Nancy:Louise Hay often reminded me that the relationship I have with my self is the longest relationship I’ll ever have. So best make it a great one. And I honestly believe the number one way we can create an ongoing, truly honoring, truth telling, loving relationship with our selves is by journaling.
Hi,and welcome to Your Permission Prescription. The podcast that teaches you how to confidently say “yes” to you and consciously create the life you desire. I’m Nancy Levin, best-selling author, master life coach, and founder of Levin Life Coach Academy. But it wasn’t too long a go that I was a burnt-out people-pleaser.
Living my life for everyone around me and ignoring my own needs.Fast forward to today, and I’ve successfully coached thousands of recovering people-pleasers to set boundaries with themselves and the people around them. So they can live a more fulfilling life on their own terms. I created Your Permission Prescription to help you do the same.
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Welcome back to another episode of Your Permission Prescription. And as you likely know, I recently published a brand new book called The Art of Change, and it is a guided journal, eight weeks to making a meaning fulshift in your life. And I thought I would share a bit about my own journey with journaling and share a bit with you about why journaling is unlike any other practice that we can cultivate for self-inquiry,self-understanding,
self-love, self-forgiveness, self-acceptance. All the things.
I began journaling when I was about 11 years old and my journaling, in itially, was away for me to quote un quote communicate with my brother who had died. So, I was two years old when my six year old brother died,and I wanted a way to communicate, to share, to express myself, and journaling became that expression, the form of expression, and my first journaling was in the form of poems.
And I, even just sort of saying that I get like a little sort of feeling in my heart space about how wise my young self was to be writing poetry and how could she possibly have known that young me, that grown up me,would go on to get a master’s degree in poetry. So, you know, the writing began as a way for me to make sense of the world as a way for me to connect, as away to express, I was aloner as a child.
I was, I still am a loner, quite frankly. And there was something very comforting about writing for me. It was away that If e lt less alone because I could really feel myself with me, and I thought I would take a moment here to just share a couple of things. One, so in my, in my first book I ever published called Writing for My Life, Reclaiming the Lost Pieces of Me,which is, what I sort of call like a little poetic memoir.
The opening piece in the book is a little foreshadowing, and it simply is four lines, and it says,
And that is very much how it was for me, that if something happened, I needed to write about it because that’s what had it be real. That’s what had me be able to sort of dissect it, make sense of it, make order of it, and in the same book, in the poetry book, there’s a note to the reader at the beginning. This book was published now over a decade ago,which is really cool. And I published a first edition and then a second edition, a revised edition.
And here’s the note to the reader from the revised edition. This book was first published in January, 2011. It was and is a collection of poems. But since the first edition, I’ve discovered that it is actually more than just a book of poetry, more than just my own story on a page. It is a bridge from my own experience to that of somanyothers.
Mine is not a solo story. I have read these poems before audiences of 4 to 4,000. I have heard from people of all age sand circumstances. Those who have loved poetry and those who never understood it, that they find themselves and their lives reflected, revealed through my words. Writing is how I solve and dissolve complex equations of the heart and head.
It is my personal commitment to revealing as poetry has the ability to connect us to one another. We discover our selves in words. Unveiled and immersed in the precision of the present moment. I have been writing to capture and process the details of my life since I was 11 in 75 volumes of personal journal.
Out of these pages,my poems emerge, mined from the mosaic of memory, fragments of language, introspection and observation. The practice of poetry is my way finding. It’s my guide, distilling and illuminating the essence of a fixed moment in time, like a snapshot, the pure, conciseextraction of an experience like espresso.
In someway, it didn’t happen if I didn’t write about it. These are my poems, but not only mine, my story, but yours too. A portalin to the story of
awakening, internal wrestling, self-awareness, ending an 18 year marriage, and the freedom that came thereafter. Making myself vulnerable through these words has opened my eyes to the ways in which each of our stories are intertwined, coursing through one another.
It’s not only the meaning, more the feeling, that resonates between us. We are all of us writing for our lives. This newly revised and updated edition is divided into three sections, each corresponding to one of the stages of reclaiming myself. Here you will find the poems and the context that became the stepping stones along my journey from fear to self-love and forgiveness.
I offer my heart to you with the hope that it serves as a compass to lead you back to yourself and an invitation to find and trust your own voice.
