A Really Satisfying Journaling Exercise

To reveal your deep desires and now steps toward manifesting them!

I got excited to share with you my latest inner process. If you didn’t already know this about me, I am constantly experimenting to learn new things, broaden my perspective, integrate experiences and receive new insights. I see what works and what doesn’t and then I share the golden nuggets of what I’ve learned with others. I’m constantly learning and being guided by my body, insights, the environment and the beings around me, both physical and nonphysical.

While I tend to get a lot of idea downloads all the time, I’ve been learning how to read my body’s wisdom to discern what to create and what is just a distraction. Being really curious has led me down many strange and beautiful paths. I’m grateful for all my wild experiences because each time I get to learn and widen my perspective. As I mature, I am better understanding life’s ebbs and flows and the importance of honoring the ebb and being OK with slowing on.

Before I jump into this journaling exercise that you can try for yourself, I want to give you greater context of how it came to be.

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Last September my body went into shock when I found out about my former partner Grigori transitioning to the other side. While I’ve experienced a number of traumatic life upsets, this one took me over the edge. I became so dissociated in a matter of seconds after hearing the news that it left my nervous system reeling to grasp on to anything physical and grounding.

I spent two solid months taking care of my basic human needs 24/7 as a full-time job. It took every ounce of energy to spacial orient into the present moment, ask my body whether I was hungry or could eat anything at all, and spent a lot of time crying and sleeping. I felt displaced out of time and space and had no other choice but to seek ways to inch myself back into the home of my body.

I learned new somatic exercises, tuned myself with tuning forks and toning on a daily basis, spent time laying in the grass and talking to trees and went through a massive purging process of old memories and timelines.

By December, I started to feel a little bit more like a human and started thinking about working again and getting a new place for myself to live after having been displaced from Hurricane Helene in Asheville, North Carolina.

During these past two and a half months after relocating to my own place in Charlottesville, Virginia, I’ve been reflecting on all of my experiences with traveling, working energetically with others, tuning in to the things that I care about most and recalibrating to new possibilities of what life can look and feel like.

Grigori has been with me often as I’m grieving. As someone who can sense and feel the nonphysical, I don’t get emotional around other people’s loved ones who have passed. When it’s your person, it’s so much different to reorient to a reality where they don’t have a physical presence. They no longer have the emotional attachments (even though I do, and that’s part of the grieving process). I go through ebbs and flows of sadness and feelings of devastation and sinking and then moments of gratitude and appreciation for the joyful memories of time spent together and the support from his nonphysical presence.

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This week Grigori’s been around more than usual. I can tell that he’s helping me get back on my feet and tune into a new life path.

Yesterday he guided me through this journaling exercise step by step, to help me access my deeper desires and focus energy on what’s important now.

I acknowledge the importance of listening to my inner guidance system. Everyone has a different way of knowing intuitively and through their body’s somatic response on what is right for them. For me, I have to follow my gut feeling, literally, my sacral energy center.

Have you ever thought about where you are sourcing your inner guidance? Is it coming through your heart? Your solar plexus? Your root? Another place? Where is your body’s ‘yes,’ your intuitive go-ahead feeling?

If you’re anything like me, and you get a lot of information overload and distractions and need to sort out what is actually in alignment with you at this time, try out this playful journaling exercise that Grigori guided me through step by step.

This journaling might take anywhere from 30-60 minutes and doesn’t have to be completed in one seating. These exercises help you identify your deep inner desires that may want to be created in your long-term vision, as well as narrowing down the parts that are relevant for you at this point in time.

Step 1:

Imagine that someone just handed you a check for $1 billion dollars. You have complete financial freedom to do anything your heart desires.

What would you create and pursue?

Take the time to do a thorough stream of consciousness writeup of all the things you would do and create. This one took four notebook pages for me. You can make it as long or as short as you like. Make sure to check in intuitively when it feels complete.

Step 2:

Fly through your written pages and circle the words or lines that pop off the page that feel especially important. This is an intuitive exercise. You don’t have to be extremely nit-picky or thorough. Allow your creative mind and subconscious to explore.

Step 3:

Take a highlighter, marker or colored pencil and just focus on the words you circled this time. Tune into the energy center or part of your body that gives you your ‘yes.’ From that place, let yourself highlight or color in the words or phrases that really amplify that ‘yes’ feeling in your body.

It might feel like heart love expansiveness. It might feel like a certain area of your body lights up, like your throat, belly or legs. It might feel like a full body chills sensation or a deep relaxed sigh of relief. Feel into it and notice how your body speaks to you.

Step 4:

Write down all of your highlighted/colored words and phrases in a separate vertical list. For me, I had over 50 items in my list.

Step 5:

Tune in to your heart, and let your heart scan the words or phrases. Put a heart next to any items that make your heart light up.

Step 6:

Tune into your body’s intuitive ‘yes’ sensation. Highlight or color any words or phrases that light up or amplify your body’s ‘yes.’

Step 7:

Make a list of the top 10 most important words or phrases. Check in with your body’s ‘yes’ and intuitively pull out the words and phrases that light you up. After the first 10, you may elect to do the top 20 depending on how many words you had on your list.

My top 10 list of most important things now looked like this:

1. Home

2. Date myself

3. Friends

4. Pamper myself

5. Love letters

6. Thriving together

7. Gratitude

8. Feeling deep desires

9. Dinner parties

10. Music

I found this intuitive fine-tuning to be really insightful. I love doing these kinds of self-discovery exercises and would love to hear about your experience and whether you gained any new insights. If you’re comfortable, please share your top 10 in the comments or in the private chat for paid members.

The next step is of course leaning into incorporating more of these things into your life routines. And guess what, it didn’t even take $1 billion dollars to create! :)

Love you all,

Melanie