#4: Dear Diary: The Joy Of Journaling

Funny and heartbreaking, nostalgic and embarrassing, Kelly opens up her diaries from age 10 through her teenage years. Fiercely independent from a very young age, she leaves Minnesota for the bright lights of Hollywood, then carries on to London as her adventures continue.

Still an avid journal writer today, Kelly shares how braindumping on paper has saved her a fortune in therapy and how you can make journaling an important part of your personal growth too.

Download the free PDF of journal prompts for writing to your younger self, writing from your older self, gratitude and challenge solving.

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Read the Transcript for this Episode below:

Episode four of the Project Me podcast. Hi, I'm Kelly pie of my project me.com, and I'm on a mission to help women to step out of autopilot. It's time to stop sleepwalking through life and to wake up to all of the magic that's there waiting for you. In each episode, I share a story from my own personal journey, and we end with a turnaround, an opportunity for you to reflect on your own life path.

And to view it through a fresh new lens as you create your future you. This episode is sponsored by Project WE, my online membership club for women who are ready to step out of autopilot and into higher levels of conscious living. Get all the juicy details at myprojectme. com forward slash project WE.

Hi there and welcome back. I'm recording this episode and hoping to get it published before I head off to my favorite place in the world. The Spanish island of Ibiza. I have not left London once for nearly nine months and I am craving a change of scenery and some fresh air and the sea. None of the clubs are open this summer and I'm fantasizing about it being blissfully quiet.

I am definitely bringing my journal away with me. As you'll find out in this episode, journaling is a real passion of mine. And can we just talk about the spelling of journaling so I don't get irritated Americans thinking I've spelled it wrong in the episode title? Although I grew up in the States, I have lived over half of my life in the UK now, so I spell words like journaling, canceling, modeling, controlling, with one L now, as that's the correct spelling over here.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. You can download the page of journaling prompts in the show notes or from the new podcast section at myprojectme. com. For my 10th birthday, I received a groovy denim covered diary with a little gold lock and key. I'm holding it in my hands right now. Each page duly describes what I ate for dinner that day, as well as what I got up to with my two best friends, Michelle and Patty.

It was 1976, and we were obsessed with Charlie's Angels, cruising around undercover on our bikes, solving fresh crimes around the neighborhood. My bedroom walls were plastered with pull out magazine posters of Donny Osmond, Sean Cassidy, the Monkees, and the Bay City Rollers. In the cold winter months of Minnesota, we played ice hockey on the nearby ponds, dug out snow tunnels to play in, and created make believe dramas with our Barbie dolls.

Too many episodes of Charlie's Angels must have given us the idea to put their dresses on backwards to create open cleavages, turning them into cops posing as hookers. You know how cliche it is to tell kids, when I was your age, I used to have to walk to school for miles in the snow. I actually did. I nonchalantly wrote in my diary about minus 31 Fahrenheit weather and wearing a knit ski mask to prevent frostbite as I walked to school.

There was no such thing as the school run in my family. My mom worked nights in a factory and she left before I got home from school and was still sleeping when I got up in the mornings. My diary reveals that my stepdad spent several nights a week at the bowling alley, or was out playing cards with his friends, and I was left alone with my 6 year old brother a lot.

I babysat for our neighborhood kids too, including, according to my diary, their mentally retarded baby. I got paid 50 cents an hour. I was only 10 years old. I had to set my own alarm and get myself to school. One October, the snow came early, and I'd outgrown my snow boots, and I mentioned in my diary that I didn't know how I'd get to school that day.

Page after page, I despair about how I've got so much homework to do, but instead I play Monopoly all night with my brother. October 26, 1976. My mom gave me a list of multiplication facts to study for 15 minutes. Then she asked me to tell all of them to her. I was doing just fine, but I got one answer wrong and she got so mad at me and said I can't go trick or treating next week unless I learn all of them by then.

I lived for trick or treating, so this was devastating. I still don't have my times tables memorized. November 16th, 1976. Today, my teacher, Mr. Hoffman, got so mad at a kid that he picked him up by his armpits and threw him across a desk. I sure don't want to get into any trouble with him. Can you imagine what would happen to a teacher who did this to a student today?

If I hadn't written it down, I just wouldn't even believe it. There's a note here tucked inside of my little diary from a few days after that. I'm going to read you it. Kelly cheated on the science test. Also, the project she turned in had only one small part completed. This is on a scrap of paper, it's not signed by the teacher, and apparently I was just meant to hand this to my mother.

Instead, it got put into my beloved diary securely and kept hidden under my mattress. One of my favorite entries, though, that made me laugh is February 25th, 1977. I drew a picture to describe the first pair of headphones I'd ever seen. There's actually an arrow showing where your head goes. Clearly, being able to listen to music straight into your ears as you walked around was a very cool concept to me.

