5 Transformational Journal Ideas | A Monk’s Perspective

[Music] good morning everyone and welcome last night i'm here in thailand right now and last night it was just insane the amount of rain because it's rainy season right now was just very heavy and our place flooded a little bit but it's okay and everyone is safe but for me that's why i'm indoors and just continuing with our work but today i'm excited to talk about uh practical tools that would help you and it's about journaling when it comes to buddhism i think many times buddhism is so deep and when people first study buddhism it's they understand it they can conceptualize it somewhat but then the question that i always get asked is then what do i do next with it so as we do these videos i want to make sure you get the conceptual framework of suffering how you heal that suffering and even more importantly give you simple tools that you can use that can improve your daily life and for me when i first came to ordain as a buddhist monk having this journal was very effective and for me i just needed time to process what i was being taught i needed to process what i was learning what i was going through and just the act of writing not typing but the act of having a book that i can open that i can hold a pencil or a pen that i can actually write down where i don't hit the delete button and have everything perfect was so critical and so helpful in my own journey so today i wanted to introduce you to five journals that you can try at home that would help you on your mindfulness practice your meditation practice and even more importantly your spiritual practice this is just an additional tool that will supplement your own personal work so in no particular order feel free to use any of these journals the way that you see fit to help with your current situation with your current lifestyle now and you know your situation better than any of us so again i'll just go through five different journal ideas and feel free to take it and apply them so let's go gratitude journal many times we just get into this habit of negative thinking it becomes a pattern and we do it without even noticing it but one of the effects that we do notice and we do feel is the symptom of it how many of you out there can notice in yourself where you're like um i'm a bit too negative i can sense that i am a bit judgmental i'm a bit critical and i don't look at things from a glass half full lens and i want to shift that and then the second part is then i i don't know how i i can read these quotes i can hear these teaching and i get it conceptually and i want to be a good person i want to be a positive person but i just don't know how so again this is one of the tools that you can apply and how i use the gratitude journal is every single day make a list of 20 to 25 things that you're grateful for and on this list make sure it can be small or it can be big so it doesn't have to be just grand but basic things as today i'm just grateful i have roof over my head today i am grateful because i have money in my bank account today i am grateful and write these actual words today i am grateful because i have or my parents are still alive today i am grateful because i have food on the table today i am grateful because i have a job because i have a savings account because i have a clean refrigerator because i have clean clothes because i have shoes to wear because i have money to pay my cell phone service but again it can be tiny and we forget those little things but every single day i would recommend in the beginning just do that two times a day minimum so when you wake up in the morning or before lunch time just morning time make sure you take that time to write 20 to 25 things you're grateful for also in the evening as well hopefully before you go to bed take the time just to write it again and this is a way for you to break your pattern and then to retrain yourself because we do a lot of things unconsciously uh it becomes just a norm and we don't even think about it so this is the active process of breaking that down and to reform that behavioral pattern the second part that i would add to for me when i used it for my own training was then i did those two times that was a mandatory a must in my day those were my gutter guards but even then because i was serious about my work was any moment that i noticed i was getting negative then i would bring out my journal start writing it and this was my antidote each time and i don't know if you've seen how people train puppies uh trained dogs and you have to just just get it every time catch yourself there you go again you're being negative and this was my response this was my training system that i cultivated for myself to check myself to retrain myself keep myself accountable no one was gonna do that for me no one's gonna do that for you so if you want to really shift yourself develop this create this own system that is helpful for you so again i did this not for one week not for two weeks but two years because i just knew patterns take time they need to be sustainable and i want it to go deep so rewire yourself fully and to the point where i couldn't keep this up just writing then eventually i would go through saying it when i got negative as i'm driving to work then i would just say it out loud 25 things that i'm grateful for but in the beginning as you're starting out train yourself to actually write it down and this is very key and it can shift your life and break your patterns so give it a shot the good you see in others if you haven't seen in one of the videos i talked about being critical and how you can fix that so one of the things that we do in the monastery is that we train our own self catch the behavior that you're engaging just observe yourself neutrally and then do the opposite pattern and for us one of the things that many people come in with it's just we're critical we're always judging other people we're always looking down or pointing out other people's flaws one it does not help you two it actually taints your mind it makes you more negative it clouds your mind so in the moment it might feel good uh you feel like you one up you feel like you're more powerful you feel like you're better than or it gives you this uh deluded i'll say that deluded sense of self-worth and energy and it's fake so knowing that then train yourself fully so break the pattern by keeping this journal there is always people around you and instead of always being critical because that's the pattern that we fall into then use the wisdom and the wisdom is then i'm not gonna go down that track i have that behavior so i'm gonna break it and i'm gonna break it by doing this exercise to train myself and what this exercise says is just keep a journal where on every other page if you're very critical give them more pages but write the person's name on it and instead of looking for their flaws which is normal then train yourself to look at the good that you see in them this person is very passionate you know i i don't agree with this person but i i can give it to them the way they're able to speak up the way they have this drive the way they're able to fight for themselves and they're passionate hey i gotta give that to you look at how the person is always on time this person