Creating a WFH Sanctuary: Step 4
4. Journal.
If you’re like “Kelle, you’re a designer. Journaling isn’t related to design.”
I’m here to tell you it is.
Interior design has to do with INTERIOR everything. Especially interior thoughts.
Jon Kabat-Zinn always says, “Wherever you go, there you are” and he’s got a great point.
Ask any designer and they will tell you that interior design has as much to do with a person’s interior dialogue and mindsets as it does actual design. What I’ve learned in my ten years in the field is that ultimately, the quality of a person’s thoughts and beliefs create the quality of their experience. The quality of a person’s life experience shows up around them.
That was deep. That was REAL. That was the true story of interior design that no one on HGTV talks about.
(Except maybe Orlando Soria…He’s dishing up the most real on HGTV these days)
Anyway, no one talks about all this interior stuff because it’s “woo-woo” and deep and weird and hard…but I’m gonna talk about it because it’s important.
TBH the thought of journaling used to make my eyes roll right out of my head.
Like, writing down actual words?
Pshh
Why don’t I pick up lace-making while I’m at it? (Wait, I actually tried that once…)
BUT a couple years ago various things in my life made me quietly crack open like a hard-boiled egg and in the process of learning how to put myself together again, I picked up several new habits.
Life changing habits that I think are worth sharing.
Especially right now.
Journaling was one of them.
Isn’t that one of the most hilarious things about life…If it catches you being all smug, rolling your eyes, scoffing at stuff, it will almost immediately throw something your way that will require you to do the very thing you were rolling your eyes at.
EVERY time.
I figure if my story helps you, then all my cracking was worth it!
I’m going to share the elements of journaling and the questions I ask myself every morning that have helped me tremendously in my personal life and my career because they have greatly improved the quality of my thoughts. My internal dialogue, if you will. Because the quality of our thoughts determines our life experience and why not take that bull by the horns??
This is my daily practice:
I get up at 5am, exercise, light a candle, and then I put on my thought mullet.
That’s right.
Thought + Mullet
High quality, positive, productive thoughts up front and icky, useless, snarly ones in the back.
See…
High quality thoughts for the front of my mullet come from these three main ingredients:
Gratitude
Humility
Self-love
Every morning I ask myself the following questions in order to get my thought mullet on right, because when I don’t…
I. can’t. see.
Here are my three thought mullet questions.
To feel better RIGHT NOW, I challenge you to start answering these questions… right now...
Who are you grateful for and WHY?
Write down at least two people.
Errrr…It is especially important right now to write down a couple good things about whomever is the most annoying to you…(i.e. quarantine buddies).
I’m grateful for my patient husband, Nick, even though he always crunches pickles VERY LOUDLY in my ear! I’m grateful because he helps me dream big. He’s always there ready to solve problems and create solutions, too. When contractors are being lame scaredy cats, he’s not scared. He jumps right in and gets the job done. When I’m thinking small, he pushes me to think big.
I’m also always writing down our daughter, Bailey. Every day, new reasons appear. For one, she’s inspiring. She’s waaay more fabulous than I am and she inspires me to be more confident and adventurous with my own personal style. Her confidence is contagious. So is her patience. She is the kid that gets put in charge of helping other kids at school because of her saintly patience that she inherited from her father. NOT me. The example she sets influences the likes of people like me, who have the opposite of patience, to do better. She helps me gain access to the more patient parts of myself by leading me there by example. Don’t tell her I said that though!
I’m hoping that by opening my journal to you that you’ll see my thought process and how that leads to choosing my thoughts. We CAN choose what we think about and right now, choosing the good over the annoying in regards to our “who” might be helpful.
Choosing our thoughts doesn’t make the annoying, bad or painful thoughts go away, it just takes the energy and redirects it to more productive thoughts. We can always deal with those scraggly thoughts when we’re ready and prepared to deal with them in a healthy and meaningful way, later.
By putting gratitude up front, you are practicing letting go of the things that you can’t control and focusing on that which you CAN control. Letting go of what you can’t control, is one major step towards happiness and a more beautiful life!
“Gratitude makes sense of your past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
2. What are 3 good things happening for you right now?
Yesterday I wrote down that I haven’t caught the house on fire with all my candle burning which led me to thinking “OMG I have a house!”
We forget all that we have sometimes! It’s so frickin easy!
When I was 10 I was so irritated with how long it was taking to become a homeowner. (Remember how I said I don’t have patience before?) Dollhouses were NOT cutting it for me anymore. I needed a REAL house to practice my skillz on. Duh.
Now I have my house. It’s NOT done…like at all...You guys only see the finished parts and those parts don’t even add up to 40% of the whole house. That’s irritating as hell sometimes BUT at least I have a house. At least I haven’t accidentally burned it down, or lost it in a tornado. At least we’re able to keep working on it. At least we’re able to keep going. Even if it’s a snail’s pace.
It was high time I grew some humility from perspective.
Perspective helps me see what IS going right. Like even having a house to burn down and idk maybe NOT complaining about being stuck in it?
Perspective also helps us HELP others because it pulls us out of ourselves so that we can see other people- what they need, what they’re going through, what life is like for them, and that leads to humility.