So, it’s not so much about the physical journal itself. It’s really more about what came alive in me and what had me feel free enough to name what was true, what is true, and the truth is ever evolving. One of the lines in apoem of mine is “A remembered truth is a dead thing”, and you. What I think about that is what is true today may not be true tomorrow,and that’sokay.
Our truth can evolve.
Do you ever feel like you’re running in circles or chasing a version of yourself that’s not really you? Well,I’ve got some big news… This winter,
you’reinvited to join me,Nancy Levin, on a transformative 8-week journey.Each week we’ll explore one of the eight dimensions of reinvention,following the chapters of my new book,The Art of Change.
You’ll receive weekly prompts, exercises, and guidance towards reinvention, delivered directly to your inbox.Designedt o lead to the heart of who you are, this powerful 8-week journey willculminatein an interactive liveworkshop with me in January 2023.
Givey ourself this gift. And remember: change begins with your commitment to your own evolution.
Don’t wait to make a meaningful shift in yourlife.
Sign-up today by visiting www.NancyLevin.com/Change. Let’s divein to the ocean of change—together.
I can’t imagine mylife without journaling. It’s one of the reasons that I’m so in love with my book, The Art of Change. I feel so grateful to have beenable to create a journal for you because journaling has been such aprofound life force for me, and I wanted to create it in such a way that allows yout o approach it in small, bite-sized realistic journaling prompts.
So I like to set out with something small and see where it takes me. I’m a big fan of setting a timer to write. In fact, one of the writing processes that I
practice called Wild Writing, which I know I’ve talked about, and I have a whole podcast about it, a previous episode one of the practices in wild writing is setting a timer for 15 minutes, and I’m a big fan of that.
I love to set a timer and write. There’s no one way to journal. There’s no one way to write poetry. There’s no one way to express ourselves with words, and the invitation here is to explore what feels enlivening to you. I don’t look at my commitment to journaling daily as a chore. I look at it as a “get to do.”
I look at it as a time when I get to deeply connect and commune with myself and ask myself some hard questions or look at something that I may not have been ready to look at until now. My journaling is really a way for me to have conversations with parts of myself and to sort of test drive new ways of thinking.
My journal throughout my entire life has been my companion. My journal travels with me, my journal goes to restaurants with me. When I’m hiking, I will often make notes in my notes app in my phone. When I finish a hardbound journal, I will return to it and go through it and look for the gems, look for the lines, look for the concepts that I know I wanna revisit.
If you are a lifelong journaler, if you are curious about journaling, if you are new to it, if you’re afraid of it, I really invite you to pick up The Art of Change and allow me to guide you day by day through the process of opening up to yourself.
Louise Hay often reminded me that the relationship I have with myself is the longest relationship I’ll ever have. So best make it a great one. And I honestly believe the number one way we can create an ongoing, truly honoring, truth telling loving relationship with ourselves is by journaling.
There was a short period of time in my life when I stopped journaling, and it was after I destroyed the journals and I was still with my husband at the time, and I was really afraid of writing anything down again, for it being found.
So I didn’t write for a while. Then I started writing on scraps of paper that I would just demolish, shred, and throw away. And then I started writing on my computer but kept everything on a thumb drive. So there was nothing, there was no evidence, if you will. There was just the thumb drive that I carried with me almost everywhere.
And then once I was safe on my own again, I started keeping a hard copy journal. And I remember that the period of time between destroying all the journals and having a hard bound journal again, that period of time in between was so disorienting to me. The fear of writing something down and having it be found, the disconnection I felt with myself in not being able to see myself reflected on the page was devastating and there was such a feeling of, I wanted to say reunion with myself. There was such a feeling of reunion with myself once I was on my own and began writing in a journal again.
So, Whether you’re a lifelong journaler, whether you are someone who’s curious or wanting to start. The Art of Change, will meet you exactly where you are and guide you day by day toward this inner inquiry and self-discovery, and I’m giddy at the knowing that you will experience a connection with yourself through this process that you have not yet had.
So, if you’re curious, I would love the opportunity to be your guide with The Art of Change so that you can experience a self-connection, a self-reunion like never before.
Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. If you loved what you heard, I’d be so grateful if you’d leave a review and share your experience.
Even better follow this podcast so you never miss a new episode. And if you’d like some extra support or guidance, head over to my Transform Together Facebook group for an engaged community.
Where you can speak your truth, receive inspiration and ask for help as you navigate life’s journey, or visit my website, Nancylevin.com, where you can find resources to help guide your path to reclaiming what’s truly important to you. Thanks again for joining me.