is always so kind i'm jealous of them and i want to learn that but before we even go into that just observe first and observe the good and see and keep collecting and for me this also took many years of just journaling every day keeping my eyes on my own work and then when i do have to look outside than training yourself to make a system where it helps you at the end of the day and keep running down the list and everyone i feel in my opinion just has the good inside of them they have their strengths and many times we are lacking those things but we judge it incorrectly then we get envious but again go back to just the training and regarding the good that people are doing get as creative as possible because if you really study someone you can learn a lot from them because they have that strength and maybe you are lacking in that area this activity like i said i did it for myself while i was in the monastery i did it when i was a layperson to train myself as well and i even did it when i was working as a therapist in the drug treatment center giving it to my clients because the teenagers and the families that i was working with they're very active and at that time i was doing my work in malibu california the families would fly in from around the world to los angeles international airports they would come do a family session with me and it would be reactive the kids were ready for war they are ready to tear their family apart and always critical because they the kids felt that the parents were just always picking them apart judging them and because many times then their self-esteem may not be so high they maybe feel shameful because of their behavior so to break this pattern for me then i would have the kids just journal journal throughout the week when your parents are actually here in real life and take the time each day to see what are good about what's the good thing about your parents and then the kids realize oh my goodness my parents actually love me they flew here all the way from england they left their work to come here wow my parents said this to me on the phone they genuinely respect me they genuinely genuinely want the best for me wow my parents is my mom is such a hard worker these are the things that she does for her children a b c d and then again it trains the kids to soften their minds and then when their mind is not so critical reactive and judgmental then we can actually do the work and then improve the relationship if we do not do this part and we're just critical and then become more critical and looking at every single situation as a critical lens and you're ready to attack we can never fix the problem we cannot get past this surfacy delusion part that it's not even the real part of the problem so fix this so improve this and train yourself to start to see the positive aspect of other people and when you can do this on a daily basis for a prolonged period of time i can guarantee you your life will shift your mind will soften you'll be less critical you'll be able to put a positive spin not like a fake positive spin but a genuine positive spin on this and you're not so reactive and it will shift your whole relationships with others and also with yourself so give it a shot shadow journal this is something that i'll be creating a real book around because i want to give you the prompts and the templates that you can use but for now just take out any old journal that you have or new journal that you have and just a start but the premise behind a shadow journal is really that there's parts of us that we're not even aware of and the analogy that i can use is like when you're driving a car as a new student you see the student drivers who are driving the most dangerous part is on the right side from behind and on the left side from behind we call that the blind side and you just can't see it and for us we also have that within ourselves because we're in our own experience everything is too close and there's aspects of ourselves that we either have not pay attention to aspects of ourselves that we don't want to see aspects of our self that isn't so clear so this journal for me highlights that part and this was a big shift for my own work and when i came to thailand i knew i wanted to not change but i wanted to transform myself and coming here i didn't want to just look at the good parts of me it's easy that for me i feel like it's just um not as effective because what what what what do i need to do to look at how good i am to see okay just my strengths to see what i'm good at what people say about me okay that's surfacy but i feel like if you want to improve and do your work go for the hard part and the hard part is your shadow side look at the dark side of you and we have that when i meet with people um the most challenging thing and i feel dangerous thing is when people put on a fake front of i'm i'm so good i'm so amazing i'm so positive i can't do those kind of things i don't have greed in me i don't have anger in me i don't have jealousy in me oh that is so dangerous and we call that delusion and just know because as human beings we just have defilements anger greed delusion it's in there otherwise we would call you enlightened and you're not and if you are i apologize but for most of us out there who are on the path this is what we're training ourselves to do so when you are doing that then take the time to uh explore this area and look at it very neutrally without any judgment and for me i made it like a game and to see these aspects of myself that were present and how i did it was really on a new journal take a page and on top of it just write anger and on another page write jealousy another page write greed another page right manipulation another page write ego and pride and there is many more and again like i said i'll try to make a prompt for you but for now this is a good start but explore yourself in real life and these situations and see how they present itself the biggest mistake i see that people make is again we spend our time analyzing everyone else when you just did yourself a disservice because the real work is on looking at yourself keep your eyes on you and by doing this you just keep seeing how these aspects show up in your life and write it down anger how does it present when someone cuts me in front of the lines when i'm getting my food it makes me angry because of this this is what shows up this is what arises and just write it down very neutrally don't make up a story and just keep going then look at your greed how does greed show up how do you talk when you're greedy um what are you greedy for do you want admiration are you greedy for praise are you greedy for attention are you greedy for money and validation and many times people do not know that we assume and we want to be a good person but again this is the work that will open and shift your whole world so go through each of those things the anger greed your pride your resentments that you have and i did this also with the other journals for two three years of just keeping track anytime i would notice that this arise in this kind of situation with this kind of context then what thought pattern it sparked the emotions that it sparked and then also the behavior pattern that it manifested into and i would keep track