Looking Back with Love (S17E3)

This episode began with me reaching for a journal from the shelf - and by chance, I picked up the very first one I ever wrote in when Flow Journaling was becoming a daily practice for me.

I opened it at random… and landed on Day 21.

What I found was a tender glimpse into who I was back then - and some insight into the foundations of how I live and work now. 

In this episode, I share that early entry, and reflect on what it means to revisit our past selves with gentleness. I talk about meditation, the deep longing for safety (for ourselves and others), and the quiet power of seeing how far we’ve come.

This is an episode about the value of reflection - not to get things right, but to be with whatever’s true in the moment.

Key reflections in this episode:

• How journaling and meditation support each other as practices of presence and self-compassion
• Why inner work isn’t linear - and how spirals of change are part of the journey
• The deep desire so many of us share for safety - and the ache that can come with witnessing suffering
• The quiet strength of giving ourselves space between stimulus and response
• How powerful it can be to revisit our past selves with love, curiosity and care

Viktor Frankl: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom."

Chapters

• 0:00 Finding My First Journal

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I turned to my journals. Today I reached for a book from the shelf and it happens to be the very first journal that I started to keep in the way that I now keep my journals, so it's a record that begins, really, when flow journaling first became a practice for me. Welcome to the Henny Flynn podcast, the space for deepening self-awareness with profound self-compassion. I'm Henny, I write, coach and speak about how exploring our inner world can transform how we experience our outer world, all founded on a bedrock of self-love. Settle in and listen and see where the episode takes you. And if you've been here for a while, you'll know that I used to date, not date. That's a really important distinction. Actually, I used to not date and I still do not date my journal entries, but what I used to do was write day one, day two, day three. Now this entry is day 21,. So it's really early on in my own journaling journey, my own change journey, really, and I opened the book at random and it fell to this day 21 and I've just reread it and I feel drawn to share it with you. Read it and I feel drawn to share it with you and, um, it feels really interesting for me actually to feel my way back into the woman that I was um this is seven or eight years ago, I think, um and to recognize the things that I was working with, that I was processing, analyzing, exploring and maybe there's something here that resonates with you, either, something that you're working with now. You know, this is all a spiral, like it's not a linear process, is it? We go through these spirals of change and reflection and this inner work. We don't, you know, tick things off on a, on a to-do list as we go and say, well, that's done. We often find ourselves circling back in this ever-widening spiral of awareness, or ever-diminishing spiral of awareness, whichever way your brain works. So, yeah, I'd like to share this with you and let's see where it takes us. Day 21. Not really sure where my thoughts are going today. I'm just going to interject there, like that's a really common theme, as you will know from being part of listening to this podcast for a while, but anyway, I'm going to start again listening to this podcast for a while. But anyway, I'm going to start again. Day 21. Not really sure where my thoughts are going today, so I'm just writing because I think that's what this is all about Allowing thoughts to fall out of my head, down my arm and through the pen onto the page, a splurge of purple mental cogitation, or not even even cogitation, mere rambling, no sense stuff.

Speaker 1: 3:50

I'm tired today and my body feels languid. I think my mind does too. Meditation was lovely and would have been delightful to have stayed in the position for longer, calming my chattering thoughts and focusing on my breathing. I wonder when, if ever, it becomes easy to switch off and allow these thoughts that bubble up and want to wash you away with them on a lovely meandering stream of consciousness, just to melt away, to swim by and not lure you along with them, and just to focus deeply, calmly, beautifully, on the breath. I think it's maybe something that grows, but never just happens easily. That's why it's a practice.

Speaker 1: 4:38

Being present is hard. We're so conditioned to future thinking and past analysis hard. We're so conditioned to future thinking and past analysis, judging and fearing that just being is difficult to do. Sitting with yourself, with myself, with my breath. No, then, just now, what a wonderful place to be. And it does make things easier to manage generally. And it does make things easier to manage generally, makes priorities easier.

Speaker 1: 5:09

I think that concept, that truth, that between stimulus and response there's a space, is so apt, it's the breathing room. Just had to take a moment to think that beautiful truth through and stare out of the window Could do that for longer. It's so lovely out there the trees and the sky and it's so lovely just here the couch and the cushions, comfort, calm, peace. May all beings find this feeling, or their version of this feeling, inside them. Is that arrogance? Is that assuming that just because something is right for me, it must be right for others? Or does that make me feel uncomfortable? Because it touches on a truth that for so many people this moment of physical safety and comfort is impossible to find, and yet for others they have this but aren't aware. Maybe it's something more akin to praying for all beings to find a space inside themselves where they can feel safe or that they can keep safe.

Speaker 1: 6:28

I don't know. I find this hard to think about. It connects me to the idea of the deep suffering of others and my natural desire is to shy away from that because it hurts me too. It hurts me to think of that and I feel powerless and yet wish that I could do more. So I think there are a number of themes in there that you know really resonate with me today and, just you know, working backwards, there are so many of us feeling this deep desire for everyone in the world to feel safe and there are so many for whom their own safety only feels available when they are hurting others or pushing others away or diminishing others in some way, and that is really challenging to sit with. To be able to hold all these different versions of reality, these different versions of reality, and there are so many people for whom safety feels like such an impossible concept right now. And being able to sit with all of that, to be with all of that, it's really hard. It is really hard and we do, I think it's.

