The Journal Prompt

Insightful Journal Prompts Delivered Weekly.

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Welcome back to The Journal Prompt, your weekly companion for introspection and personal growth. 🌿

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In This Week’s Issue (11-minute read)

💬 Quote of the Week

🖼️ Framing Your Reflection

✍️ Three Insightful Journal Prompts

Framing Your Reflection 🖼️

My eldest son, Dillan (10 years old) plays lacrosse. His position - Attack.

For those unfamiliar with the game, it’s like hockey on grass - thank you, Canada.

It’s wicked fast. And it’s…..physical.

Attack is offense - they are there to make goals.

They go against huge defenders that use six foot poles to prevent Attackers from making those goals.

During Dillan’s most recent practice, his coach bellowed at him from the sidelines during a run-and-shoot drill.

“More aggression, Dillan! You gotta attack the box when you come out of that split dodge! Do it again!”

I could tell my little dude was having to dig deep to perform.

He’s been playing since six, but this was the first year we decided to take the game a little more seriously.

We switched him to the best team in his league.

Longer practices.

Higher expectations.

He has a separate training coach on the days he doesn’t have team practice.

We discussed the changes with him at the beginning of the season and he was up for the challenge.

But there’s a difference between discussing the plan with your parents in an air conditioned living room, and having one of the top defenders in the state shove and check you at full speed.

In short - Dillan was feeling it.

As I shouted an encouraging “You got this, Dill!”, I had a Universe moment.

That’s what I call when an existential question suddenly hits you while you’re doing something normal/routine.

Intuitively, I agreed with Dillan’s coach - Dillan needed more aggression when going in for the goal.

It seemed self-evident.

And the obviousness with which I treated that fact is what shook me a bit.

…..WHY did I agree with Coach Travis?

Isn’t aggression in society bad?

Are we using lacrosse as an outlet for behavior that’s not appropriate anywhere else?

And if THAT’S true, why I am letting….no, encouraging….my son to get better at being aggressive?

Doesn’t this create the type of sinister criminals, greedy businessmen, manipulative negotiators, and sexual predators that destroy the fabric of our social contract?

In order to find out whether I was contributing my fair share to society’s demise…..I whipped out my phone, and started going down an internet rabbit hole.

First things, first - words mean things. So I started by googling “aggression definition” and got this:

When I read those first several sentences, my anxiety grew because it seemed like the Universe was telling me “Ivan…why are you adding to the problem?”

But that last one told a slightly different story.

And the synonyms were all (mostly)…..positive.

Interesting.

So, question became: if there are different kinds of aggression, which one is Dillan learning playing lacrosse?

I needed to dig deeper - to find out if this specific game was the bad aggression.

Enter Perplexity.ai.

You ask questions and ai scours the best resources on the internet, generating answers and citing it’s sources. I have virtually stopped using Google. Its’ awesome. Use it.

I looked into the history of lacrosse, and boy was I shocked.

It was invented around 1100 AD by the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois people - a confederation of six Native American nations in what is now Upstate New York and parts of Canada (thank you again, Canada. Leafs up! 🍁).

The Haudenosaunee call lacrosse the “Creator’s Game”, and believe it to be a gift from the Creator (capitalized here as they would capitalize it). It’s part of their world creation story.

While it’s most famous purpose is that the game was used to train warriors, it was actually predominantly used as a social gathering.

Tribes would come together to trade, connect, compete, and men would use it to work out aggression without violence.

Get this…..

Lacrosse was even used as way to resolve disputes between nations instead of going to war.

It’s spiritual roots are so deep, that the nations still use it for religious rites and medicinal purposes - it is literally believed to heal the soul.

So wait….

If the inventors believed that their Creator gave them this game as a gift…..and seeing what they used the game for……what does that say about the spiritual role (for lack of a better term) that aggression plays in our lives?

When I went down another Perplexity rabbit hole looking into the psychology of aggression, “Assertiveness Training” was shown to have significant impact on depression reduction, increase in self-esteem, and helping groups work better as teams across ALL industries.

Wouldn’t the opposite happen if we were encouraging more aggression?!

And this helped me realize it’s not whether we are or are not aggressive, but to what degree are we aggressive, and how much aggression is appropriate for the situation in which we find ourselves.

It’s a continuum on which we traverse, not a bucket we fall in to.

Just as violent criminals have no place in society, there is no virtue in being someone’s doormat, letting people walk all over you without giving your Existence the proper respect it deserves.

Perhaps there’s certain areas of your life in which you’ve tilted too much toward the doormat side of the continuum.

Maybe so much so that you’ve taken yourself out of the game completely - you put yourself on the bench.

Maybe because someone called you “too aggressive.”

Or maybe because someone said you weren’t aggressive enough.

In either case, we must accept that it was US who decided to back down.

But therein lies our ticket off the bench - we don’t need anyone’s permission to get back in.

The difference between the game of lacrosse and life: you’re both the coach and the player.

If you put yourself on the bench, you can also put yourself back in the game.

And maybe the position that needs you most……..is…...Attack.

Go score some goals.

Three Journal Prompts ✍️

🔍 A Past Fire

Examine a time when you were really committed toward something, and you felt that aggressive energy propelling you to achieve? How did that feel?

If you succeeded, examine why you were able to reach the right amount of aggression. If you failed, examine the role that aggression played in that failure.

Do not whip yourself. This is not about guilt - it’s about analysis. Be a scientist and seek to understand with as much objective distance as possible.

🧠 Real Contribution

In what team or project are you currently involved that could use more aggression from you to help reach the goal(s)?

If you hold back, are you really being a team player? If you are being a “ball hog”, are you really being a team player? Examine where you currently are on the continuum.

🔭 Storm Clouds Rising

Is there a problem looming in your life, or perhaps in the life of someone who’s close, that if things materialize in the way you believe they probably will, you would regret not being forceful sooner, helping prevent catastrophe?

As we dive deeper into understanding ourselves, let’s remember that we are not alone.

Writing is healing and healing can hurt - reach out to friends and family. They are there for you.

Sending Good Vibes,

Ivan from The Journal Prompt Team

P.S.

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Stay tuned 👀

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