I filled up every page of that first diary and headed straight into the next one. My writing began to evolve into how I was feeling. Usually angry at my mother, or annoyed at my brother, or hurt over endless friendship dramas. The following year, I moved into an undated, larger journal. I began each entry with, Dear book, and I told the stories of my life as if to someone else.

Someone else who cared about what I had to say, and wanted to listen. I didn't have this growing up. By the time I hit my teens, my mom still worked nights in the factory, But now, she and my stepdad were divorced. I had more responsibilities than ever, and I didn't have any adult in my life to talk to about all the emotions that a young teenager has.

Journaling was my way of getting it out of my head and onto paper. I now know what an incredibly useful tool this is for emotional health, and I am so grateful that I somehow intuitively knew to do this. I found this note of warning tucked into one of my teenage diaries. To whomever is holding this in their hands right now, I really don't know why you're holding this right now.

My diary is my most private, personal possession. If you're just snooping, please put it back. Curiosity kills. If I'm no longer alive, please throw this book away. It was never intended to be used or read for other purposes, other than for my own personal getaway. Don't hesitate to throw this away. There is no material in this book that could ever be published or of interest to anyone other than myself.

If you're simply curious and want to take a quick peek before you throw it away, I once again urge you, don't read this book. It will cause the reader more pain and will ruin all good memories of me. Thank you. Oh my gosh, you know, I remember putting this on top of my diary each time I put it back under my mattress so that if my mother got a hold of it, she would read that and put it away.

I don't know whether that was true or not, but I kind of assume so because she never said anything. My heart aches for my teenage self, as I turn over tear stained, ink smudged pages of sadness, insecurities, and angst, and how I look to boys to fill that need to feel loved. So many boys, one after the other.

Here's a funny one, though. August 28th, 1981. Dear Book, Last night, me, Scott, Patty, and Dave went to see the movie Arthur. You should have seen the car Scott picked us up in. A silver catalog. It was so deluxe. It had a radio station scanner, a digital clock, climate control, and power windows. You could press a button and make the windows go up and down.

Okay, one last one. October 16th, 1983. I think there's something wrong with me. I get terrible acts of depression. Then I'm fine. Then it all hits again. I'm scared it might be that PMS disease. I don't know too much about it, but I think I should read up on it at the library. It seems like I should be happy.

I mean, I'm a cheerleader. I have a boyfriend. Last week was Homecoming, and I wrote the whole song for the variety show, and I choreographed 60 girls to dance to it. It was a total smash. But right after the second showing, I got the depression. I feel so alone and miserable it's scary. All I can do is cry.

I wander the halls at school alone on my seemingly endless remods, trying to appear to all the groups that I pass and I'm on some sort of an important mission. Here I am, in my cheerleading uniform, and I'm supposed to eat lunch at the head jock's table, but I don't fit in there. Why can't I just be happy?

Gosh, you know, if you were ever looking at the cheerleaders at school if you weren't one and thinking, oh my gosh, they all had it really good. It just goes to show you that you just don't know what's going on in anybody else's head. After high school and university, I can't find any journals from what I call the missing years.

My early 20s, when I was working in Hollywood and having the time of my life. Which is a shame, as that's the stuff I'd love to remember better. It's all kind of a blur of flashbacks, like, I can remember being at Charlton Heston's 50th birthday dinner at his house, when I was dating this Hollywood producer.

Or using Elton John's piano as a place to set my beer as I listen to him play Philadelphia Freedom. I didn't even use a coaster, I remember I just set my beer right there on his baby gram piano. I was Johnny Depp's press assistant on the hit TV show 21 Jump Street. And when he left the show to pursue a career in films, I moved over to the iconic Capitol Records building, working on music videos with MC Hammer, Tina Turner, and my favorite band Crowded House.

Remind me to tell you the story one day of how Bruce Springsteen has a nickname for me. My family will shout, no, not the Bruce Springsteen story. These were the days way before smartphone cameras, and it was considered super uncool to bring a camera to work or to take photos of celebrities you're hanging out with.

It just wasn't done back then, which is hard to explain to my kids. Who only know the world of selfies and taking photos of everything every day. They don't believe me because I don't have pictures of this stuff. I guess I was having too much fun to think about writing any of it down. My journals were my place to vent my emotions when life felt hard and I didn't think to write down all of the good stuff.

I do have my birthday entry every single year. I started that annual ritual of writing all about me and writing my height and weight. What I got for my birthday, who was president and top current affairs, and what the music and movies and fashion were of that time. I still do an all about me entry every year on my birthday.

