THINK POSITIVE - well you've got to really!

 

I was looking through recent pages to select something to blog today, when my eyes lit on this one.  I was impressed that I'd manage to write in the vertical for a change, and loved the colours.  Then I read what I'd put and realised it was a perfect fit for how I am feeling today ... forgive me if I tend to revisit the same themes over and over, but then again my life is a bit like going around in an endless hamster wheel at the moment!!

Anyway if it also seems odd that I hardly remember a page made recently - its because the condition I have also affects memory and concentration.  Which is difficult, and I have to ask people not to tell me things later in the day when I will instantly forget them, or fend off furious friends and relatives who are saying "but I TOLD you" ... yes well you probably did, but I am capable of forgetting almost anything!  Its a bit of a trial really.  Anyway this page was made (I now see) when the grandchildren had just been to visit, and I was suffering the after-effects.  They also came last weekend.  Nuff said.

The page below is an experiment with water colours - which I do love but have always seen as a bit wishy washy for journalling, when I get more intense vivid shades with acrylics.  Feel free to disagree. Everyone has different art materials which just work for them - I do myself!

Pretty much the first thing I did was add in this picture of a rabbit (hare?) person - what it stands for is that feeling of pretty much being brought to your knees, and only managing to get along by crawling.  That (I now recall) is how it felt that day, and I'm not far off the same place today.  So I began on the far left, writing down how tired and sad I was feeling etc etc., but didn't get very far before I had to shout "stop" in my own ear and try to talk myself out of it.  Well it doesn't do to wallow does it?

So then the page sprouted this flower as a positive symbol, and I began the necessary process of persuading myself that things aren't so bad, and you just have to keep on keeping on.  Like you do.

Anyway after (yet another) positive lecture to myself the page was finished, and while I don't particularly recall if this exercise worked on that particular day, it has today.  I've said and written a lot about positive thinking, but I genuinely believe in it.  You can be in exactly the same place but feel very differently about where you are through exercising the choice to be half full rather than half empty!  Call me Pollyanna playing the Glad Game if you like, but it works for me when not a lot else does ...

One thing I particularly like about journalling is how getting feelings down on a page is really helpful and therapeutic, healing almost.  Then going back and looking at a page again can bring back the thought processes you went through at the time - a useful aide-memoire for someone like me who is VERY good at forgetting stuff!