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When the idea of a newsletter on topics related to mindfulness, coaching, journaling and public speaking blossomed in France last year it looked as time will create a rift and give me some extra hours to reach your email 4 times per year. I am a dreamer! :)

My wish/plan from this newsletter is to offer you content and resources that you can share with the world or only use it for yourself. And that takes time. Planning and life - made me realise that realistically I can send only one email every now and then…It was a hard admission! so while this comes to you from my annual vacation, the next one should reach you in the Christmas vacation :) since it is already planned.

In this number: emotions, journaling, listening and some cool recommendations. Scroll down:

Emotion Wheel

In a study published in National Library of Medicine we can see that people’s everyday life seems profoundly emotional: participants experienced at least one emotion 90% of the time. The most frequent emotion was joy, followed by love and anxiety. Did you know that people experienced positive emotions 2.5 times more often than negative emotions? But they also experience positive and negative emotions simultaneously relatively frequently. In order to be able to name our emotions is best to know how to name what we are dealing with it.

Based on the Plutchik’s wheel of emotions Junto Institute created an amazing visualisation for 102 emotions ranked on 3 levels in order to deepen your awareness and designed as a color wheel.

I have the visual saved ;) and use it every time the need arrives. The first step into recognising and focusing your emotions is needing to build a strong emo-dictionary. You can have the wheel and create a habit of looking at it and identify the emotion - start from the middle with a main one and then move to the extremis.

Let’s say you start with joy then you dig deeper and go with happy and deeper with jubilant = Feeling or expressing great happiness and triumph.

Or if you start with the frequent emotions from beginning anxiety comes out of fear and this a great way to go deeper to understand what trigger some emotions in you and use ways to deal with it.

On the long term you can easily understand the emotions and support others in becoming aware of this.

Pay it forward

If you find the information in this mail interesting please feel free to invite people to join by sharing them the link bellow:

Journaling

Maybe you have this tool added to your daily habits or maybe your are struggling to see what are the benefits. 6 or 7 years ago I discovered the Bullet Journal method. This year the method offered by Ryder Carroll celebrated its eight year in a global event - that was amazing.

Due to this book I created my own system and subtracted a lot from my heavy need of writing everything down. The process of giving a structure to my thoughts and the habit of recording important ideas created awareness in how I process my emotions and what is important on the daily basis. Also, it is a great way to reflect if the activities of the day are serving my vision and mission. And let’s not forget the planning part for which I am well known at my job and cherished by my friends.

In coaching, I invite my clients to keep journals as well. In the short run, this habit improves the way they express them selves, helps them identify their self-talk and saboteurs. And these can be addressed in the coaching sessions since they are real barriers in achieving one’s goal.

In an article from University of Rochester Medical Center you can learn how journaling can support you to gain control on your emotions and improve your mental health. And it also can help:

• reduce anxiety

• prioritisation of things

• identify stressors or triggers

If it something that you feel you want to try and you don’t know where to start - create a reflective habit by taking 10 minutes in the evening and think about your day. Choose one thing that happened and reflect on it.

An easy tool you can use to start reflect is the 4F formula that you can concentrate on the present, learning, emotions while you focus on the future. You can download the design of the formula if you press the button below and read an article with extra information on the topic here.

Learn to listen more

One of my fav mottos is ”Listen to understand, not to reply”. When you think about this as 2 actions that you need to take you in order to bring more awareness in your conversations.
Action 1: Listen to understand - that means to ask curious questions and bring to the table any assumptions you might have in order to be discarded or addressed.

Action 2. Not to reply - means to step back and push down your natural instinct of fight or flight. A conversation should be about respect and cherishing the exchanged info not about proving who is smarter, brighter or whatever adverb you feel is appropriate.

Pay attention to the number of time you interrupt your partner, on the number of times where you use their words in continuing the convo or you high-jack the conversation in order to bring your own opinion/subject/meaning to the table disregarding the other one.

Why? Because this is a way to become more aware and you can change something if you goal is spending quality time where you and the other person leave the conversation richer, happier and accomplished.

Start small: Bring awareness in the ”Good morning” - how is the tone of the person, what about their body language or energy? Do they share more than just a reply? Listen to their words when they respond - in a KaiZen way you can start to listen in order to understand not to reply.

Want to do learn how to be present in conversations, keep calm in conflicts, neutralize self-sabotage talk?
Join the Coaching Journal podcast and listen by pressing the button: