Have you ever wanted to journal? Have ever tried to kickstart the habit yet kept failing at making it a consistent thing you do? Well, if you are, I'm in the same boat as you but something happened this morning and I think something clicked...
Let me explain.
For over five years, I know that journaling would be incredibly beneficial to me. My mind race at a 100 miles per hour and the only way sometimes that I found to slow it down is to write and speak. This is the only way that I've found that I am able to organize and clarify my thinking.
Journaling (or keeping letters or diaries) is an ancient tradition, one that dates back to at least 10th century Japan. More and more we are discovering genuine health benefits to journaling such as:
- Clarify your thoughts and feelings.
- Solve problems more effectively
- Resolve disagreements with others. (Writing about misunderstandings rather than stewing over them will help you to understand another’s point of view.)
- Make sense of our own personal history
What Changed?
Well, I use to have so much difficulty writing about me and my day to day life that I mostly wrote notes and to do lists. But last year, I started a journal where I would mostly write about "how I feel" and "what's going on in my life". At the time it seemed inconsequential and boring.
3 Months after I started that journal...I lost it.
I was really sad that nobody could find it but then I moved on and didn't journal the same way...I just kept mostly writing about goals, to do and notes in my other journal.
But then, yesterday, the journal came back to me in the most unexpected way
As I was metaphorically "cleaning my room" this morning, I decided to crack it open and read what I wrote a year ago. Believe it or not, it was the first time I was reading about what I was doing and how I was feeling a year ago. I finally understood the value of a journal on an emotional level. A year ago, I was meeting the women I would spend the rest of my life with. A year ago, I had questions about life that I found answers to, a year ago...I was me in the process of becoming me today.
It's all nice to intellectually know something but it's usually not enough to move us or really making us understand at a deeper level what it means to journal.
My Message
Start journaling even if it's only a few lines a day. Write about your story. There is obvious value at doing that in the here and now but the value of doing this go way beyond that...it help us make sense of our own personal process and rediscovering where we came from.
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