Journal writing is a voyage to the interior
Have you ever had moments in your life when you like you didn’t really understand your own motives or choices? If you ever have this feeling, there is a simple way to find out why you do the things you do. Life can be a whirlwind of activity at times. Perhaps you have just been too busy of late to spend time thinking about what your priorities and goals really are, what they should be, or why you can’t stick to them.
One way to increase your self-understanding is journaling your thoughts and feelings. The idea of keeping a journal may sound strange to you. Most people don’t think of themselves as a writer. But even non-writers keep journals. When you open yourself to journaling, you open yourself to experiencing a new wealth of self-understanding.
Writing bits and pieces of your life experiences can be an incredible journey. Once you start thinking about something that happened to you in the past, you’ll find yourself remembering another story, then another.
Once you start making an effort to recall some of the experiences from your past, this will begin to trigger some of those memories that you haven’t thought about in years. All of the experiences that you will recall have combined to make you the person that you are today. Taking the time to sort back through some of your life stories will help you better understand yourself.
Where to begin:
1. Tools. Decide how you will write your story. Will you use a spiral notebook, composition notebook, or Moleskin? Will you be writing with a pen? Perhaps you would like to try it with your computer. Choose the tools that will work best for you. I journal better when I use pen and paper. Like anything else, no method works well if you don’t actually use it.
2. Just start! Don’t worry about starting at the very beginning. Interestingly, many people getting started in writing down stories of their lives because they “can’t remember back that far.” Where you start the story isn’t important. Starting it is.
3. Make chapters. Think of your life as a series of short chapters. To simplify your story, each situation you recall can be called a “chapter.” For example, you might remember the time your favorite uncle took you fishing and the boat tipped over. Go directly to your computer, or notebook, open up a blank page or document and start.
4. Ignore your inner “grammar Nazi.” Focus on getting your story down. Things like sentence structure, spelling, grammar, etc, are not all a top priority right now, unless you are planning to publish your journal unedited. You can deal with all those things later by going back through and editing the material.
5. Let the words flow. The order of your stories is irrelevant.
There are two ways to do your stories on the computer: (1) Open a new document for each “chapter” and title the document to describe the story, or (2) simply write all your stories in one document. Open that document when you feel like writing a story, and separate the stories by using chapter headings. If you feel the need later on, you can go back to the document and copy and paste the stories into whatever order you like.
6. Document what you remember. Get down information about what happened, what you did, what you thought, and how you felt. These seemingly meaningless details will ultimately help lead you to develop a better understanding of how you have lived your life as an adult.
Writing your life story is not all that difficult. If you keep your focus on getting the writing done and off of the end result, you will find yourself recalling more and more parts of your life. Plus, you will begin to understand and even love yourself better than you ever have before!
Start now to journal some of the stories from your life.
Soon after, you will be very glad you did!
Thoughts?
Photo Credit: mollycakes via Compfight cc
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I’ve been trying the journaling thing since the beginning of the year. I’m not really sure how it’s going, but I can tell you that ignoring my “Grammar Nazi” is super difficult. I find myself wanting to edit my journal. I just don’t allow it.
Yes, that is a tough critic to ignore. And most of us won’t be able to totally ignore it. But we, at least I, lose my train of thought if I am trying to correct my sentences and look at the flow while I am trying to write the thoughts out. If we cannot totally escape the “grammar police,” we should hold them at bay until the chapter is written out. We can go back and “correct” it later.
And whether its going well or not is up to our individual determination. We write what we need to get written at the moment. Sometimes its a little. Sometimes its pages. Find your own rhythm and flow, then stick with it.
Thanks for taking the time to comment, Kenna.
Martina
Martina,
I have kept a journal since I was at least 15 years old. I have periods in my life that I did not keep the journal as well as other periods but I still have a “fairly” accurate representation of my life. I find it interesting to go back and look at now (especially the thoughts I was thinking at 15 or 16 versus 43) As the old saying goes “with age comes maturity.” It is something I can see through my emotions and feelings. When I was a young “stupid” man life could make me mad so quickly and easily and now it is the opposite. I can honestly look back and say thank goodness for maturity (and keeping a record of it to see how far I have come as a man and a human being)
Aaron Brinker aka DadBlunders
Same here, Aaron. I like to make some time to go back and read my old journals. It offers insights into what’s going on now, things I have struggled with in the past and overcome, things that I have struggled with and never mastered. It gives me a way for my past-present- and hopefully future self to converse.
Thanks.
Martina
One of my favorite books on this topic is the Artist’s Way. Great piece on journaling, three pages a day, free form.
One of my favorites as well Geoff, and a great way to get started. Thanks.