Author Danielle Dufayet: How Journaling Helped Me Be More Calm, Mindful And Resilient
An Interview With Heidi Sander
Journaling is a way to track our progress, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. We can see how we’ve changed and grown. We can be proud of how far we’ve come, making us more resilient for the future.
Journaling is a powerful tool to gain clarity and insight especially during challenging times of loss and uncertainty. Writing can cultivate a deeper connection with yourself and provide an outlet for calm, resilience and mindfulness. When my mom passed on, I found writing to be cathartic. When I read through my journal years later, there were thoughts that I developed into poems, and others just provided a deeper insight into myself. In this series I’m speaking with other leaders who use journaling to become more mindful and resilient.
As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Danielle Dufayet.
Danielle Dufayet is an award-winning children’s book author, fine art artist and teaches English and self-empowerment classes to middle graders. She is a certified nutrition and lifestyle coach with a B.S. in Psychology. Danielle’s passion is to help people become happier and healthier so they can live their best lives. She believes we are all here to remember who we truly are -divine beings of light and love.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! We really appreciate the courage it takes to publicly share your story of healing. Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your background and your childhood backstory?
My childhood wasn’t a very happy time for me, being a child of divorce, but I never felt I lacked anything, and I never felt like I was dealt a bad card. I did struggle to handle my emotions as they felt overwhelming and confusing at times. I remember writing poetry around the age of seven. This gave me comfort. I suppose I was channeling some of my emotions in a healthy and creative way. It definitely felt like an outlet. It was then I realized on a subconscious level that writing was a powerful tool for self-expression, healing, insight, and transformation.
Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about journaling. Have you been writing in your journal for a long time or was there a challenging situation that prompted you to start journal writing? If you feel comfortable sharing the situation with us, it could help other readers.
I didn’t start journaling until I was going through my second divorce. I had endured a long and toxic marriage that left me feeling drained, emotionally. I felt I had abandoned myself during the marriage, putting my spouse’s needs first, even if it meant compromising my mental heath and well-being. I knew I had to reconnect with myself, and I knew journaling would help me do that. Essentially, when I wrote down my thoughts and feelings, I felt like I was sharing with my higher self. I approached it like I was talking with my best friend, sharing my deepest fears and sadness, and asking for guidance and support. I committed to journaling every single morning to start my day. I’ve been doing it now for about six years.
How did journaling help you heal, mentally, emotionally and spiritually?
Journaling was very healing because I could let all my feelings out on paper. Bottling up feelings is never healthy. It helped me heal as I worked out some of my emotions. I was careful to never write as if I was a victim. I tried to express my feelings in the most self-empowering way, while being authentic. The more I wrote, the better I felt because it helped me feel stronger and more focused on the kind of life I wanted and not dwell on the kind of life I was leaving behind. Journaling felt safe and comforting and it helped me keep my mind on my dreams and goals.
Did journaling help you find more self-compassion and gratitude? Can you share a story about that?
My main emphasis for journaling was expressing my gratitude. It was tempting to focus on what was wrong in my life when I knew I needed to focus on all my blessings. Making that shift in my attitude was so empowering and it felt so much better! It absolutely helped me to be more self-compassionate. It’s OK to feel down in the dumps but staying there too long is not helpful. I found that writing my feelings and thoughts to myself, for myself, was an act of self-love. It motivated me to be kind to myself. Journaling reminded me that writing was a way to help understand myself better and trying to understand yourself better is an act of self-compassion. During my divorce, journaling truly helped my gratitude and self-compassion grow — all a part of my self-love journey.
What kind of content goes into your journal? For example, do you free-write, write poems, doodle?
