Be grateful to everyone is about recognising that you’re dependent on everybody else for your existence. That’s not easy to accept, especially in relation to someone or something you don’t like. But mind training is about befriending those parts of yourself and others that you reject. The original lojong slogan is the same as my… Continue reading Buddhist Writing Prompt: Be grateful to everyone
Take responsibility is about not blaming others when things don’t go the way you hoped. Instead of looking for somebody else to blame, you can turn it around and take responsibility for your part in the drama. The original lojong slogan is: Drive all blames into one. This doesn’t mean you blame yourself or make… Continue reading Buddhist Writing Prompt: Take responsibility
Turn obstacles into the path is about working with whatever happens, no matter how difficult, rather than waiting for your life to be perfect. If you only meditate or write when you feel good, you’ll get stuck when you have a bad day. The original lojong slogan is: When the world is filled with evil,… Continue reading Buddhist Writing Prompt: Turn obstacles into the Path
Practice self-acceptance continues the instructions for tonglen meditation found in slogan 7 and says you should begin the practice with yourself. It’s good to have compassion for others, but you can’t help others unless you can help yourself. Compassion really does begin at home. The original lojong slogan is: Begin the sequence of sending and… Continue reading Buddhist Writing Prompt: Practice Self-Acceptance
Good news! My latest book is now available as a shiny new paperback! Discover the secret to mastering your thoughts and get your mind to behave itself so you can get some writing done. Here’s the inevitable blurb: Free Your Pen: Mind Training for Writers 59 Slogans to Cure Writer’s Block & Free Your Voice… Continue reading Free Your Pen now available in paperback!
This is the final extract from Free Your Pen: Mind Training for Writers. In the last post we looked at how to practice with the slogans in general. Here we look at one slogan in depth – first by exploring the original teachings and then applying the slogan to writing. Slogan 1: First, remember the… Continue reading Free Your Pen: Applying Lojong Slogans to Writing
Continuing the extracts from Free Your Pen: Mind Training for Writers. In the last post we looked at the traditional practice of lojong and its teachings. Here we explore how to apply the slogans to writing and daily life in this extract from chapter three: How to Practice with the Slogans If you want to… Continue reading Free Your Pen: How to use Lojong Slogans in your Writing
What does it take to be a writer? The one thing that all writers have in common is very simple: they write. But more than that, a writer writes – no matter what. It seems obvious, but it’s the ‘no matter what’ that causes all the problems. To be a writer it helps if you… Continue reading How to Free your Pen: Mind Training for Writers
There are loads of exercises you can do that use acrostics to give your writing brain a work out. These kind of word games rarely produce anything useful but they can help you to get unstuck if you don’t know what to write. They’re also good for encouraging you to think of a variety of… Continue reading Writing Exercise: Fun with Acrostics!
This exercise uses a newspaper headline as a starting point for a piece of writing. It’s not about trying to write something perfect or even interesting, just take a headline from a newspaper or online and see what ideas it triggers. Allow your pen to go with the flow of whatever comes up and write… Continue reading Writing Exercise: Newspaper Headline
This writing exercise is a way to challenge yourself and have fun at the same time. The idea is to pick three random words, the more disconnected from each other the better, and then add an emotion. Then you write for ten minutes and incorporate all the words in a way that conveys the emotion… Continue reading Writing Exercise: Random Story Generator
Another writing exercise to get the juices flowing! This time we’ll explore five of our favourite words – these could be any word you like or whatever is rattling around inside your head at the moment. Try to choose words that are concrete rather than abstract, words that point to something real, not an idea.… Continue reading Writing Exercise: Five Favourite Words
Jessica Davidson 