EMBARK ON A JOURNEY TO FIND YOUR AUTHENTIC VOICE AND THE PATHS TO YOUR UNIQUELY PASSIONATE, POWERFUL, AND PURPOSEFUL LIFE
Excerpts from the book:
Do you worry about the meaning of life, the future of the planet, the nature of reality, and how to contribute to creating a peaceful world? Do people tell you to lower your standards when you wish they would raise theirs? Is your big soft, lonely heart breaking on a regular basis? In Saving Your Rainforest Mind: A Guided Journal for the Curious, Creative, Smart, & Sensitive, I am your guide to recovering your strength, authenticity, and radiance–the radiance that may have been crushed under the pressure to be smartest, under the bully’s taunts, schooling frustrations, expectations of exemplary achievement and traditional success, devastating loneliness, overwhelm, underwhelm, and the rubble of your ancestral baggage…In this journal, you will be shown how to increase your understanding, acceptance, and celebration of your multiple complexities…
SAMPLE CHAPTER TITLES AND PROMPTS
Do People Tell You to Lower Your Standards When You Wish They Would Raise Theirs?
Perhaps you feel pressure to be a high achiever because you’ve been told how smart you are since you were little; this has become your identity or what you believe makes you lovable. What would you like to say to your child self about that now? What makes that little one lovable? Compassion? Kindness? Curiosity? Drive? Sense of humor? Write them a love letter, pointing out their strengths. See if they want to write back to you or just curl up in your lap…
When Failure is Failure and When it is Not
Make a list of your so-called failures. Analyze it carefully. How many are insignificant now that time has passed and you’re less connected to them? How many took you to new adventures that you would not have had otherwise? How many are mistakes but not really failures? How many are losses but not failures? How many might you use to make your memoir memorable?…
Does Your Empathy Overwhelm You?
When you have so much empathy, you may have an automatic response to shrink, shut down, or try to disappear when in public and confronted by something uncomfortable. What if it was a safer choice to get bigger, expand, and breathe more deeply? It may seem counterintuitive, but it can help when you feel overwhelmed. Instead of becoming tense and shut down, allow the energy to keep moving. It can move through you and out your feet into the earth. You’re bigger than the emotion coming at you. You breathe and expand, and it goes right by you or through you. What image works for you to represent your expan- sion? …
Move your Existential Depression
Write a letter to your depression. See it as a part of you but not all of you, even if it takes up a lot of your energy and time. Imagine it has something to teach you or show you. Picture your depression. What are the colors, shapes, textures? Draw it. If you’re so inclined, sing it. Give your depression a song, a voice. Dance it. How does it move? You may think depression doesn’t move, but see what happens when you move your depression…
This is Your Brain on Giftedness
Draw a picture of your brain. What’s going on in there? How would you picture the ideas, pathways, meanderings, questions, quests, feelings, thoughts, and doubts? Use many colors or media, or make it 3D. Let it be as detailed, odd, or unrealistic as you want. Maybe you have different departments. Maybe it extends into the rest of your body so you end up drawing your brain-mind-body. Is there a dance or a song that expresses this?…
Finding Your Purpose(s)
Start a mind map. Put “Purpose(s)” in the middle of the page, and go at it. Don’t think too much. What comes to mind? Don’t be practical or logical. Make it the largest, most complex mind map ever known. If you don’t want to draw it by hand, find a mind map app. Go a little crazy. This is the beginning. When you’re exhausted, stop and go back to it later. Use colored pencils/pens to emphasize your favorite ideas. See if a plan starts to emerge…
MY JOURNAL ENTRIES
At the end of the book, I include some of my own relatively recent journal entries. I wanted to share my own vulnerabilities, reflections, insights, and processes. I wanted to show you my fears, my insecurities, my broken heart, and my resilience–so you know you are not alone. On those very hard overwhelming or underwhelming days, you can join with me and together we can save and love our curious, creative, smart, and sensitive rainforest minds.
The book is available now to order at your independent bookstore and through this link to Amazon.
And if you are unsure if journaling is for you, click on this link (My Journal Keeps Me Sane-ish) to read about my own experience with my journals and why it is so beneficial!
_________________________________
To my bloggEEs: I am so excited to share this with you! Please let us know in the comments what you think. And, if you would be so kind to add a review on Amazon, that will help with sales. I’d love to read some of your entries (including drawings) so, if you’d like, email photos of them to me at paula@rainforestmind.com. When you send them, let me know if I have permission to share them on the blog and/or social media. (with or without your name) Much love to you all, as always. And thank you for your support! Here is the link to Amazon. Or ask your favorite independent bookstore to carry it! (It might not be accessible to bookstores for another week.)
Leave a Reply