder
• Schizophrenia

However, it is important to remember that any mental health condition could develop into a disability, so if you feel that you are struggling, contact a medical professional who will be able to diagnose you, survey your symptoms, and measure the degree to which they are impacting your day to day life.

Dealing With Its Effects on Your Professional Life

If your mental health concern has become a disability, you are likely to notice that it impacts almost every area of your life, including your professional life. This can be extremely frustrating, as not only will you be experiencing the negative symptoms that come hand in hand with your condition, but you may find yourself in difficult situations, such as finding that your work contract is terminated due to an inability to attend work, an inability to make it into work on time, or an inability to carry out expected tasks and roles for a given period of time. Alternatively, you may find it difficult to land a job in the first place due to your condition. This can have a profoundly negative impact on your finances, placing you in an even worse situation than suffering from the disability alone. If you feel that you are experiencing prejudice when being interviewed for a job role, are experiencing prejudice in the workplace, or have been wrongfully expelled from the workplace due to your condition, you may want to file disability claims.

Dealing With Its Effects on Your Social Life

Mental health can also have a negative impact on your social life. If you do not inform loved ones of your condition, they may take offense to your behavior or actions. This can cause tension. However, if you are open with others and explain why you might not be as social, active, or involved, they should be understanding and help you through these negative times. If you are feeling alone, there are plenty of support groups and helplines out there to help you through this difficult experience!

Hopefully, the above information has helped you to understand how mental health problems can be linked to disability, and how to deal with their effects on your life in general!

Bullet Journaling 101: The Fundamentals of a #Bujo

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Bullet Journals 101

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past several months, you have probably heard of bullet journaling. However, understand exactly what it is and what is involved is a little trickier.

Boost Your Creativity with These Journaling Ideas

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Boost Your Creativity with These Journaling Ideas

Are you looking to boost your creativity through journaling?

While a creative journal can really help to develop and nurture creativity, it can be difficult knowing where to start. There’s also going to be times where a certain journaling method may stop working for you for a while. Whether you’re looking to start a creative journal, or you’re simply looking for a new method to try out, below you’ll discover some awesome journaling ideas.

September Reading List - a little late!

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A little late with my September reading list, but I did quit one job, start another, and have just generally been really busy.  

Depression, PPD, and Decades of Living Through It: When Postpartum Strikes

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This will hopefully be the last chapter I have to write on suffering through depression. In case you missed the first installments in the series, you can find them here.

The trial was over - yippee! We could finally focus on the goodness we had going on. Our little LB was coming soon.

Helping You And Your Family To Be The Best Versions Of Yourselves

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When you have a family, you just want everyone to be the best versions of themselves. You want everyone to be happy, healthy, and successful. It’s only natural to care about your loved ones. Of course, it can be hard to be the best version of yourself and ensure that your family members are striving for the same goal. But you shouldn’t have to support your family on your own, as we’ll discuss in this article, a group effort is needed. The following pieces of advice should help you and your family to be the best versions of yourselves.

Enhance Your Blog's Image with These Visual Tips

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Making your blog visually appealing is key to getting people to read it. If it looks boring, cluttered or out of date, it can put people off. Whether you write about your life or you try to offer informative posts about a specialist subject, your readers will be more likely to stick around if everything looks good. Don't worry if your blog isn't currently looking its best or you're just getting started with a new blog. You can create a beautiful blog that is pleasing to the eye and encourages people to keep reading. Here are some things you can do.

How to Achieve Any Goal

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Pretty much everyone has goals, right? For some people, it might simply be to make that promotion and earn a little more money and for some, it might be something a bit more ambitious like giving up work and traveling the world for a few years; it doesn’t really matter what our goals are, they are always important to us, and it is possible to achieve them if we set our minds to it.

Four Smart Ways To Turn Your Blog Into A Business

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Can you make a mint blogging?

5 Styles of Creative Journaling

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5 Styles of Creative Journaling

Did you know there are several different styles of creative journaling? 

Motivate Yourself to Journal Daily

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Motivate Yourself to Journal Daily

Knowing why you should journal is just the beginning; you then need to motivate yourself to keep up with it. It is generally recommended that you write in your journal every day but doing it on a regular basis is also helpful. Look at these easy ways to motivate yourself to keep writing in the journal.

