I woke up at 2 am this morning. It’s now 3:47 am. I had planned to get up at 5 am to exercise because I have class at 8:30 at the other campus this morning. I think the reason I struggled to sleep was because I was doing that thing where I obsess over something in my dream and I can’t sleep well over it. In my dream, I think I worked at my last school and there were some ridiculous expectations that I needed to meet and I was worried over it and running it in my mind over and over and over again. I hate when I dream like that because it makes me really struggle to fall back asleep. It may be that my brain has some difficult things to work out on those nights. I’m not really sure. It’s cool to know that as I’m sleeping, my brain is working all the things out that I learned the previous day, for me, and getting them all straightened out. It’s a really cool setup that God has made for us! I’m writing now to try to maybe get my thoughts out of my head to clear it a bit and I’ve been writing a LOT the past two days and it’s been great for me to really get the gems out of my head and onto paper, well in this case on the computer. Anyway, some things I was thinking about after I woke up were sources of knowledge. I was curious if there were any Jim Rohn seminars available on the internet after hearing Tony Robbins tell his story about where he got started. It was Jim Rohn who really helped him take off. He did whatever he could to get the 2000 dollars or 1200 dollars (can’t remember exactly how much it was for sure) that he needed to attend one of Jim Rohn’s seminars. Today, to attend a T Robbins seminar, it’s really expensive! But if Jim Rohns’ seminars are available online, that would be perfect as his stuff should be cheap at this point, since at this point it would be considered quite old. I don’t want to spend a lot of money on knowledge although I think it is very valuable. I guess there’s too much of it freely available out there to feel like it’s worth it to spend money on certain sources. I might be more willing if my money was just my money, but since my husband makes most of our money I feel a bit guilty to spend it on things that I want and could possibly get other places for free. I don’t want to steal it, however. Anyway, I found a 12-session program on YouTube which is perfect! I might check that out later, but right now I’m reading through the Four Hour Work Week and I should probably finish that first, since I only have it for a limited time from the library. What a blessing that library app is! It’s been awesome and I’ve already learned so much from the books that I’ve listened to from there. I also have access to Tim’s book “Tribe of Mentors” on there without even having to wait for it! That was one of the biggest bonuses. The Lost Art of Listening was also a really great book! Possibly even life-changing in the way that I learned how I should listen. It would probably be good to revisit the scoring rubric again to brush up and stay focused on the important points of listening that I haven’t mastered just yet. I caught myself last night waiting for my friend to finish her sentence so that I could ask her another question. While it was about her, I have to be more patient and listen to what people are saying and slow down a bit in conversations. I shouldn’t let other people’s habits and behaviors affect my own. When I met two old coworkers last night, it was challenging to listen carefully for like 1.5 hours on the same topic (my old workplace) although I should be able to relate to the frustration that the school creates for them. Definitely Sasha makes it hard to get much in. She talks a bit too much, I think, for her own good. Ha. I’m so glad that I’m naturally not like that. It’s not even something I need to work at – caring about what others have to say and giving them time to say it and listening and caring. It comes naturally to me and I think that’s such a blessing. Once I found that resource from Jim Rohn, I felt a bit more at ease, but the other things that were on my mind were learning Chinese and my next steps for pursuing my passions that I have been thinking about for the past couple of days. I’m really having some major Aha moments in the past few days, thanks to the questions in the Four Hour Work week and the thing I read in Tools of Titans about writing 3 pages freehand and not stopping to edit or reread or even think really. That single activity, if I do it daily is life-transforming, in my opinion. The guy who gave the advice also mentioned that. I want to go back and reread that section to see exactly what he said. It’s definitely true that it helps something to click in your brain and everything is starting to come together for me. It’s 100% for sure that whenever I was learning stuff from all these different sources, it was majority just input. Now that I’m spending more time on thinking which is basically what this process is… thinking on paper, I’m really starting to actually GET the concepts I’ve been learning all this time. I remember hearing someone say that you don’t really need to go outside yourself to find the answers you need. They are in your heart. I think this is true! I’m really seeing it in this writing-thinking process. I believe if I continue to do this daily, I will see amazing life-changing results. I’m already so pumped about getting started on my day today at 3 am! I think it is primarily due to this new writing habit I’m starting to create. I think it’s amazing and I will continue to do it from now on, I believe or at least until I don’t need to anymore. It may help me get my thoughts really organized on a regular basis without even having to write anymore. Who knows. But as long as it’s benefiting me, I don’t see any reason why I should stop. So today I have two classes. Those classes are mostly girls and they are lovely. I feel really great teaching them! It’s such a pleasure! The activity I have prepared for today is really nice, too. I think it’s a great way to get to know the students more and give them a chance to share some things about themselves. I want to ask the girls about how it feels to hear that someone listened to what they said about themselves and remembered it to repeat back to them. Whenever I was having conversations with my students in the other class that I don’t even really like, it was really nice to hear them repeat back to me what I said. It was meaningful that they listened, and I hope to implement that more in my life with other people in conversations to let them know that I listened to what they said and I really understood it. It’s affirming to hear what you told someone repeated back to you and gives you a really good feeling maybe of being cared for or of significance. I’m not sure exactly what it is about it, but it’s great. I hope this will be something that I always remember and can implement more and more in my life. I think it’s an excellent practice and can really help people to feel heard and cared about and significant. I should really focus on that today in my interaction with my boss after my classes. We have plans to have lunch together today. Other than my classes and that lunch, I have no other plans so far today. I should write Liz though and wish her a good flight for Thursday and a nice trip. She’s such a wonderful friend of mine and it seems that she is going through the exact same situation I was going through with my husband whenever we first started dating. It’s amazing how me and my two closest friends basically followed the same path. That is something to be so thankful for because although there are some differences in our lives now, we have so much in common as well and can really understand each other. Having those two wonderful friends is such a blessing in my life. