{fill your cup} Allow
Weekly Journal Prompts
Refill your emotional cup before another busy week.
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You can take just 10 – 30 minutes on these prompts. Read through and respond to what strikes you, or simply take the journal topic and go in your own direction – this is about what you need.
We spend so much energy and so much time trying to control the world around us.
We follow the rules. We make the rules. We invent non-existent rules.
We spend a lot of time allowing or trying very hard not to allow things to happen.
I think about my daughter's birth. She was born at home after an easy labor – really easy and really fast. The only wall I faced was mentally getting out of my own way and allowing it to happen. I almost wasn't ready for it to be that easy – I had had two other babies before and was expecting labor to last much longer and be more painful. She was easy and I nearly couldn't allow it.
After she was born I found myself waiting for the hard part – surely since the birth had been easy I was in for some sort of horrible after birth complication…? All of my beleifs told me that transitions in life must be terribly difficult, and yet here I was with a beautiful baby and a body that felt alright and two older kids who were excited to have her here. Was it allowed for a transition to be easy?
This week we're thinking about the word allow – what we allow, what we don't allow, and what we struggle with allowing.
- What can you let go of and allow it to be easier? Can you allow others to help you? Can you allow it to take the path of least resistance?
- What do we tell our children is not allowed, and yet our actions show them that actually we do allow it? Do we need to change how we reinforce the rule? Or change the rule?
- Who are you not allowed to be? Do you want that to change?
- What do you need to allow to take more time or more space in your life? What part of your life are you trying to force or push into something it isn't at this point in time?
Alissa Zorn is an author, and founder of the website Overthought This. She's a coach and cartoonist passionate about helping people overcome perfectionism and shame to build authentic, joyful lives. Alissa is certified through the International Coach Federation and got her Trauma-Informed Coaching certification from Moving the Human Spirit. She wrote Bounceback Parenting: A Field Guide for Creating Connection, Not Perfection, and is always following curiosity to find her next creative endeavor.