Gain Clarity By Keeping A Journal

Thoughts come and they go, the same goes for wonderful ideas capable of changing the course of your life for good. I could liken them to the rain, in due season it falls but if we aren’t witty enough to build dams to retain it then it goes deep into the earth wasted. The sun as well with its magnificent shine and the heat it comes with consistently rises and sets but only those with solar systems can harvest its power. Without the proper infrastructure and organization, it would be impossible to take a day just to go and admire nature’s beauty in animals at the zoo or game park.

All these are natural phenomena that follow a certain pattern engraved in their being; but without human effort to make the best out of them, their full potential cannot be known. See a man leading a confused life, making unwise decisions, and perhaps blaming one person or the next thing for his disadvantaged fate? There is disorder even in his thinking. Disorganized thinking leads to actions and words of the same nature and the opposite is true. There is something about keeping a record of one’s thoughts and plans that helps eliminate grey areas of doubt in their path. This is because naturally when you set out to keep a journal, as opposed to a diary which is often a chronological list of events, you are inclined to note down only important things and so the more you write them down the more you focus your mind on those.

1. Journaling empowers you to gain clarity about where you are.

Sure, you may read your diary years later and laugh at some of your folly and immature thinking one day but if you want a fair assessment of where you stand today, start writing down your experiences, your reflections, and your takeaway from these in a JOURNAL. It’s a busy world we live in and without sufficient time taken to analyze ourselves, we gradually lose touch and just blend in with everything else happening around us. Give yourself a kind reminder of who you are and what you represent, your values, your pains, your joys, regularly to make sure you aren’t just existing. A business cannot know how well it is doing and how much improvement it needs without thorough bookkeeping. You also, unless you keep your personal account books cannot be sure of where you stand and what you need to improve to lead a more profitable life.

2. You need to appreciate how far you’ve come.

Going through a picture album with all my photos from babyhood to childhood through teenagerhood gave me an interesting perspective recently. I realized how much I had been ‘mutating’ over the years without even realizing it! It is the same feeling when you read your journals or diaries written in past seasons. You can only look and be grateful for the character growth and otherwise. Sometimes when we are hard-pressed by current challenges, we only need to look over our shoulders and see where we have come from. Reminiscing how we won over the Goliaths of that time gives us the courage to face the present ones. Keep journaling so that you may not forget to be patient and always hopeful in every circumstance.

3. Journaling removes the mist around your future.

This is by far the most important part of all this: using the power of writing things down to paint a clear picture of the future you want.  The mind can be a dangerous place to keep important information because it may not keep it all ready for reference at anytime. We may forget. Or time and circumstances change our notions of what we want to be and do. With our imaginations, we see what could be but when we write it down, we cement our imagination thereby increasing the chances of us living to see the dream. Without clearly defined goals written down, one can only hope to stumble upon a favorable future.

Something else very interesting happens when you take the step of keeping a record of your life. You may not be a skilled writer but somehow your level of excellence in writing advances when you set your mind to do it. This then spills over to even the way you execute your plans. It as if your mind hears the message, “We are organized and we are taking ourselves seriously” and so it passes it on to every fiber of your being.

After adopting the winning habit of writing you will find it useful to organize the journals themselves because if they look like trash it’s only a matter of time before you toss them out. Neatly written and well-organized work will make you want to read and keep it. Imagine that day in the future when you will want to tell your story to inspire others, your written work will be most valuable then so keep at it, and don’t forget to insert dates and even times in your journals.