I have not been a huge journaler for the majority of my life. I’ve heard people talk about why you should journal, and it all sounded great. However, it was something that I tried many times with electronic forms. I got the Day One Journal. I’ve tried the iPhone journaling app. I’ve tried journaling in Notion and many other apps.
Thinking that this would be the easiest way to journal the problem, not run into is that I would journal for once, twice, three times, and I’d fade out and I’d come back and I’d do it more and then I’d fade out for some more time.
Always then turning around and trying yet again, and I would stop for years at a time, and then said OK. Let’s try to journal once more. Only forwarded for me to fade one again now I’m not the greatest journalist as I’ve stated, but I have come to understand some advantages to journaling that you useful.
You’re able to lay your thoughts out in a visible form.
To start this post off, right let’s start with the biggest aspect that you get with journaling, and that is the opportunity to do a thought download. I thought download is exactly what it sounds like. You can either lay out the thoughts you have about a particular subject, or all the thoughts that you’ve had for a particular amount of time.
There are many advantages to using a thought download. These advantages become very apparent when you keep a journal.
The big advantage is that you get your thoughts out of your head and onto the paper, or on the screen. I firmly believe that paper is actually better for thought downloads because there is a tactile connection between the paper, the pen, your hand, your arm, and your mind. Because when you do a thought, downloading, you free up all the thoughts that your brain is working really hard to remember. And when it knows that it has been stored safely on a piece of paper, it can stop working so hard to remember. Our brains make wonderful thinking machines, terrible recording devices.
So as you write out the thoughts that you have, you’re able to look at each thought and determine do you truly believe this thought or not. Does this thought serve you in any way? How does this thought actually make me feel? Remember, yes, your thoughts make you feel your emotions. Nothing outside of you has that power.
So when you’re journaling, you get to lay your thoughts out and see them in their completeness. You get to see where you’re lying to yourself. Where are you lying to others? Where you’re being honest and truthful with yourself. And when you’re being honest and truthful with others.
Journaling allows you to process your thoughts and emotions coherently.
When you start looking at your thoughts as they are written out in a thought, download, you get to see what emotions come up with that thought. You get to the side. Does this thought help me or cause me to play small? Is this thought something I want to keep in my life? If not, then you get to change those thoughts. Now this won’t be something that is easily done right off the bat because many of our thoughts show up because we have automatic habits in our thinking process.
So it will take time to change the habit if we have a limiting belief. Beliefs are nothing more than thoughts we perceive to be true. We can change those thoughts with a bit of work and dedication.
Journaling also allows us to clean up our views of our different circumstances. This allows us to have clean emotions and to understand what dirty emotions we are having. We can see where we are resisting in a circumstance, or where we are allowing within a circumstance.
When it comes to your emotional and mental thought processes, journaling is one of the grandest tools you have in your arsenal.
Journaling freezes up your mind.
As I mentioned earlier, our minds are terrible at remembering. And it burns a whole lot of extra energy and willpower. Trying to remember what happened during the day. This is one reason why we may wanna remember something, and at the end of the day, we can’t remember what we’re supposed to be remembering.
When we write our thoughts and memories down, we allow our brain to free up the gum works so that we think better and clearly. So being able to transcribe your thoughts and what those thoughts mean to you can help your mind breathe a little easier.
It shows you progress on your goals.
As you go through your days, weeks, months, and years, if you are consistently journaling, you will be able to look back in your life and see how far you have come. We will be able to see and understand how much it sucked to start. We will see how wonderful it was to achieve our goal. And we see how scary it is to go to the next level, but come to fully understand how elated we become when we tackle that next level.
We don’t have that if we do not journal. Look at any woman who has had a child and ask her what it’s like to have a child, and they will give you well. It was hard work, yada yada yada, they will tell you how horrible and traumatizing it is to have a child at first. And that is because our brain takes the horrible things and sweeps them away and builds up on the positive things so that it doesn’t look quite as bad.
Our mind wants us to have a good life so many times we’re gonna look at the crappy parts and it’s not gonna be quite as crappy. Well, if you can write down your thoughts and emotions while you’re in the middle of a dig to get to the goal, you will have more understanding of what you are going through.
Journaling keeps records of your accomplishments.
It is very important to have a record of your accomplishments because many times we do not recognize our accomplishments as readily as we should. Yet many times our accomplishments need to be seen and understood why those accomplishments are as tremendous as they truly are.
Yes, we do downplay our wins, but we still want to look back and understand how great that win truly is. Don’t let your accomplishments and successes get washed away. Record them as they occur; that way, you have a record, even if you don’t ever read it again.
Journaling allows you to review your actions.
If you are a man of action, what are the big things you wanna do after action reports? This is what went right, what went wrong, and what did you learn from it? When you are journaling, you get to see what the actions were, and then on the fly, talk about what went right, what went wrong, and why you learn from it.
Journaling does this and more. We are able to allow ourselves to grow and become better men all around when we journal. You may be able to journal every day. If you do awesome, keep it up. Maybe you’re like me, where you journal twice to three times a week. At the moment, I’m doing really good at that. So keep journaling, keep growing, and let’s keep up the work.