Bella Inspired Grace Receives Blogger Recognition Award!

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Depression, PPD, and Decades of Living Through It: Chapter 3: Part 3

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So, now I'm pregnant!  That's fantastic, right?  That's what all the affirmations I'd been doing had been sending out into the universe and it happened!  YES!  Except I hate being pregnant or so I learned...

To read click:  part 1 and part 2.

So You Want to Start a Blog? Blogging Platforms - A Simple Review

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If you have ever read anything on starting a blog, you've likely heard of Blogger and Wordpress.  Blogger was one of the first platforms created for the blogging world in the sense we understand it today.  It was also acquired by Google in 2003.  In 2003, Wordpress also began.  The latest statistic is that Wordpress.org runs 30% of the world's websites including big companies like CNN, Fortune, NBC, and TechCrunch.

Gratitude and Incorporating It into Everyday Life

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We all get into the rush and tumble of everyday life. When we do, we tend to forget being grateful for what we have, tend to only focus on the negative, and/or keep imagining all of the other stuff we want/"need". I am certainly guilty of all of these. In fact, as I reviewed my gratitude log, I realized in 3 weeks time, I only did 6 entries. I didn't exactly meet the everyday goal...

Depression, PPD, and Decades of Living Through It: Chapter 3: Part 2

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As I was entering my mid-thirties, I had a lot of things going for me. I had my dream job, I was engaged, we were moving into a great townhouse, I had picked my dream china pattern, and my future husband loves silver. There were some not so great things intertwined in my want to be fairy tale life. For the first part, go here.

August Reading List

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Instead of waiting until the end of the month to do a reading list, I thought I should start posting earlier instead of after the fact. So this month, I've been obsessed with The Maze Runner series.

In the first book, The Maze Runner, Thomas arrives in the Glade without his memory in a box that deposits him in the midst of a group of boys. Think Lord of the Flies meets the future that is in total upheaval. There is definitely a pecking order and each boy is assigned a job. The Glade is surrounded by walls on each side that close up every night. Runners have the job of trying to map the maze that encircles The Glade to try and find a way of escape. It's very much a young adult read but it's a good story of what trust is, is the individual or group more important, and what determines friendship.

The Scorch Trials continues the Maze Runner saga. They've escaped the maze but what follows is anything but better. The Gladers learn the Sun Flare has ruined the world as they knew and has infected most of the population with "the flare". WCKED is the group that put them in maze to try to find a cure and now they are testing them even further in this next set of trials set in The Scorch where humans don't quite act like humans but more like crazed, rabid animals.

The Death Cure is the third installment of the saga. I'm still in the middle of getting through this one, but it definitely keeps you on the edge of your seat. Thomas continues to fight for his life, his friends, and to try and take down WCKED. More to come as I finish.

The Maze Runner movie franchise starts out very much in line with the first book. However, then it dramatically departs from the storyline in the books. That being said, although different, I think they are still very good. Some of the things depicted in the books would just be too difficult to try and convey on the big screen.

The Tea Girl from Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See is by far one of the most moving books I've read in a long while. I have loved Lisa See's books since I first read Shanghai Girls which was the first encounter I had with her work. I've since read most of her books, heard her speak, and been a loyal fan for years. The Tea Girl follows an Akha through her life in Yunnan province.

The Akha people are one of the 55 minority groups that exist within China's borders. Yes, China definitely has more than just Han majority. I actually spent 3 weeks in Yunnan province in 2001 and went to some of the places mentioned in The Tea Girl. It is a beautiful province that was extremely poor both in the novel and my personal experience.

Times have changed over the past 20 years and with the growth of the tea industry, Yunnan has become famous for their Pu'er tea. Tea is at the center of this story and how it shapes the life of Liyan. It is how her peasant family made a meager living prior to the opening of China and how Liyan ultimately triumphs. It the story of loss, love, struggle, enduring and overcoming.

It is also the story of mothers and daughters - a unique bond that defines who we are as girls and women the world over no matter race, creed, religion, or background. Read this book!

What have you been reading?