After I moved to London and into an unhealthy relationship, the journals made a swift re entry. Once again, I had absolutely no one to talk to about what was going on behind closed doors, and my journal became my trusted confidant. I know some people burn their old diaries, and I did recently throw out the journals and photo albums from that painful period of my life that I really don't want to revisit, but I've kept the rest.

I always imagined I'd have a daughter, and I thought they'd be so useful for getting back into my teenage head and even sharing with her how I was feeling at her age. But I was blessed with two boys instead. My mother wanted me to have a girl so badly so I'd know what I put her through. What I put her through?

It just goes to show that we all have our own versions of reality. In 1997, I read Julia Cameron's book, The Artist Way, and I started writing morning pages. Have you ever done this too? I was feeling creatively stifled in my job as a record cover designer. I was expected to sit in an open plan design studio with music blaring all day from all angles and constant chaos and interruptions.

And somehow, I was meant to knock out amazing album covers. It was not happening. I felt so creatively stuck and totally insecure about my talents. I can see now that I had imposter syndrome. I'd fallen into record cover design and I was a natural in many ways, but the rest of the design team were all art school grads and two of them had it out for me.

There was so much competition for who would get to work with which bands and artists. I became typecast as a boy band designer. Anyone remember the Irish band Boyzone? And then I became pigeonholed as a girl band designer. I was so upset to have to be the one to design Destiny's Child's first single.

Who was this unknown girl group anyway? Why did I get stuck with them? I had no idea Beyonce would become a household name when she was hugging me and crying tears of joy over seeing her very first cover design on my Apple Mac when I showed them my ideas. Anyway, back to when I discovered writing morning pages.

I In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron invites anyone who wants to unleash their creativity to make a daily practice out of writing three pages of longhand stream of consciousness writing, ideally done first thing in the morning. If you don't know what to write, you just start by writing, I have no idea what to write, and you just keep writing absolutely anything for three whole pages.

For me, and so many others, the magic comes about two pages in when suddenly something really insightful pops up. Or it doesn't. That's the point. It's about clearing your mind and brain dumping, which is really how I still journal today. No agenda, no plan, I just open it up and see what comes out. I highly recommend this form of journaling.

When I became a mother, I began to deeply appreciate journaling as a way of staying in touch with me beyond the chaos of my outer world. Whenever I dedicated a bit of me time towards journaling to dive into my feelings and identify challenges and brainstorm solutions, I felt empowered and inspired to take action.

And when I didn't, my head felt bursting full and jumbled and confused. Once I made the direct correlation between my journaling and my headspace, I made it a weekly practice to journal every Saturday or Sunday morning. I expressed to my husband how important it was for me to be able to have a lie in on a weekend morning and to be able to journal a bit in bed.

This me time saved my sanity during those crazy early days of motherhood. Things that felt so upsetting or frustrating in my head felt figureoutable once poured into my journal. I was able to reframe, give myself a pep talk, write down some possible solutions. By the time my husband came in, desperate for some relief from daddy duty, I'd be able to read him a page to get him into my head and share what ideas I had.

It became a healthy tool for being able to communicate my feelings to him in a calm way, rather than in a fit of anger or frustration or building up resentments. People ask me, when did I first start my project ME? And I have to differentiate between when the website and blog were published, which was 2013, and when I actually started my own project ME.

Because, believe me, I'd have never imagined I'd write a book about it or start a Project Me global movement. How could I? I started my Project Me for me and only me. In the year 2000, soon after my first son was born, I began my annual ritual of reflecting back over my previous year and identifying the highlights and what I wanted to change or do differently in the fresh year ahead.

This became my January ritual of goal setting, and amazing things began to unfold from there. Eight years later, in 2008, I formed a Power Posse with my friends Anna and Susie, and we began monthly meetups to talk about our lives, discuss our challenges, and brainstorm solutions. More about my Power Posse in a future episode.

I know a lot of people struggle with what to write in a journal. They feel called to try it, but there's something about all those blank pages that makes them freeze. I think the block comes from thinking that there's a right way to do it. And the truth is, there's not. Many people are too focused on writing their to do list each day, which doesn't allow for thoughts and dreams and the hopes that you have or future long term goals.

I see journaling as a place to do that, rather than just becoming another place to list your to dos. There are many different journaling techniques you can play with to see what feels right for you, and you can always chop and change between them as you wish. I have several types of journal on the go for different focuses.

There's always my regular journal, which is a large lined journal with a beautiful cover, I love selecting which will become my next regular journal. My favorite brand right now are the gorgeous Peter Popper Press journals. Peter, Peter Popper Press. It's like a tongue twister. Peter Popper Press journals.

