About me: nobody told me...

Nobody Told Me:

What did nobody tell you that you wished you had known?

What would you like to pass on to other people – your friends, your children, particularly - to save them grief?

Start with the prompt:

I wish someone had told me that ...

About me: how I felt...

How I felt

Find a photo of yourself on an important day such as last day of school, university graduation, your wedding photo, someone else’s wedding, a party, or a family occasion. Now write about how you remember feeling as compared to what you LOOK like you are feeling in the picture - do you feel you have accomplished anything that you were hoping to on that day?

About me: I'd rather...

I’d rather…

Life doesn’t always work out the way you’d like it to. Sometimes you yearn to be doing something else, being somewhere else, even being WITH someone else…

So - what would you rather do/be/have/say?

• I'd rather go to the dentist than have to face the hairdresser!


• I'd rather be with my family than with anyone else.


• I'd rather get up early and get on with stuff than lounge around in bed all morning wasting time
  


• I'd rather...

This is a great journalling prompt – I’d rather – see where it takes you!

About me: feelings

Write down a list of emotions

Here are a few to start you off:

amused,              angry,

anxious,             bored,

cautious,            cheerful,

confident,           confused,

delighted,           ecstatic,

embarrassed,         energetic,

frustrated,          happy,

hopeful,             jealous,

lonely,              sad,

surprised,           unperturbed,

valiant,             warm,

wise

Which emotions do you feel most often? Are you a soppy romantic? Are you jolly and optimistic? Me, I'm a glass half empty kind of girl, but despite caution being my middle name, I'd like to think I know how to enjoy myself!

Now pick a photo you took. Can remember your feelings when you took the picture. Why did you take the picture? What is the meaning behind it? What is there that someone else would not see and you would have to point out?

About me: stress

Stress

"There is no stress in the world, only people thinking stressful thoughts." -- Wayne Dyer

Something we do all face from time to time - stress!

What stresses you out most?
What stressful thoughts have dominated your thinking recently ?
What could you do to limit these thoughts and reduce the stress in your daily life?
Have you overcome stress in the past - how did you do it?

Journalling:
It's important to have both short-term and long-term ways to combat stress - and first of all, to be aware of one's own symptoms and triggers. Insomnia and illness are two of the big symptoms for me, and triggers include being out of control - lack of control over my work calendar, for example, or a stressful situation with a building project in the house which I can't seem to affect. Short-term ways to deal with stress include having a fragrant hot bath, chocolate (of course) and going to visit beautiful places.

About Me: milestones

Milestones

What are the milestones in your life?

When were you happiest, or felt most successful? When did you face a big change?

Why was it a milestone - how did you feel about it?

For me these might be:

• Going to secondary school
• the first time I made an audience laugh on-stage
• learning to play the guitar
• my first part-time job
• my first proper job – moving to London
• getting my first computer
• getting married
• having my first baby
• when my eldest started nursery school
• when my eldest left home!

What are your milestones? They are probably quite different. How many of them do you have accompanying photos or memorabilia for?

About Me: your life in literature

"When a person dies, a library is burned." -- Edmund White

It's either your favourite subject for writing and journalling about - or it's something you never touch - yourself! We'll come back to writing about yourself in future, but for now, here is a week's worth of prompts about writing about yourself. Today:

If your life were a book – what would be its title?

Jot down some possible chapter headings.

The most obvious are chronological – babyhood, childhood, nursery school, infant school etc. Create a timeline of your life so far.