You’ll Live a Different Life If You Start Telling Yourself a different story: How Journaling Can Change Your Life

The therapist lets the words hang in the room after he asks them, his eyes not leaving mine.

You are not ever telling your heart to beat, and you are never not telling yourself a story. 

“Uh….. so you’re asking how did I really actually feel when they said they love me?” I’m awkwardly rephrasing, repeating his question, to buy myself time, to somehow pay attention a bit longer to feel whatever it is that I am feeling. 

Late afternoon sunlight moves across the table and lights the side of a vase, fills it, and there it is — it’s all I’ve got, and it’s only one word, and the light of it fills me. 

I whisper it, brimming a bit with leaked emotion, spilling light:

“Grateful.” 

I’m just overwhelmed — hushes —- with gratefulness for love, for the miraculous grace of love. 

“You will need to write this all down, and let me tell you why,” the therapist leans forward. 

“Journal out these moments of feeling love like a screenplay — write how did it make you you feel, what did they say, where did they say it, how they said it, what was the feeling in your body, where was the feeling, and what happened next?  Engage the neurons in your mind around this good moment — and you will begin to literally rewire your mind, your story —- and begin to imagine and anticipate a good story for your future.”

Stringing your thoughts together with lines of ink — begins to unknot and rewire the processes in your mind. 

I’m nodding… 

Stringing your thoughts together with lines of ink — begins to unknot and rewire the processes in your mind. 

Because The Word Himself made your mind — the process of journaling words begins to remake your mind. 

Ink is more than just cheap therapy — ink actually begins to rewrite your one precious mind. 

“Just journal out this conversation, and what you will be doing is returning again to this liminal moment, to this thin space where you saw how God was present right here in someone’s love, in someone’s words,” the therapist’s nodding. 

And I’m writing this all down, how writing things down will write new patterns into thinking, will write a new script into your life. 

Because The Word Himself made your mind — the process of journaling words begins to remake your mind. 

Because this world is not some accident, but is made by design, by the Word — this then is a world of stories, and you are always telling yourself story upon story.

You are not ever telling your heart to beat, and you are never not telling yourself a story. 

Word-made beings, we live and breathe and have our being in the stories that we tell ourselves.

The research of Smorti, Pananti and Rizzo (2010), that asked patients diagnosed to keep a long-term journal, discovered that journaling helped “to create many autobiographical connections between their life events” and it’s true:

When you pull out a pen and journal, dot your i’s and cross your t’s —- you start to connect the dots of your life — and see the full story of who you are and where you are, so you don’t feel lost, so you are wholly found. 

And I can see it, even as I’m scrawling these ink scrolls of ideas across the page: 

The more we journal our story — the more we journey into a deeper understanding of our story. 

The more we journal our story — the more we journey into a deeper understanding of our story. 

We may journal and write our stories down in straight lines, but none of our stories are linear.

Just as the Word Himself encircles us, just as this world the Word made is circular, so our stories are circular, and in the returning again and again to our stories, this reviewing of our stories, actually gives us a different view of our story. 

We only understand parts of our story through distance — and the distance from our hearts to the end of our pens.

What is the story I’m telling myself about our relationship? What do I believe is happening in this story? What is my longing in this story? What am I afraid of in this story? 

We only understand parts of our story through distance — and the distance from our hearts to the end of our pens.

What is my deep worry in this story? 

What is my deep want in this story?

Fall victim to small stories —- and you live a shrivelled life. 

Live large, magnanimous, generous, charitable stories —-and you’re given a large, generous, magnanimous life. 

The story you tell yourself —- is the story that ends up shaping your life. 

And if you take the time to write down and remember these moments of God’s lovingkindness —- this is what literally re-members you.

I think about this on the drive home through late fall’s golden light, I think about this when I’m telling the Farmer Husband just as we turn out the last light, about how we only start living a different life when we start telling ourselves a different story. 

We only start living a different life when we start telling ourselves a different story. 

“You know, Ann, after all these years, what I can say is…” his voice’s tender as he sits on the edge of the bed in this gentle circle of lamplight. “The story you tell yourself can be the most dangerous thing about you — or the most freeing thing about you.” 

And I feel like I’m standing in so much light: 

There is a Word that is Truer and greater than your story that is here. “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us….” (John 1:14)

This is a world of stories, and we have to write the lines of our story into the freedom and safety and comfort and reality of the bigger and Truer Story. 

And whatever part of your story that didn’t get what it needed, can find what it needs in the Word Himself and His story. 

The story you tell yourself —- is the story that ends up shaping your life. 

When the sun rises the next day, I reach for a pen like a flaming pillar of fire to see the way, part the waves; I reach for a pen and page. 

Fresh Day. 

Fresh Mercies.

Fresh Pages. 

And all of us made by the Word, made of story and word, begin to write… into a Fresh Us!

All this golden light just keeps finding us this time of year, helps us to just keep finding all of ourselves and the whole, good story.

Wanna Change Your Life? Start Changing the Story You’re Telling Yourself

Take our free 4 Week Journaling Masterclass: FRESH PAGES

Starts October 1st : Fresh Day, Fresh Mercies, Fresh Pages, Fresh US!

Pre-Order either of both of my 2 (!!) New Journals with you & all these free gifts are yours!

Your complimentary enrolment in Ann’s 4-Week Journaling Masterclass: FRESH PAGES with video teachings & live-streamed classes. Learn how to write to change your life!

2. A welcome to our private SACRED Prayer Community, gathering together on Zoom from the quiet, intimate space of The Village Table.

3. Your own “Go Deeper” Journaling Toolkit with journaling prompts, a prayer guide, Identity in Christ printable bookmarks with daily notes to soul, a playlist & a resource guide to our favorite journaling supplies!

4. Your own seat in our private online community of journalers, with regular live-streamed journaling retreats

5. The chance to win your own writing retreat on Ann’s farm, staying in a shepherd’s hut on the river…

Just Pre-Order either one of our Life-Changing Journals right now, & receive all these free gifts, including:

Our Free 4 Wk JOURNALING MASTERCLASS: FRESH PAGES

Pre-order now to begin with October 1st! Fresh Pages, Fresh Us!