Speaker 1: 8:15

Also it was really interesting for me to read my reflections about meditation, because it was around the same time that I began flow journaling, that I kind of developed this practice for myself, that I also began meditating practice for myself, that I also began meditating. You know they're they're sort of pretty well integrated, uh, into a shared practice for me. It's why, you know when, when I do these free events, these free uh finding flow events, um, that I do with Kate, my publisher from Inner Work Project, I always share a relaxation practice before we journal because it helps us come into this deeper place, and my own journaling practice has really deepened again. It's just so delicious right now. I wake each morning, I sit up in bed, I meditate and then I journal. And I've had, you know, periods of time where that hasn't been the case and it just feels. I'm so grateful that it's returned to me, that my attention to it or my attention has turned toward it maybe that's a better way of saying it and like I've said in this, this journal entry from you know, years ago, it is a practice. It is a practice that we that we keep returning to meditation. That is in order that we can build the muscle memory and gain the benefits from it.

Speaker 1: 9:52

And for me, flow journaling is very similar, actually, that it's not necessarily the words themselves that we are writing, or you know the lyricism within the words. You know the meaning, the rich meaning that can sometimes appear on the page and sometimes it doesn't. It's all equal, but it is the act of sitting down with the journal and our pen and allowing our thoughts to flow that brings us so much of the value of this really beautiful work. Um, and if you haven't yet explored the power of flow journaling and you're curious about it, I really do recommend getting a hold of a copy of in the flow and it's the first book that I kate published for me. You know, first, one of my books that Kate published, um, I think there's a link to it in the show notes and if not, I'm gonna double check that um, it is rich with guidance and it also has all of these really beautiful, compassion-based, open prompts for you to use, like in the book, to write in the book.

Speaker 1: 11:10

I really like like the subversive nature of that as well. You know we're taught at school, aren't you never to write in books, but this is a book that we are meant to write in. Kate has this lovely phrase about the books she publishes which is useful, useful stationery. So you know, to really allow ourselves to sink into this inner wisdom that I think we all hold. And you know I'm finding it fascinating looking just back at this one single entry from years ago and seeing gosh how and seeing the foundation actually of so much of the, the thoughts that really have helped me build the framework for the way that I work, the way that I coach, the way that I run my group coaching courses, the way that I flow, journal blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of it and the way that I am, the way that I experience the world, the way that I choose to experience the world, I can see the roots of it are in here and that feels really, really powerful for me, and I think it's really useful to be able to look back at times and see how far we have traveled.

Speaker 1: 12:27

Whatever our journey is, your journey will be very, very different from mine, you know, and that's perfect and marvelous and just as it should be. And it is important to be able to look back and see oh gosh, yes, I see where those thoughts were beginning to develop, or I see where that insight was starting to show through. Or it might also show us something, a thread that perhaps we put down somewhere along the way and we could, you know, very gently, just pick it up again and see, well, how could we weave this thread into the life that we're living right now? Um and anything else. Oh yeah, I think the other thing as well, really, here was um, it's been, it's really interesting to see, um, how, uh, certain um messages that I have gathered along the way, uh, remembering actually that that one the victor frankl quote about, between stimulus and response, there is a space, and it continues something like um, it's a space and in that space lies our power and freedom, lies our freedom to choose, and in that choice lies our growth and happiness. I think it's something like that. Again, I'm going to put it into the show notes, so you have it.

Speaker 1: 14:00

It's such a beautiful, beautiful reflection from someone who experienced desperate trauma in his life. He was an Auschwitz survivor and was able to navigate that with the most incredible humanity. And, as I say that, I am deeply, deeply aware of the correlation with the stuff that's unfolding around us right now. So I would love to leave you with love. Oh, you know, I really feel like there's so much tenderness in this reflection. Actually, today I don't know I'm, um, this afternoon going to be going to something which is extraordinarily tender, and maybe that's what I'm feeling echoing inside me, and maybe it's something that you're sensing too, and I just want to send you love and to say there's a theme that has been with me I think actually it might have been the thing that I spoke about last week which is this idea that this inner work, this deep work.

Speaker 1: 15:39

You know it can be deep but it doesn't need to be heavy. You know we can hold it and we can hold ourselves lightly and that feels so important. And it's not about holding things lightly, it isn't about ignoring the pain or ignoring the suffering. It's about being able to hold our response to it lightly and then that enables us to move into action, whatever action that might be that is available to each of us in order to help alleviate the things that we are seeing, that are so painful around us, and alleviate rather than subsume or, um, distract ourselves from. But when we hold ourselves and what we're experiencing lightly, it becomes easier to be calm and kind and clear.

Speaker 1: 16:48

And I've also recognized that those three words are really powerful for me and they feel like the? Um, the deepest values of this work really, and the deepest values of how I wish to experience the world, how I wish to show up in the world. Maybe they resonate with you too. Maybe other words resonate with you and I would love to hear what they are actually. You know, you can always message me, henny, at hennyflinncouk. You can email me with your reflections from this. Maybe it's raised some sorts for you. You can also just tap on that little button in the show notes. Tap to share your reflections and I'll receive those as well. I can't reply directly to those messages, but if you want to share something, I would really love to see that, and maybe I'll share your words in the next episode, always anonymous, of course, and yeah, let's leave it there. That feels enough. We are enough Sending so much love, my darlings, and sending a hug and a wave, thank you.