Photo by Maysie

The One Tool You Need to Lead a Balanced Life is a great guest post by Haider Al-Mosawi on Zen Habits.

The idea is that you create a Personal Growth Map from the Seven Life Areas that are our lives, then take the following actions:

1. List all the activities you can do to advance each life area
2. Consider activities that stretch across several life areas
3. Select the activities you want to carry out for each life area

When these actions are combined they provide you with a more balanced approach to life and help you gain control while satisfying your needs across multiple life areas.

For example, one activity might be jogging. The loneliness of the long-distance runner is a recognised fact, but finding a jogging partner or group, and extending that to other pastimes (like blogging about it) would create a life / balance system across a number of life areas — recreational, social, creative.

Read the post at Zen Habits or go straight to Personal Growth Map then use your journal to start creating balance.

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Tokoni believes everyone has a story to tell.

If you can’t get your message across in 140 characters on Twitter, join the community on Tokoni and tell your story to an audience that appreciates what you have to say.

It’s an easy tool to use. Set up your profile and start sharing your stories.  You can even start to record your autobiography or memoir one story at a time. When finished adding a story, choose a category and add tags (keywords) so your story can be easily found through search.

Create a Hub

A hub is a place for Tokoni members (Tokos) to collaborate, share and discuss stories around a topic. Hubs can be created from any number of places, like your profile page, a story page, and from the hubs link on the navigation bar on the top of every page.  When you create a hub you can name it, give it a description, add images or even video, and categories.

Let me tell you a story…

There was once a family of immigrants who decided to flee their country after a world-wide conflict left many people without homes and little hope for the future. The family first arrived in the Far North where they had no experience of the weather, the culture and the way of life in general.

They found it hard to relate to a new land and hoped to return home one day, but gradually, without even realising it was happening, they adapted to the new way of life.

When finally they had worked hard enough to save the money for the journey home, much to their surprise they realised that they didn’t want to go. The land they had fled to was their new home and that’s where they decided to stay.

Stories change the way we relate to each other

If I tell you this is my family story and show you photos from my family album you will probably now have a very different impression of me from when you first began this article.

Perhaps your background is similar. Somewhere in your history are people who faced the same challenges. If this is so, then we share parts of the story, and in this way we have established common ground on which to relate to each other. Even if your life experience bears no resemblance to mine, you have shared some of my experiences through my story.

If you don’t have a personal blog, telling your story on Tokoni is a great way to get published and share your story with others.

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Mind maps are a great way to set personal goals, make decisions, solve problems and plan for the future. Mind maps are also a great journaling tool and can be used to plan, communicate and develop creative ideas.

But first of all, what’s a mind map?

A mind map is like a map of a city. Let’s say you’re thinking about your next holiday. The central point of your mind city is ‘holiday’ but thoughts about where you could go, how much you might spend, who would go with you perhaps, branch out like freeways from that central starting point. As you go along one route you notice little sub-routes branching off at odd intersections. Following these new paths leads again to interesting new branch points.

If you could watch your thought processes you would see the map expanding, creating new patterns and adding new sub-branches of its own accord, quickly, surely and with great complexity.

Mind mapping is basically the process of capturing these thoughts quickly and easily by drawing a diagram that looks, in essence, very similar to a map of your mind. Or at least how you might think your mind processes would look if you were able to take a snapshot of your thought paths.

Get started now

Here’s what you need to get started:

• a large sheet of paper
• coloured pens and pencils
• imagination

Start at the centre of your page. Find an image or a picture of your central idea. You could draw something, use a photograph, or perhaps a picture from a magazine. If your central idea is HOLIDAY use an image of the place you want to get to or a picture of a plane, boat, car etc.

Draw thick branches radiating out from your centre point. Make sure to use separate colours for each branch. Colour adds energy and helps your creative thinking. Write a key word along each branch, for example, PLACE, MONEY, CLOTHES, EQUIPMENT.

When you have your main branch ideas start adding the sub-branches. These are the thoughts that naturally generate in relation to your theme. For example, if one branch is DESTINATION you could add branches for the different places you would like to visit. Let’s say London, Paris, Berlin. These branches would then break down into third-level branches such as Museum, Tower, Harrods etc.

Print clear key words on all the sub-branches and add small images as you go. Eventually you might fill the whole sheet.

As you continue I can guarantee you will see connections that would never occur to you if you were writing a simple list.

mind map

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This week’s guest post is from Journaling Instructor, Catherine Franz. She shares 8 helpful tips that are sure to improve your experience of journaling.

Mix a martini, don’t forget the olives, or pour yourself a tea, relax and enjoy!

There are no hard-set rules for keeping a journal. How often you write, time you spend, and how rigorously you maintain a regular journaling schedule are matters of personal choice and circumstance. Therefore, it is important to find what works for you. Here are nine guidelines to assist you.

1. Allow for regular writing times. Find a time of day that works well for you and use this time every day. As much as possible, control interruptions during this time.

2. Give yourself an inviting writing environment. If you need quiet space, find a time that you can write without noise and interruption. If the hum of the world around you is soothing rather than distracting, plan to write during a time when other people will be engaged in their own work and not looking over your shoulder.

3. Develop a centering ritual. Associating journaling with another pleasurable habit can guide to strengthen the routine and create an atmosphere of self-nurturing. When you are ready to write in your journal, consider pouring yourself a cup of tea or coffee. Play relaxing music. Take a moment for meditation, deep breathing, or prayer.

4. Prompt your writing with a routine self-reflection
question: Triggers such as “What are you feeling right now?” or “What’s on your mind?” Anais Nin suggests asking “what feels vivid, warm, or near to you at the moment?”

5. Write because you desire to write, because you know it’s a comfortable place to be you. Don’t allow journaling to become anobligation or chore. Remember not to demand more of yourself than you can give. If you have missed a day, or several days, accept that journaling, like life, is imperfect and go on. Write the next time you have a chance.

6. Create a positive feedback loop. As you continue to use the journal as an opportunity to be with and learn about yourself, you will find that the practice gains a momentum all its own. Discovering your own hidden depths piques your curiosity and stimulates you to continue, setting up a positive feedback loop between your conscious and
unconscious mind.

7. Emphasize process rather than product. An important purpose of journal writing is simply expressing and recording your thoughts and feelings. Concentrate on the process of writing — keeping the flow of words rather than worrying about the result. If your goal is to have specific audiences read your piece, go back to it later and edit it. Use your journal as the raw material for more polished writing.

8. Learn from your own experiences. It is always good to reread your entries a month or so down the road. It demonstrates your growth — a nice pat on the back for all of us. Look for patterns and correlations. What improved, what stayed the same? Learning from yourself is so much more gentler on the self-esteem. Use objectivity to review your life from a different perspective with hindsight.

Relax, have fun, and don’t forget to laugh! Journal writing is its own reward. Once you get started, your journal will become another one of your good friends — one who is always available and never presents a deafening ear. Your journal loves you for being you.

Catherine Franz has taught journaling for the last 15 years, including two US Presidents and First Ladies, and hundreds of workshops internationally. She currently has two informational documents available on journaling at:  http://abundance.blogs.com

Article Source:   http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Catherine_Franz

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