and i would study myself like a hawk every single day and like i said it was a game where i would see it i'm like oh my god there it is i did not realize how this presented in my life and i did not realize how frequent it is i didn't even realize i spoke that way because of this and you'll start to connect the dot and what is so key about it is because then you'll be conscious of it many times we cannot fix our problems because we don't even know it's a problem so this is the step that will help you to bring that unconscious part into the consciousness and when you can do this then you have a more successful chance at shifting it but i find that people cannot because they haven't done this first part they haven't even identified and see clearly and neutrally what this is so i also have another video if you haven't seen about how to see things neutrally and then how it can solve your problems but for this aspect it's just training your mind using this as one tool keep a journal and keep it of your shadow side and we'll get more into this later but for now this is a good start venting journal for anyone out there because the modern world is very stressful the conditions that many of you are faced with such as a job dealing with kids and family and traffic i know when i was in los angeles and just dealing with three four hours of traffic that alone is so stressful the stuff that you hear on the news tie it in with the pandemic and your safety and quarantine and the unconscious stress that that the energy that is just all around you it can be overwhelming so when that happens many times we just don't have a release yes you can do it through working out yes you can do it through talking yes you can meet with your therapist yes you can many forms but i find that journaling is another tool that you can add to your arsenal and with this is just get out a journal and just write put the date on top and just write what happened and freestyle free form and just allow your thoughts allow your emotions to just run on this page don't censor yourself if you need to say things that are not so appropriate it's okay but just release because many times without doing this and without having a release valve we just carry it and we become toxic and it affects our mood it affects our mental health it affects our biology and i just feel like it gets trapped so this is just one tool that you can use and write without erasing without crossing off but just keep going and brain dump emotion dump on this page every single day because your partner may not want to hear about this your friends may not want to hear about this but this is just a safe space that you have for you and you can dedicate as much time as you need to so give it a shot and the last one is a meditation journal for those who are meditating i would suggest this journal for those who are not meditating i would suggest meditating first and then if you are then add this to your toolbox and what it is for me is so helpful because many times people are putting in the effort they want to train themselves they understand the benefits of meditation but they're not progressing because why because we haven't analyzed and broken down our meditation but the key part of meditation is every single day after your meditation is just dedicate a page to it and just write in the date write in the amount of time that you have been meditating write in your experience write in or draw the images or inner experience that you see and then even most importantly try to figure out when you have a good experience what did you do to get there and does what you eat before affects your meditation does you working out affects your meditation are you too sleepy it exposes that you're not getting enough sleep and it affects your meditation for me through my journaling i realized that having caffeine before a meditation such as green tea no and because i've been doing this for many years now i've studied that pattern and i can see what i can do and what is effective before my meditation during my meditation after my meditation such as when you're having wondering thoughts what tools work for you when you're having drowsiness what tools and technique can you use but for me i was studying myself like a scientist and take the take the parts that are effective and then keep repeating each time so then you save yourself time of guessing and then you can just implement it right away and you'll notice that your progress in meditation will be so effective and this is helpful because you need to develop the skill of observation to develop the skill of neutrality and with this skill then you can develop wisdom when you're calm everything is still everything is stable what you notice is wisdom arises then you just know how to solve this issue it's just an intuitive thing and this is the wise part of you that will help you answer all your questions and this is where it stems from so we will get more into this but again if you are practicing meditation make sure you keep a journal track how you got the results that you did not to attach to the result that's not the point but the point is to study the technique that got you to get to this point what did you do and can you do it to repeat again to have this experience and use this as a training and it will speed up your meditation tremendously so there you have it that's a lot and depending on your lifestyle feel free to use as many of these journals as you want if it's a bit too much and you are overwhelmed or you have a lot of things going on just pick one pick one that would be most helpful for you if you're a negative person i would suggest doing a gratitude journal just start there and keep it going but these things it's helpful because it's free you can do it on your own time it's very safe and it's very private and it's very effective because it shifts your mind it softens your mind it gives you a neutral insight into yourself into other people and into your situation and with this awareness then like i said you can take the next step which is number two and start to fix the problem but that is a lot again but thank you for taking the time to listen and if you get a chance feel free to experiment with it and leave us a comment to see what was effective for you any other journals that you try that is helpful for you and let us know and keep us updated on your progress but as always genuinely from the bottom of my heart just to say thank you to you and i'm supporting your transformation journey and just keep it up and wish sharing all my blessings to you from thailand so thank you and have a good day [Music] you

Channel: Nick Keomahavong

Views: 104,288

Rating: 4.9784527 out of 5

Keywords: a day in the life of a monk, monk, monks, buddhist monk, life of a monk, monk life, the life of a monk, 5 transformational journal ideas, transformational journal ideas, buddhist monk journal ideas, buddhist monk journaling, buddhist monk transformation, buddhist monk mental health, mental health and buddhist monk, journaling for mental health, how to journal with monk, how to journal for transformation, the life of a monk thailand, buddhist monk thailand, mental health monk

Id: hQbDB7QNnTM

Length: 29min 22sec (1762 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021