I find those on Amazon. The covers are beautifully inspiring and I love the clean, wide space lines and how my pen doesn't show through to the other side. I use this as a general brain dump for anything and everything. How I'm feeling and why. Burst of ideas. Challenge solving. Some weeks I'll write in it several times, other weeks I'll go two weeks without.

But that's becoming rare now. I always feel like I have so much bursting to come out lately. Then, I have a gratitude journal. And that's where I use the left hand page to write out thank you for, or I'm so grateful for, and I write whatever comes to mind until the page is full. Then, over on the right hand side, I write gratitude in advance for what I'd love to happen.

I write it in the present tense, as if it's already that way. I am always amazed when I read through my old gratitude journals and I see that the right hand future entries have become reality. I read that Oprah Winfrey started a gratitude journal nearly 20 years ago, writing down five things she was grateful for every day.

She said it was the single most important thing she thinks she's ever done. What you don't want to do with a gratitude diary is turn it into a mechanical, Oh, I got to write down my five things list. Okay, done. You got to feel into it. Really allow the true feelings of gratitude to flow through your heart.

You'll know the feeling. Breathe into it and smile. It doesn't have to be every day, unless that feels good to you. There are some of these really small few lines a day journals out there, and those would personally never work for me. Once I'm on a roll, I can fill up pages, and if I were confined to a small box, it would be pointless to me.

I journal to get things out of my head where I can express and explore, and sometimes I need several pages for that. A couple of years ago, I started yet another type of journal for writing down my insights after doing the amazing 10 day courses in the Insight Timer Meditation app. I bang out about the Insight Timer Meditation app constantly, and I will do an upcoming episode about how I went from saying, I can't meditate, to becoming absolutely hooked.

Anyway, I wanted a separate journal just to capture my insights from the Insight Timer courses and my lovely assistant Rachel got me the perfect one as a Christmas present. I love it. I also have another mini journal called My Positive Book of Aspects. That's where I take any topic and I fill a whole page with what I like or love or appreciate about that topic.

So for example, I have a whole page for my bed. That's my favorite place for my journaling, by the way. And I have a page for each of my family members, which really helps me to reread their positive aspects when said family member is driving me crazy. And I've got a page for everything I love about London.

I read that when London life is driving me mad. You get the idea. I got the inspiration for that from Abraham Hicks. I now regularly write to my intuition for specific guidance, which is like having a hotline to a wise guru with all the best answers. I'm going to do a whole episode on intuition and how it went from being a really abstract concept to something I feel deeply connected to.

I've been asked by so many of my amazing Project WE members to help them with making journaling a regular practice, so look out for my upcoming offering on that. I am excited to help others to bring journaling into their lives. If you're interested in joining my Joy of Journaling course, send me an email, hello at myprojectme.

com, or jump on my mailing list at myprojectme. com, and I will make sure that you hear about that.

Very honestly, if I didn't get stuff out of my head and onto paper, my head would be a jumbled mess, and I'd probably need therapy. Journaling helps me to have a deep, close relationship with myself. I'm in touch with my emotions. I'm able to get perspective on my problems. I get clearer on my dreams and my goals.

I hash out ideas. I create game plans. I notice the good stuff. I live with deep gratitude and appreciation. I don't think it's ever too late to take up a journal.

I'm going to ask you some questions and I'm putting these into a PDF in the show notes along with some extra journal prompts for you. No need to write anything down now. Simply reflect. What would you love to tell your 16 year old self? What wise words of advice do you have for your younger you? Imagine what you'd like to say to your own teenager or a niece or nephew.

What would you most like them to know?

Do you have an outlet for getting things out of your head? Do challenges seem less overwhelming when you write them down?

What are you grateful for right now? The first thing that comes to mind. Allow a sweet feeling of gratitude to swell up in your heart.

What do you think your future 80 year old self would love to tell you right now? Any sage words of advice?

That's it for this time. Get the free pdf of journal prompts that go with this episode in the show notes and let me know what comes out of that for you. I'd love to hear. I'm going to post some pictures of my groovy denim covered diary on my Instagram, Kelly Project Me, and on Facebook, Project Me Kelly P.

And I'd love to hear from you if you kept diaries too. It would be fun to host a Zoom meetup to hear people read entries from their teenage diaries. If you don't have one, you could come along and be in the audience. Let me know if you're interested. In the next episode of the Project Me podcast, I'll share how I overcame the most deep rooted fear of my life, childbirth, and turned it into my biggest and bravest achievement using hypnobirthing.

Be sure to subscribe. And if you're listening in Apple and enjoying the podcast, please click the five stars or write me a little review. I am so grateful for that. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, open your mind, open your heart, and stay curious. We all need some space in our lives for the magical and unknown.