Perspective also helps us see that everyone has baggage, everyone has a struggle, and everyone has something they wish was a little better.
That insight keeps us grounded, more open, and more grateful.
***In this step I am NOT giving permission to introduce guilt. This is not about guilt. It’s NEVER about guilt because guilt is stupid and USELESS. This is about perspective. Seeing that things could be a lot worse helps us see what we CAN be grateful for. And how we can be grateful for how things ARE. Especially the things that are out of our control because the one way to take control when we don’t have any is to DECIDE how we want to think and act about the situation. Which ultimately leads to how we feel about the situation. We can choose to feel better about ANY situation once we choose to decide what good we can take from it. (That was $3500 in therapy you just received for free!)
3. What are 3 things you love about yourself?
Self-love is so critical because it’s required for loving others. I think self-love and how it leads to loving others is ultimately why ALL. HARD. THINGS. HAPPEN.
Self-love comes from self-respect.
We only gain self-respect by going through hard stuff.
Welp.
Whyyyy, God? Whyyyy???
Because watching ourselves grow helps us love ourselves.
When we watch ourselves not give up when it gets hard, when we see ourselves persist when we want to quit, be generous when we want to hoard, get stronger when we want to break, show compassion when it’s a lot easier not to, show empathy instead of hate, and when we show gratitude for what we’d normally take for granted, we start growing!
When we go through difficult times we get to SEE ourselves. We get to see all kinds of new and beautiful characteristics emerge from our decisions and actions.
We get to see WHAT there is to love.
(That cheese was brought to you straight from Wisconsin)
This morning I wrote that I love my big laugh, my strong will, and my big round face.
This is important because I have NOT loved all three before.
My big laugh scares small children sometimes.
It can be startling, but it can also be what brings the party.
I’ve resented my strong will…Ok, not that often because… STRONG. WILL. Kinda speaks for itself. But I still need to respect it because it makes me get up swinging when I’ve been knocked down and it makes me stand up for my clients when they’re being pushed around.
I don’t take NO for an answer unless there’s a damn good reason for it and there usually isn’t.
My strong will always finds a way to make dreams come true.
I’ve even disliked and wanted to change my big round face.
Ok. Like every other woman alive, I wanted a face that fit the definition of “beautiful”. You know, oval, perfectly symmetrical, golden ratio proportions…definitely NOT big and round like a balloon. Even when I was skinnier than a stick, my face was still a chubby-cherub face. Wanna know why I didn’t like my chubby cherub face?
Because chubby cherub face = I’m a happy little girl that no one has to take seriously.
That’s not a very helpful belief for an entrepreneur, is it?
I believed a sharper face would make people take me more seriously.
LOL!
Well…
Thanks to my dad’s DNA there’s nothing sharp about my face (except for my pointy nose) and there’s nothing symmetrical about my crooked smile and singular dimple, either.
All of which are copy-and-paste versions of his.
Guess which one is my dad….
Hint: It’s NOT the kid on the left with the skinny oval face!
Here’s where the HARD came in that led to me gaining some respect and love for my big round face:
My dad died suddenly about two years ago. He was only 67. I’m still pretty irritated with him about that. The nerve! Ditching us all so soon for his forever nap…He’s got some explaining to do!
Anyway, you know how you don’t really miss seeing someone’s face until you don’t get to see it anymore?
DON’T GET ALL SAD!
Remember how I literally have his same big face???
I still see him all the time in the mirror!
Once my dad was gone, my face that I once wanted to trade in became a gift!
All 800 square feet of it!
My insecurity about being taken seriously because of my cherub face vanished too because I learned how frickin strong I am. I had a front row seat to the “one of hardest things a person goes through in this life” show. I watched myself take the pain head on while keeping my heart open. I took on the responsibilities my dad left for me and took all the life lessons, the memories, the good and the bad, and I learned everything I could in order to grow from the pain. I watched myself get up, get back to running a business, and make way better choices to take care of myself so that I don’t check out for my forever nap as early as he did. I have to much to do!
I learned my strength and my big open heart on the inside is WHY I have a big, round face on the outside.
And I wouldn’t change a thing about it! - Thanks, dad!
P.S. My own journey with self love has led me to do whatever is within my power to help other women love themselves too. That’s why we take time every Wednesday to feature a Wild Woman that we’re looking up to- so that more women can see the beauty on the inside that comes from strength, determination, perseverance, and kindness instead of the outer beauty that the world has so narrowly defined.
AND because we ALL deserve the outer reflection of our best interior selves!
Eeeeeeeeeee…..thanks, dad!
Now write down 3 things you love about yourself and get that thought mullet on right!
Need something shiny and new to write with???
You’re in luck!
You may have noticed by now that we’re OBSESSED with Blackwing pencils and their sexy gold ferrules.
We love them so much, we want to give away a whole set of 12 Blackwing Pearls with shiny gold ferrules!
We’re also going to make sure one lucky winner has an entire journaling set complete with a beautiful Blackwing notebook, a special 2-step sharpener, and a set of eraser replacements!
You can find the deets on how to enter the giveaway on our Instagram!
Now, go get out that journal and I’ll see you here again in a few days for Step 5
Stay well!
