Travel the Universe with Your Journal (Without Leaving Your House)

You are going to be delighted with the excellent information you’ll see here today as our guest blogger, Dolly Garland of Kaizen Journaling drops in with some great information and a fun assignment.

If you thought that your journal was just there to record your minute-by-minute activities, or to vent your frustrations or write a poem or two, think again. A journal is only as limited as your imagination. It can be the most powerful tool in your arsenal for personal and professional growth. The only barrier is how you limit yourself.

And that applies to travel. Not just the world. But the universe.

Have you ever said to yourself, “I wish I could go there?”

Maybe you don’t have the money. Maybe you have family members who don’t want to travel. Or maybe the places you want to travel to are not accessible. You are limited only by your imagination, so today I’m going to show you how you can travel the universe with your journal, without leaving your house.

Create segments in your journal for places you want to visit

Are you particularly obsessed by one location? I have a friend who wants to go to India more than anything. She’s immersed herself in the culture, movies, everything. She wants it desperately. Do you have that feeling?

Start a travel journal now. Make it a combination of facts and hopes and imagination.

Facts: collect data that interest you. You learn about a particular city or a monument you would want to see. Paste its picture, draw it, or simply write its name. But don’t stop there. List your reasons. Why do you want to visit it?

Hopes: What do you hope to get from this visit? What amazing things do you think will happen? How would going to this place be different than going anywhere else in your mind?

Imagination: Pretend you are there. Be adventurous. Write your own story. Feature yourself as the main character. It doesn’t have to be a literary masterpiece. You are doing for you. Pretend you are there. What do you think you will see. Who are the people you are talking to? What do you do? With the wealth of resources at our disposal, you could easily get the sense of facts about the place, and incorporate your fiction there.

Go Beyond Reality

If I ask you, where do you really want to go? What will you say? Paris? Rome? China? Antarctica?

But what about….

The moon?

Hogwarts?

Rivendell?

Metropolis?

The History? (Mughal India, Mark Anthony’s Rome, Cleopatra’s Egypt, Victoria’s Britain) Do any of them appeal to you?

What about the future?

Do you see where I’m going with this? Possibilities are endless. You don’t have to be a fiction writer (though it’s a certainly good exercise if you are) to enjoy this.

That’s ridiculous, you say. What are the benefits of such silliness?

First, you exercise your imagination and most people don’t do enough of that. If you always think in a certain way, how do you expect to grow as a person? In your journal, you get to think outside the box risk-free. No one is going to make fun of you. No one is going to shoot down your ideas. So be adventurous and have fun. Fuel your daydreams.

Second, you learn how to control ability to visualise. Whether you see in pictures or in words, it doesn’t matter. By doing this sort of exercise, you are directing your brain to think in a certain way. You are forcing it to think about the life in a particular time and place, and you are placing yourself there. You are trying to imagine the visceral reactions you will have, by physically and emotionally being there. This kind of control over your mind doesn’t just slip away. To be able to control our thoughts, even half-well, is a good skill. How often do you sit down to think something through, only to end up whirling in circles or going completely on tandem and losing track of what you were supposed to decide? Human brain is a powerful thing, and to be able to harness even some of it power in creative way, gives your creativity a tunnel to race through. It increases your creative intensity, and it gives you an edge.

And all the while, you create some fun and amazing stories of all the places you have been, without leaving your house.

ACTION YOU CAN TAKE TODAY:

Try this for one week. Pretend that you are on a week’s vacation. Pick a place, whether real or imaginary, and write as if you were literally in that place. What did you do? What did you eat? Who did you see? What did you say? What did you wear? Immerse yourself. Have fun. Be creative

Dolly Garland is a founder of Kaizen Journaling where she helps a community of Kaizen Warriors turn personal journals into potent arsenal for success. Find her on Facebook.

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