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I think you’re lucky to find one good friend that you can really understand and who understands you SO WELL, but I have two! It’s really amazing. They will be my life-long friends ALWAYS. I love them so much and maybe they could even meet each other one day! That would be really cool. It would be so interesting! I wonder how they would get along with each other. I’m so thankful that my relationship with Liz seems to be totally repaired now. I would even like to visit her if I could in Scotland. I’m sure my husband would let me go. It would probably be good for him to miss me anyway! Haha! Speaking of being blessed, what an amazing husband I have. He’s such a sweetie. I love how he always wants to hug me in the middle of the night and really just all the time. I think he may even be more affectionate than me, and it’s just wonderful. I’m so thankful to have such a nice life partner in him. That was another thing that I was really thinking about this morning – Hawaii and how we could have encounters with humpback whales again. We definitely will! I’m really excited about seeing them up close! I got to see some close breaches on our last trip, but none of them came up to really check us out. This time I definitely expect that this will happen for us! I’m so excited about it, too, now as I’m thinking about it. I’m really excited about staying in that nice community as well right next to a golf course. It’s going to be beautiful there and it will be great to get a taste of that rich lifestyle. I loved the Waikoloa village beach community. It was beautiful and so fancy! It must be wonderful to live in a place like that if you are prepared to really appreciate it. I’m sure a lot of people that live there don’t, sadly. I’d say most people don’t focus so much on gratitude, which is a loss for them. I have to remember to always focus on gratitude and I should maybe add a quote to my wall for that just to be sure to always remember it. I’m still sorting out what my morning routine should be to some extent. I know that I definitely want to include this freehand writing exercise into my schedule each day. I’m not 100% sure if I should do it in the morning or a later time once I’ve gathered some good questions to write about. I may do both. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to do this in the morning and then do it again later in the day. I think I should do it any time I feel unsure or stressed or worried to get myself back on the right track and to sort out my thoughts and feelings. Any time that I feel fear it definitely makes sense to rationalize it out and how irrational I’m being to sort out my emotions. I guess I would need quick access to my laptop at all times to be able to do that, but I usually have it nearby so that shouldn’t be a problem. Worst-case scenario I could just take notes on my phone, but handwriting notes takes much longer and gives me more time to think than just typing out my ideas nearly as fast as I think of them like on here. Anyway, for today I hope to accomplish something related to Chinese as well as work on my whiteboard goals and my passion projects. I think one definite think I should improve in the future is making sure that the things I put on the whiteboard are well thought out and very meaningful for my life. I also need to make sure today that I message a friend or family member to accomplish the task on my board. Chinese is an essential daily as well. I might should get my habit tracker back out and put on there to do my daily writing, Chinese, and contacting a friend and daily exercise, although I never forget the daily exercise. That has really become a non-negotiable thing for me. I hope that I can make other useful habits the same, especially this writing one. Today I don’t feel as much advantage in this as I did the past two days. That may be because I didn’t write this based on a question and I’m not pondering or stressing out over anything particular at the moment. I think for now, I should just focus on doing the best I can and keep in mind my objective that I wrote and posted next to my whiteboard. I should be sure to keep my thoughts positive and take immediate action when things start heading in a different direction. It’s really nice to take this time out for writing, though, because it helps me to calm down on the crazy expectations I have on myself that are very unrealistic. I am improving on that through this writing. That’s a huge improvement! That was something that had become a really serious problem in my life. I’m glad it’s been getting cut out the past few days and I have just been so much more clear in my thinking and more positive about my life and future. Right now I’m feeling really excited at the possibilities ahead. I always tell myself that I know that I can accomplish anything that I set my mind to, but I just don’t know what I want to set my mind to. For now, I know that I want to accomplish my goal of being only a positive influence on the other people I come into contact with. I know that I want to master my emotions to be totally in control of them at all times. I know that learning Chinese will make my life more meaningful here in China, but actually I’m not sure that I really know that. I recite it in my mind when I think about why I should learn Chinese but I think even louder in my head the reason that it is the proper thing to do, the respectful thing to do, overpowers that reason and I feel like it doesn’t motivate me so much. I have been questioning whether learning Chinese is something that can REALLY benefit me for my future or is it a distraction and I know it deep down and that’s why I continue not getting really serious about studying it. This past week I have become more serious though about getting a better strategy for learning it, however. As long as we are living in China, I definitely think it’s worth learning Chinese and it’s an excellent opportunity to practice what I learned on a daily basis if I’m actually willing to. I should really think about this more. Maybe I could even write about it sometime soon to get all of my thoughts out on the matter. I might should start on that right now as I have about 30 minutes before I need to get started on my day today. My wish for today is that I can fill all of my time with useful activities to take me more into the direction that I want to go. That’s pretty vague so my specific ask for today is that I can use all of my time usefully to:
1. Improve my Chinese
2. Become more clear on what I want for myself for the future and how I can better help people which is basically what I want overall because it gives me a deep feeling of contentment and meaning and purpose in my life
3. Better get a grasp on what I want to do right now to move in the direction I want to go with my interests and passions
4. Enjoy today and love every minute of this life that I have today
5. Appreciate everything that there is to appreciate and focus more on gratitude throughout my day today
6. Avoid having empty time where I feel a bit lost about what to do with my time right now as I have quite a bit of free time actually
7. I hope to make a difference in some way in as many people’s lives as possible that I come into contact with today
My Journey through Journaling 