Journaling and Why

Hi socials, welcome back to this week’s post. As it says in the tittle, today I’m going to talk about journal. Journal or journaling is a quite familiar word to all of us. I know we all are living in a digital era and very busy with our lives. So some of you all may ask is journaling still a thing? Oh dear, let me tell you it never went out of the style. I have seen that most of us Sri Lankans are not into journaling. Some thinks it’s stupid. Some think it’s an additional risk to write down everything in a book, what if someone found it? All your secrets will be out. Well I’m not here to disagree with any of your thoughts. But I’m here to tell you the story why I keep my journal and how it helps me. And may be why you should re consider about having a journal.

If you’re serious about becoming a wealthy, powerful, sophisticated, healthy, influential, cultured, and unique individual, keep a journal.-

Above mentioned saying was from well known business philosopher and author, Mr. Jim Rohn. I feel the above saying gives the enough motive to keep a journal. As a Sri Lankan, I have seen that we aren’t that inspired to keep journals. We weren’t that influenced in writing journal as kids. Well in my case my parents never encouraged me to keep a journal. But they did encourage me to read. So as a kid finishing up a book withing a day is my goal. I sit on a one place and I keep reading. I put all my work aside and try to finish that book. Sadly now I’m trying to finish a TV series instead. However as you all may know now, I love to write. When I was 11 years old, I started writing down things. I wrote what I hear, song lyrics, what happened through the year, what I feel about my friends. I had wonderful friends, me and one of my friends started to write an extended version or Rosewell. We put all our imaginations in to the story. And I had this another friend who is crazy about Harry Potter. We both started making our own Harry Potter stories. We had our own imagination world. It was fun and it influenced writing. Back by then I had a thing for poems, so I wrote down those things in papers. When I was in age 14, me and my friend started to write each other weekly. What we did within days, what we feel about other friends. It’s basically like the summary of the week. Lucky me, I had a pen pal too. She if from Germany, we hardly write each other now, we are more connected through social media. But back then writing to her like summarizing my life. What happened after the last letter I sent to her. What is new in the life, what are my plans for future. Well, now you may wondering to where she is going with all these details. This is not what we meant by keeping a journal, but these were the foundation for my story of journaling. One day I got this beautiful pink color book with empty pages, I was 17 years old I guess. My Mom gave me that book. It had a velvet cover. I was thinking what I can do with this, shall I turn this to a diary. Yeah a diary, a journal. Why not. So then I turned the first page and wrote dear diary.. Here we go.. That’s how I started to keep a journal. After that all the journals I got, I started to name each one of them and dedicate the first page to tell why I picked that journal out of all the other books which were in the stole. I have never allowed any single soul to read any of my journals. Because I know most of them are filled with my feelings. When I’m sad and down, writing down my feelings helps me a lot. As much as I love writing them down I love to avoid the risk that could happen if someone put their hands on my journals. As a solution I started using my own names to replace the actual names. But the feelings and story is exactly what it is.

Well what did I get from keeping a journal? Glad you asked that. I wrote all the memorable dates in the journal, like first day I met particular person I would say. Later on, may be after years when I’m sad, when I opened my journals and start reading, all the memories come back to my mind. It’s like I’m living in the moment. I may not be friends with some of the people who are appearing in the pages of my journal, but the memories I have with them makes me feel alive. Sometimes I laugh and sometimes I feel loved. And most importantly it helped me to forgive people what they did and it reminded me why shouldn’t I let some people into my life, the lessons I learnt in hard way. Most importantly who I was back by then. If I never kept a journal, I might not remember much of things. How many of you all remember what you did on exactly one year back on the dame day as you are reading this? If you do remember it, great you have a good photogenic memory. I have a photogenic memory for an extend. But I can’t think of what I did three years back on the exact day as I’m writing this post. Some of you may say, does it really matters? What happened in past? It may contains heartbreaks. Yeah, I know we all don’t have a happy past. But sometimes we need to remind ourselves what we went through. Then we can tell ourselves that we survived such situations and became who we are now. And I’m proud of that, whatever the thing that we are going through now won’t matter in few years like it doesn’t matter now what happened in few years back.

Besides that keeping a journal helps you to track things. How much money I spent for the day and where does all the money go? How much of time I have wasted for the day? At the end of the day you sit on the comfiest place that you can find and you write everything that happened within the day and how you feel about things. Which means you can easily track what were the things you shouldn’t be doing. And what were the things that you have done for the day which leads for a better tomorrow. You might have said a terrible thing to your friends and when you write down it in the pages, you realize what you did was not what a good friend would do. You make sure to make it up to your friend and not to do the same thing again and again. And writing down things what happened make you realized how close you are to your goals. How far you have to go and what you have done so far? Who knows one day your journals will be an inspirations to future generation to achieve their goals. We all know that world famous people tend to keep journals. They strongly believed that it helps personal growth.

William Wordsworth once said,

Filling your pages with the breathing of your heart.

One of the other reasons that why I’m keeping my journal is, it clears my mind. When I write down my feelings and thoughts, it helps me to organize things. From the beginning of the day everything was messier in my mind. It helps me to free my memory and so that I can think clearly about things. Sometimes when I wrote down things it makes more sense and it helps to find that solution I was being trying to find through out the day. Jornaling sparks the creativity and it helps you to improve the problem solution skills.

The other added advantage of journaling is it helps you to de-stress. It’s just you and your journal, you write down all the feeling you have, you let go your anxiety with the words. Trust me it feels so good. You can always trust yourself, so telling yourself how you feel is much more safer.

Dr. Francisco Cruz, lead psychiatrist at Ketamine Health Centers, Florida. Once journaling becomes a daily habit, the amygdala begins to register journaling as a safe zone for personal growth, healing and reflection, adds Cruz

I hope this article gave you the motive to have a journal on your own. Well If it did, then why don’t you grab your bag and go to nearest book shop and buy the journal that your heart desires. It’s okay if you can’t find time to write a journal everyday. It will be hard at the beginning anyways. Spend 10 to 15 mins of the day writing your journal. And make it as a habit. Before starting on your journal there are two things I wanna tell you.

1. Do not let anyone read your journal unless it’s what your heart desires. You write everything you feel. Those pages filled with your feelings. Don’t let outsiders know your every feeling. More people know your weak points more they can attack you.
2. DO NOT EVER READ ANYONE’S JOURNALS unless they allows you to. Well I suggest that even if anyone allowed you to read their journals, just refuse it.

That brings us to the end of this post. I’m hoping to come to you all with another post like this. I was thinking, why don’t you suggest me what to write in next post. Comment down below what you suggest me to write in next blog post. Happy journaling you all.