The first thing I write in my journal is “thank you”. Thank you for a good night’s sleep. Thank you for my life. Thank you for this beautiful day, etc. I always include thanking my “Divine Counsel”. I believe we all have spirit guides and angels and ancestors that are watching over us and wanting the best for us. I call this group my Divine Counsel. I don’t dwell so much on how I’m feeling, rather I ask for guidance and strength during difficult times. I confirm that things are working out and that I am open to receiving blessings and miracles. I end by stating that my heart is full of gratitude and that I wish the best for everyone. Occasionally, I’ll write down a dream I had the night before if it’s truly memorable and significant. Looking at my dreams is a way of understanding my sub-conscious mind.
How did you gain a different perspective on life and your emotions while writing in your journal? Can you please share a story about what you mean?
I gained a different perspective on life by writing in my journal because I realized that I could decide which words to use when expressing myself. Words became so more important. I believe we all describe our lives in our own way. How we describe it, however, determines the quality of it. We always have a choice on how we want our narrative to go. I remember once I was writing about how my day was going to go, but until I added enthusiasm and authority, I didn’t feel excited. I went from “Today’s going to be a good day” to “Today, I’m going to make this a fantastic day full of love and joy and abundance!” I noticed the more enthusiastic I was, the more I felt excited about what I was writing and the more self-empowered and optimistic I felt. It was important to add exclamation marks! Slowly, I started writing my dreams and goals as if they were already happening. Now, my journaling is all about positive affirmations and gratitude. Rarely, do I dwell on any negative feelings and if I’m experiencing them, I turn the narrative around and choose more positive and encouraging words and phrases. Journaling showed me that the words we use to describe our lives (to ourselves and to others) is up to us. If we use self-empowering words, we feel more self-empowered and act more self-empowered.
In my own journal writing, I ended up creating poems from some of the ideas and one of them won an award. Do you have plans with your journal content?
I don’t have any specific plans with my journal content. Perhaps when I’m gone, my kids would see I was dedicated to practicing self-love by how I was speaking (writing) to myself. I believe we should all be taught to treat ourselves kindly. In our journaling, we can include self-forgiveness and self-compassion. I love reading back on some of my journaling to see how far I’ve come. I’ve trained my mind to be very positive, so I don’t feel such a dire need to journal like I did before. My journal is like an old friend. It has seen me through all my ups and downs. I would only hope it would inspire someone else to take that inner journey.
Fantastic. Here is our main question. Can you please share with our readers “five ways that journaling can help you to be more calm, mindful and resilient”?
Journaling can be a great tool for being more calm, mindful, and resilient in five ways:
- Journaling helps you become calmer because it allows you to unpack your feelings onto the page.
- It helps you become calmer because it forces you to use your left brain (language) and your right brain (visual images) which can feel very balancing.
- It helps you to be more mindful because you start to notice how using certain words make you feel. Focusing your writing on negativity will not feel as self-empowering as choosing more helpful, positive, and encouraging words.
- The physical act of writing uses the frontal lobe part of the brain, which is responsible for reasoning, planning and problem-solving. This can add to feeling more resilient and in control.
- Journaling is a way to track our progress, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. We can see how we’ve changed and grown. We can be proud of how far we’ve come, making us more resilient for the future.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of peace to the greatest amount of people, what would that be?
I would like to include social/emotional classes in every school — of course, all according to different age levels. Children need to learn about how we as humans think and behave and why. They need to learn about the subconscious mind. We shouldn’t wait until we have a major life crisis to start understanding ourselves. We need to start early so we can make better choices. Luckily, we are starting to take social/emotional learning very seriously with our children, but I believe it should be part of the school curriculum. Anger management should be taught as a class. Negative self-talk should be a separate class. How to feel self-empowered would be another (my favorite!) If we all understood ourselves better, we would ultimately understand others better. I believe that would lead to world peace.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them. :-)
I would love to meet Robert Moore, author of many wonderful books on Jungian Psychology. He has an excellent book called King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. It’s about the male psyche and I think every parent that has a son should read it. Our young males really need some strong mentoring. It’s truly lacking in our society.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
https://www.danielledufayetbooks.com
https://www.danielledufayet.com
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued fulfillment and success with your writing!
Thank you so much for allowing me to contribute to this important topic.
