One Word Essence Journaling - A Journaling Tool

Spirit lives in the essence of things, not the thing itself.

“The tongue of the original self is the language of the heart.” – Julie Cameron

Sometimes we don’t have the time to journal. (Or perhaps I should say that we don’t make the time to journal.) If you have trouble committing time to journaling, try ‘One Word Journaling.’ But beware – it’s not as easy as it sounds!

Focus on attuning to and experiencing the essence of a person, day, a motive, etc. Magically, the more closely we connect with an essence, the fewer words there are to describe it anyway. So rather than spend time journaling, spend it attuning to the essence of things, events and people and build your awareness this way. Do this a few times each day. Each week review your words and write a short summary of your experience.

You may want to use the Daily Tracker form and put in one ‘essence’ word for each of the most important areas of your life.

EXERCISES

Getting started:

• Capture the essence of your day with one word.
• Bring to mind an essence you would like to live all day long.

Go deeper:

• Bring to mind a relationship with someone and write down one word.
• Tune into your feelings now and write down one word.

Reach higher:

• Meditate and write one word describing your experience.
• Tune into God or your soul and write down one word.
• What word best captures your main motive throughout the day?

“When we learn how to be truly present with our joy and our sorrow, with our longing and our desires, layer upon layer of our selves and the world are revealed.” – Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Go back and check out our other 50 Journaling Tools.