If you’ve been feeling fragmented across different notebooks and documents, I feel you, baby.
Since I was college-aged I have been thinking about how to improve my life.
At 21, I got my first therapist.
I read self-help books and did ALL the exercises.
But it wasn’t enough!!
I felt some incremental change, of course, but knew there was so much further to go in my healing.
Writing became a part of that journey:
at 22 I decided to take on Julia Cameron’s challenge to write daily morning pages.
Weeks later, I paged through my journal and was completely surprised by the thoughts and feelings I had written down.
I HAD SO MUCH TO LEARN ABOUT MYSELF.
It turns out I needed to go deeper than just beg the universe for someone to tell me the answers to my life.
I needed to start by understanding my life, and myself better – to address gaps in my knowledge like:
-maybe things I had been putting up with really were not acceptable…
hence why I felt dumped on.
-maybe my expectations of myself or other people were not fair…
hence my stress and disappointment.
-maybe I had no idea what I really wanted in my life and work…
hence feeling confused and lost.
It was time to get answers.
Problem is:
No one else can provide all the solutions –
Your life isn’t the same as anyone else’s so no one can tell you 100% what to do.
It’s your responsibility to find your unique formula.
Wish you could buy it in stores? Me too!
But it HASN’T been invented yet.
I love learning from other people but…they are not having my experience.
I need to go into myself to gain the clues needed to invent my own formula.
I need to understand myself better.
That’s why I love writing, as it helps me do this.
And I love what I am creating to 10x my healing:
AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ME.
The 10x effect
When I realized that I needed to find answers IN MYSELF, my life changed.
When I realized they could be found with writing, my life changed even more.
But even daily writing added to counseling and self-help didn’t cut it.
Things were still falling in the cracks–
Notebooks and writing piled up and I knew there was juice I was not squeezing from them.
I was just so sick of feeling fragmented with ideas strewn across different notebooks and documents.
And sick of repeating cycles in my life and business…
I needed a way to bring all of my insights, parts, ideas, and thoughts
together into a cohesive whole.
Good news:
I found the Technology to solve this!
Now I can organize my writing along important healing themes.
For the last few years I am bringing all the writing together, and I’m noticing:
I AM RAPIDLY BECOMING A WHOLE DIFFERENT PERSON.
That’s how big of an upgrade it is.
10x
What is an ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ME?
It’s the instruction manual I always wanted.
It’s like a private wikipedia for
my thoughts, feelings, goals, intentions and history.
It’s got everything I need for me to understand myself.
Every time I look at it, I make new connections, think about my goals and get ideas about what to do next.
Let’s dive in so you can get an idea of how this works.
Creating my encyclopedia
I created this encyclopedia with a free app called Obsidian. Been using it a few years now.
Last week I shared how I used it to explore the theme of patience in my life.
This week I noticed feelings in my digital journal that I want to come back to later.
And I wondered how to make it easy to do that…
Problem:
I might forget the feeling I was writing about,
so how would I find it?
The question spurred this AHA:
Even if I don’t remember the name of the feeling, I will remember that it is an emotion.
And so I created a directory page about all of my emotions!
When I want to dive into my healing and emotions, I have ONE PLACE to access them all.
(Pictured below)
I named my note Emotional States MOC.
MOC stands for Map of Content, a name created by Nick Milo.
Organizing my Emotional Encyclopedia
This is a new page I’m creating all about my emotions,
so they will all be listed in one place.
To fill it out, first, I listed my emotions.
I already had some notes about these I could easily link to, but I decided to brainstorm a few more emotions to round things out.
(New additions have a red underline.)
As I added different emotions to my list, I started to separate them into different groups.
The positive feelings,
the difficult feelings…
But it also made sense to add tools that support my emotions and teachers I am resonating with now.
I pulled out emotions of particular interest to go back to.
Finally, I added an area that’s very interesting to me:
all of the different relationships to things I am working on over time.
They aren’t really feelings but I want them here.
Like my relationship to work,
my relationship to time (often feeling a sense of urgency) and
my journey of releasing control.
Of course, each “feeling” is not just named, but also linked to a list of notes and references all through my journal.
DAMN THIS IS A GOLD MINE.
Here is the final result:
All of these headers are collapsed to look more simple (picture below).
I can click on the header name for an additional list of links to my notes under each header.
Organizing them for new connections
Just creating this directory made me remember about things I hadn’t thought about in a long time,
old notes, studies, books, experiences and so on.
Do you know what a satisficer is?
I do because a note on it came up as I was exploring the feeling of satisfaction. Google it, I dare you.
As I wrote the list, I realized I had notes on so many fears that I should put them all on their own Fear directory.
Fear is all basically the same emotion right?
LOL why does my mind hate that idea? Now that’s interesting to observe in myself.
The process of clicking around to create this encyclopedia is just as enjoyable and eye opening as the final product.
And I’m still playing with it!
This directory for my feelings is something I created on a whim, bouncing off of other notes I had already been creating.
But that’s the cool thing about the system I use, a free app called Obsidian:
I can be messy yet organized.
THIS DOES NOT NEED TO BE ANAL
I don’t have to be like an architect:
I don’t have to understand how I will organize things ahead of time.
I can be a gardener…
I can wander around the garden of my ideas trimming, organizing and growing things as I please.
So this encyclopedia is part of a system of notes that is a continual work in progress, full of healing and insights for me for years to come.
I’ve been using this system for several years so I have lots of other notes about my emotions to connect together to this hub.
I would have loved to have this encyclopedia 15 years ago at the start of my healing journey!!
ONE PLACE
This is just one page in my system that connects to emotions across journals, dreams, ideas, and more.
In two years, I’ve made over 3000 notes.
And I still legitimately find it easy to find things.
I have a place where all of me lives coherently.
All of me is in one place together.
Because of it, I remember things better, I find things better, and
I am bringing insights of my life together into a cohesive whole.
I can use the knowledge I’ve gained to 10x my healing:
- know what is important to me,
- make better choices,
- feel more positive emotions and
- ultimately live a better life.
How would you organize information about yourself?
The encyclopedia of me won’t look like yours, right?
Emotions are confusing to me, but
what do you find confusing or complex in your healing journey?
Could you make a directory to think more deeply about these things
and bring your notes and ideas together?
Maybe this gives you ideas about how you can 10x your healing, too!
Have fun
And by the way–
I’m excited to share more about digital organization in the upcoming membership program:
I’ll be sharing how to organize your ideas across different
notebooks, time periods, or documents,
themes, topics, intentions or reviews.
Practice organizing your notes or journals with me
so you can put your own spin on it,
and get your questions answered.
Join the waitlist for the Digital Organization Membership
where I’ll share my 2 systems for organizing:
- journals, content, and writing
plus
- project intentions and tasks.
Early birds get 50% off the price:
===> $30 total for 3 months of membership
only available for the first week it opens…
Click here to join the Digital Organization waitlist for more info.
Thanks for reading!
