Writing It Down Makes a Difference
By Alex Fayle

• Someday Lesson: The written word creates change by clarifying possibilities.

In Tuesday’s post, I talked about the power of the written word especially when it comes to clearing your life of Somedays.

I’m not the only one out there talking about the power and the possibility of words. Joanna Young of Confident Writing (and a finalist for the Top 10 Blogs for Writers) has also spent some time exploring what writing could do.

She asked people for their best personal thoughts on the possibilities writing offers. She also did a three post series on the Language of Possibility. My favourite post on this topic however is one where Joanna tells us about nine ways that writing makes things possible. You can read the details of all nine of them in her (as always) beautifully written post, but here’s a summary:

1. Writing is declaration of intent
2. Writing helps you notice the sticking points
3. Repetition makes a difference
4. Your mind starts looking for evidence
5. Writing opens things up
6. Writing helps you notice the details
7. Writing makes you creative and playful
8. Writing changes your brain chemistry
9. Writing together helps us find answers

I read this list and thought to myself “Wow, that is exactly why I do email-based coaching.”

Let’s look at that list again, but with a focus on clearing Somedays from your life.

1. Writing is a declaration of intent
By writing down your intention to rid your life of Somedays you make the desire concrete and you take the first step towards personal accountability.

2. Writing helps you notice the sticking points
I always start my clients with a “my life sucks” list and I get them to write it down. When we talk and complain we don’t always pay attention to what we’re saying, but when we write things down we learn pretty quickly what are meaningless gripes and what are the real obstacles to achieving our dreams.

3. Repetition makes a difference
Usually the path to ridding yourself of your Somedays includes doing the same set of actions over and over until you achieve success. Because progress is slow, writing down what you do and writing down Someday Check-Ins shows you the progress the repeated actions are making.

4. Your mind starts looking for evidence
Going back to the “my life sucks” list when you write down what you normally only verbally complain about you force your mind to prove that what you’re writing down is true. When you talk and complain, the words fly out of your mouth and disappear. When you write them down, they don’t go away and quite often don’t stand up to any sort of scrutiny.

5. Writing opens things up
Many times I’ve had clients tell me that just by writing down their problems and their challenges they can see possible solutions. When we just talk about them, the mind doesn’t have to pay attention – our mouths are very adept at working without our minds engaged in the activity. Writing down our challenges engages the mind and encourages the creation of possible solutions.

6. Writing helps you notice the details
I’ve also had many people tell me that by going through the writing exercises I set them they see things that they didn’t even realize they were doing. Whether it’s self-sabotage, or procrastination activities that they weren’t aware of, but writing down what they’re doing the details that people ignore on a day to day basis are made real and concrete.

7. Writing makes you creative and playful
Many people tend to be shy about being spontaneous and on-the-spot creative. Asking someone to come up with a new way of approaching a problem verbally puts them on the spot and many people freeze. Ask them to write it down, however, and they’ll take their time to think about it and construct a variety of options. After all, seeing one solution for a problem on a sheet of paper or in an computer file looks kind of sad, like you didn’t put much effort into trying, whereas talking about a single idea can look quite productive if you rephrase and reword the same idea over and over.

8. Writing changes your brain chemistry
Going back to what Richard Wiseman said in the introduction to his book, 59 Seconds, writing uses different processes in the brain than talking so writing down challenges, desires and plans gets the brain working in a way that talking doesn’t.

9. Writing together helps us find answers
This is probably the number one reason I do email-based coaching rather than face-to-face or phone coaching. When I write down my questions, you write down your answers and I then write my interpretations we work together to create solutions. And the best part is that it’s not ephemeral. We can go back to it and draw more wisdom out of the words to create new solutions to challenges we hadn’t seen earlier.

So don’t just take it from me – go check out Confident Writing and read all about possibilities, especially how writing can help.

Then sit down with pen to paper or fingers on the keyboard and start writing away your Somedays.

(Of course if you need help, it’s just a webpage away.)

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Get rid of your Somedays and make the big change you’ve always dreamt about. Check out:

• The Someday-Busting Coaching Services
• The Dream Discovering Ebook by Alex Fayle

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