WRITE INTO YOURSELF

Writing is not only a form of art that is reserved for the creative, informed and entertaining wordsmiths. It’s also a powerful personal development technique that can aid you in building a better relationship with self, which can improve how you navigate other areas of your life.

Be the storyteller that detangles the details of your narrative.

It’s not about writing for others or as others do. It’s about writing for yourself with complete honesty to get a better understanding of how you, the main character, are showing up for your life. When you read this story of you back to yourself, you open space to be the higher self.

The higher self is the reader of the story, a version of you that sees a wholesome view of who you are and what you are going through. As the reader, you see beyond just the roles and duties that your character fulfills. You see you for who you are.

Communication

The difficulty to communicate your needs to others, and even to yourself, can make it that much harder to achieve anything in your life.  It may seem like you don’t know what you want; like you are stubborn, confused or just unworthy of having a decent life and relationships. The real issue may lie in your struggle to understand and feel what it is that you need, and so naturally it’s hard for you to express it. If you can’t even express it, how will you live it? When you don’t wrestle with your circumstances that deeply, you only focus on the symptoms instead of the cause. The symptoms being your emotions, behaviour and how others receive you.

Writing can help you grasp and articulate your needs. Not only to the rest of the world but to yourself. There is an emancipation that comes with writing to, and for, yourself that helps you access a level of honesty and clarity that is harder to reach when communicating to others, or keeping something as a thought that only plays out in the mind. The story that you relay back to yourself with your words gives you a more detailed and thorough view of what may be your ego’s blind spot.

Write. Reveal your story so that you can get to the real matter. Read the matter back to yourself and sort through it some more if need be. The most important thing to keep asking yourself at every part of your story is “Why?”

Break this down until you hit the root of the narrative.

With any story that you ever read; you were able to understand a character’s development because of the fuller narrative that was presented. Use your own words to connect with your narrative. Maybe the cause is smaller than what your character made it out to be. Maybe your character is distracted from something else that is more important and real.

It’s all in the story. Connect with your narrative.

Now of course, how effective this is, depends on how intentional you are. It may help to start off with some breathing exercises that will bring you down to a calm state from where you can set your intention.

This may not come as easily as it sounds in the beginning. Some of what comes up may be hard to face too. Remember this though: In those pages you have a safe space where no harm or judgment can come your way for spilling your truth, no matter how ridiculous or messy it may be. Keep this safety as your motivation, despite what the conditioned terrorising voice says. Your written words have the capacity to carry you, even when it seems like you can’t carry yourself.  Trust that.

Relationships

Writing to yourself can help you maintain healthier relationships, whether it is with a lover, colleague, family, friend – anyone really who forms a significant part of your life. In connecting with the narrative on why you feel and behave a certain kind of way, you can communicate to others more confidently and even express yourself more peacefully. In as much as we have the right to communicate our discomfort about something, we can try to avoid merely dumping our truth as a heap of confusion, frustration and anger that jeopardies relationships unnecessarily.

Maybe:

You’ve had an argument with your lover.

You know that you deserve that work promotion.

Your friend or colleague is treating you unfairly.

With words as your companion you can figure these situations out with yourself first so that you can approach the person with a clear and honest story that doesn’t see you blindly projecting. The storyteller does research before relaying the tale – in this case, it is research about you that can be informed by the deeper part of you that you reach through writing.  A further benefit is that you will be able to make a more sound and informed decision around your situation with that person because you showed up for yourself, and to them, fairly. This is the power of owning your own story with your own written words.

Your Body 

With enough attention and presence, the writing process can also inform you about your body’s ailments. Suppressed energy/emotions and events are stored in the body, and your written story can help you locate where and how your body is impacted by a situation. A good idea for this is to sit in a comfortable position where your spine is up right. Take note of how your body responds to what you are writing down – feel where it is that you are tensing up, what bodily sensations arise and how you are breathing. All of this tells you how the story is sitting in your body and can show you which part of your body is sick because of it. You can then remedy it with an appropriate releasing technique (There are tons of these on google).  This part of the storytelling process can save you from illnesses, most of which are a manifestation of a dis-ease that lives in the mind and spirit.

The solutions lie within us and writing is a creative and harmless way to uncover the answers. Once again, you don’t need to be a wordsmith for all this. You are a living person and by virtue of that you are a story. That is more than enough to qualify you for words.

Fetch yourself in the story of you. Write your way into yourself.