In this series of posts, I’m putting two ideas together—the idea that smart, creative, sensitive individuals are confronted by special challenges and the idea that journaling is a valuable self-help tool—and turning them into a set of journaling prompts designed to lead you on a personal journey of discovery.
I hope that you enjoy these prompts. Here are five more challenges, and four journal prompts to go with each challenge. Engaging with any one of them may well serve you. I hope you find these valuable! And I hope you’ll take a look at Why Smart People Hurt and at my latest journal, Affirmations for Self-Love.
In ancient Greece, a thinker or an artist could be as wide-ranging as they wanted to be, doing science, art, philosophy, and whatever else excited or interested them. An Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Democritus, Pythagoras, or other Greek thinker could engage in what was called “natural philosophy”—that is, they could take an interest in anything and everything. Nowadays that is rarely true. We have arrived at an age of narrow specialization—and with it, serious repercussions. Let’s look at five of these contemporary challenges.
- Your academic research has led you to a very narrow, restrictive, and constrictive place. For example, maybe you are a biologist who has landed in the narrow place of learning more and more about just one cellular process.
+ Have you been painted into a corner, intellectually speaking?
+ Visualize yourself escaping from that corner. What do you see?
+ Describe one tactic or strategy that might help you break free of your current situation.
+ Are there any people to enlist or resources to employ to help you escape that corner?
2. Your interest in big ideas in your field clashes with your day-to-day activities. For example, maybe you are a lawyer who is deeply interested in the big ideas of intellectual property law but you find yourself spending your days litigating small, murky intellectual property disputes.
+ Do your day-to-day activities rob you of the chance to think about the big ideas in your field?
+ Do you see a way to at least partially pursue those big ideas?
+ Pick a big idea from your field that interests you. Visualize yourself pursuing it. What do you see?
+ Is there a way to maneuver yourself in your field so that you get to entertain big ideas more often?
3. Your field has “hardened” into a standardized way of thinking and there is no room for innovation. For example, maybe you are a physicist who can only garner research money for yet another study that supports the standard model.
+ Are you working in a field that has “hardened” in this way?
+ What have been the consequences of that hardening for the field?
+ What have been the consequences of that hardening for you personally?
+ What solutions or part-solutions seem possible?
4. You’ve made a name for yourself in connection with a certain principle or idea which you yourself no longer believe in. For example, maybe you were one of the first computer scientists to write about the value of AI, but now you have your doubts about it.
+ Have you painted yourself into a corner by making a name for yourself?
+ What might you try to do to get out of that corner?
+ What do you see as the upside of becoming associated with an idea, principle, or intellectual brand?
+ What do you see as the downside?
5. You are a writer who would love to be a generalist and write about whatever interests you. But editors are pushing back and indicating that they want you to stick to the one thing for which you are best known and for which you have the largest following.
+ Do you see a way to balance writing what you want to write with writing what they want you to write?
+ Given that self-publishing is always an option, what are your thoughts on focusing on self-publishing, so as to be able to write whatever you want to write?
+ When the marketplace demands that you stick to one thing, what strategies might you employ to maintain and explore your other interests?
+ Have you had the experience of being told to stick to one thing? How did you react?
More to come! Enjoy!
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Promote Healing, Ignite Creativity, and Discover Writing Tips from Two Journaling Experts
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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