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The Power of Life Journaling
Tristan Loo
I am a firm believer that there is no greater self-help or
self-exploration tool than a journal. That's right -- a simple
blank book and a pen can help you manifest millions of dollars.
It can help you identify goals. It can ease emotional pain
or grief. It can transport you back in time. The journal is
a physical manifestation of the contents within your own mind
and heart. In this article, I am going to list some basic
techniques and guidelines to follow when journaling.
Your life is special and worth recording. I firmly
believe that all human life is special and purposeful. You
and I were placed on this world for a reason and we have a
limited time on this world to establish our legacy. Some very
famous people in history have the benefit of having others
essentially journal for them in chronicles, biographies, and
other materials that record their life, but the best and most
accurate record of who you are now and who you will be remembered
as after you leave this world will be through the journals
that you write.
Write only for yourself. A client of mine once asked
me if it was okay to journal on an Internet blog for everyone
to read. She said that all of her friends had created blogs
and that it seemed like a fun thing to do. I told her that
there is nothing wrong with blogging, but for the purposes
of life journaling, you should keep your journal private and
write strictly for yourself. This is because we write differently
when we know that our writing will be read by other people.
We have what is known as an internal editor inside our minds
who edits what we write and it's this internal editor who
prevents us from genuinely writing from the heart. So while
I think blogs are fun and great to share with others, a life
journal needs to be written with a one-person audience in
mind -- you. Now this is not to say that you can't ever share
your journal with anyone. I have often shared my journal entries
with the people who are special in my life, but there is a
difference between sharing an entry later on and writing that
entry for yourself in mind.
Human memory is fallible so write it down. Our organic
memory is not as sharp as one would think. Over time, our
memories of certain events either get washed away or become
tainted with our retrospective and emotional views of that
event. Journaling is like taking a snapshot photo of our mind
and emotions during that event. It allows our memory to remain
true as to the events of our past and by reading those entries
months, even years later, catapults us back to that moment
in time and allows us to remember it with much greater detail
and accuracy than if we relied on memory alone.
Select a physical journal, not a computer. Although
many people in this day and age are much more accustomed to
typing rather than handwriting, I argue that for the purposes
of journaling, there is a big difference. In my workshops,
I advocate the use of a physical journal you can hold in your
hand because you can always take it with you wherever you
go. I myself have some great adventures all over the world
and often I go weeks without any access to electricity. Having
a journal and a pen in my backpack as I explore the Amazon
of Brazil or trek the desert plains of Australia is lightweight
and always available to jot down notes.
Invest in a quality journal. Your journal is the most
important book you will ever own. The thoughts and ideas and
emotions that are contained within its pages are more precious
than anything you possess because it becomes a part of you.
Therefore I suggest investing in a journal that is representative
of those special thoughts and ideas. Personally, I choose
a handmade leather journal for all my life journaling not
only because it is highly rugged and durable, but also because
it looks nice and will remain that way far after I am gone.
Investing some money into a good journal that you like will
also be an incentive for you to actually follow through with
consistent journaling practices.
-10 to +10. One thing that I do different in my journaling
practices and what I suggest you do also is give yourself
a pain - pleasure ranking next to the date that you write
your entry. On a scale of -10 (most painful) to +10 (most
pleasurable), rate yourself on how you feel at that particular
time. Do this for two reasons. One, it is good for you to
know exactly how you are feeling each day and to quantify
that experience with a numerical value. Two, you can go back
and review how you felt on a given day and you can thumb through
your entries and see if there exists a pattern of low feelings
or high feelings and what the cause of those feelings were.
Self-probing questions. When people think of journaling,
they think of simply logging the day's events on paper. This
is far from true with my journaling techniques. Of course,
I do recommend regular event recording, but I also advocate
interweaving what I call self-probing questions along with
those other journal entries. Self-probing questions are questions
you ask yourself and from which you brainstorm your own answers
to. It's a way of reaching deep within your mind and your
heart to retrieve answers that may not have surfaced to your
conscious mind. Self-probing questions help you bring clarity
to issues in your life that need to be solidified in your
mind. For example, in one such entry of mine, I asked myself
the question of what exactly are my dreams in life? What did
I want to accomplish, see, or do in my life before I die?
I brainstormed and wrote down every answer without evaluating
or judging those answers and let me tell you, I came up with
goals that I never even realized I had, but made sense to
me after I realized that I did in fact have such goals in
the back of my mind. Each week ask yourself an intuitive question
and brainstorm answers on paper without evaluating them...just
write them down. You might be surprised at how powerful this
technique is.
Tristan Loo is the Founder of the Synergy Institute,
a Personal Development Firm based out of San Diego. Tristan
is a former police officer, personal development coach, conflict
negotiator, and author. Visit
the Synergy Institute Website
Article Source: http://www.upublish.info
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