Foreword

The practice of keeping a personal journal has been completely forgotten in our modern lives.

Being greatly influenced by books such as Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and Walden by Henry David Thoreau, I decided to try journaling for myself.

For the past year, I’ve religiously kept several journals and experimented with various methods of journaling.

I can confidently say that keeping a journal has been the single most life-changing habit that I have developed since I started meditating many years ago.

If fact, I’d venture to say that keeping a journal is just as important as regular meditation.

Journaling is the yang to the yin of meditation and yet, few people actually keep a personal journal.

In this post, I’ll explain why keeping a journal is crucial to your development, the different styles of journaling that I’ve experimented with, as well as a few things to keep in mind when first starting out.

Why Journal?

1) Face the man in the glass.

When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,

And the world makes you King for a day,

Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,

And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,

Who judgement upon you must pass.

The feller whose verdict counts most in your life

Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He’s the feller to please, never mind all the rest,

For he’s with you clear up to the end,

And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test

If the man in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,

And think you’re a wonderful guy,

But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum

If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,

And get pats on the back as you pass,

But your final reward will be heartaches and tears

If you’ve cheated the guy in the glass.

-The Man in the Glass by Dale Wimbrow

Most of us are perfectly fine living our lives wasting precious time, not following through on our promises to ourselves, taking the easy way out whenever faced with fear or discomfort because we never have to truly face the man in the glass.

We are never forced to objectively look at our daily actions and until we do, we will only find excuses and rationalizations for our behavior.

We face the man in the glass when write journal entries like the following:

"Today, I chose to hit the snooze button instead of hitting the gym because I felt groggy.”

“I am writing this entry at 1:00 in the morning because I chose to watch Youtube videos instead of going to bed at 11:00 like I said I would.”

Being honest with yourself in this way will keep you accountable to your actions.

Nothing stings more than facing the man in the glass empty handed.

2) Develop your ideas.

One thing that I’ve always struggled with is articulating my ideas.

They float around in my head and are clear to me, however, when the time comes to put them to words, I falter.

Sitting down and taking the time to take your ideas and transmute them into physical form will give you a much more concrete view into your values and beliefs.

In fact, most of the articles I write on this site come from deep introspective insights that reveal themselves when I’m journaling. I merely string them together to make the thesis as comprehensible and applicable as possible.

3) Analyze your fears and negative emotions.

Your journal serves you as a platform onto which you can logically strip all of your negative emotions to the bone to see just how irrational they are.

Here is an actual entry that I wrote in my journal to deconstruct some obsessive-compulsive tendencies that sprang up a while back:

"A certain level of caution is healthy when dealing with things that are in your control. Once you get past that, your worrying of things outside of your control won’t affect any outcome and will only bring you misery. Therefore, focus only on what you can control and ignore the rest.

How long you’ve been paranoid of certain scenarios panning out, which have not happened, and yet, you worry.

Nobody is perfect. We all make stupid mistakes and are forgetful.

Whenever unwanted thoughts creep in, remind yourself that they are fantastical. Bring yourself back to the present moment. You did all that you reasonably could to prevent it. Nothing is fail-safe. Stop worrying about what could happen. This accomplishes nothing.

'Think of how many times what was expected never occurred, and that which was unexpected did.'

-Seneca"

Something as simple is deconstructing my fears on paper helped me tremendously and has been a panacea for helping me break through irrational fears and emotions.

4) A place to vent.

Sometimes you just need a place to run your mouth.

Using your journal as a toilet bowl for anger, frustration, or just about anything you want to get off your chest is a quick and painless way to let loose of any mental or emotional baggage that you’ve accumulated over time.

This way, you won’t have to burden anyone else, or worse yet, pay big bucks to sit in a comfy chair for an hour talking to a therapist.

5) Track your progress.

When you eventually look back at previous entries, you can really see just how your ideas and values have changed and how you’ve matured emotionally.

Reading a detailed journal entry from months, or even years back, will be like jumping into a time machine.

You’ll often laugh at yourself and the things you wrote. You may even cringe out of embarrassment.

The important thing is that this gives you a clear idea of how far you’ve come in your personal development that you wouldn’t otherwise have, had you not written it down.

6) Analyze your actions.

It is crucial that we look at all of our actions through a critical lens.

Most of us never do. We wait until we hit rock bottom to start making changes because we never sat down and scrutinized our actions enough to see that they were destined to bring us failure.

Here’s another example of a journal entry I wrote a while ago after I backed out of doing something from fear of failure:

"Everything anyone could ever want is out there, ripe for the picking. The question becomes: are they brave enough to take it? Everyone is paralyzed, confined to a box of their own ego, afraid to fail. I’m afraid to fail.

The ego can’t stand the idea of being challenged.

Failure is objectively benign; you take a shot, miss it, then keep taking it until you make a hit. The egoic sting is what makes failure so unbearable. It’s really quite pathetic if you logically deconstruct it.

You fear taking a ‘shot’ because the ‘miss’ threatens your ego’s identity of being a flawless shooter. You may be a phenomenal ‘shooter’, but you’ll never find out because when you don’t allow yourself to miss, you don’t allow yourself to score.

Aim high, know your mission, fail.

If you’re not failing, you’re not trying.

Different Types of Journaling

Diary

Description: A journal in which you write about daily events in detail.

Pros:

  • Easy to start.

  • Makes you appreciate the little things when reading past entries.

  • Helps you to remember events that you would otherwise forget.

Cons:

  • Limited introspection.

  • Has the potential for making some people dwell in the past.

Who’s it for? Anybody who wants to remember a certain event or period of their life for future reference. Ex: Trips, graduation, milestones, etc..

Philosophical Journal

Description: A journal for recording philosophical insights. A great example is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

Pros:

  • Useful for finding your purpose in life.

  • Ideas could be beneficial to others as well.

  • Helps to develop original ideas and to apply preexisting ideas to your own life.

Cons:

  • Difficult to begin.

  • Less suited to practically minded people.

  • Most insights will not be original (which is doesn’t negate its purpose; Marcus Aurelius built upon the insights of over 500 years of Stoic thought).

Who’s it for? Anyone looking to discover the nature of their own values and to develop philosophical ideas of their own.

Freestyle

Description: No rules. Write whatever comes to mind. Write until you strike a meaningful topic of discourse.

Pros:

  • Flexible.

  • Easy to start.

  • Habit forming.

Cons:

  • No sense of direction.

  • Will cause some people to write superficially when they should be answering the tough questions.

  • Hard to follow when re-reading at a future date.

  • Tends to waste journal space.

Who’s it for? Anyone struggling to find something to write about. Even if you write 3 pages of nonsense, you’ll reinforce your writing habit, becoming more in touch with the thoughts that go on in your head moment to moment, and have a place to go on any tirade you want.

Progress Journal

Description: A journal for setting goals and monitoring your daily progress towards achieving them.

Pros:

  • Easy to start.

  • Defined.

  • Keeps you accountable to your goals.

Cons:

  • Limited introspection.

  • Can feel tedious and repetitive at times.

Who’s it for? Anybody looking for a tool to help track their progress in greater detail.

Reflection/Analysis Journal

Description: A journal for analyzing your actions, emotions, ideas, and fears. By far the most personal and introspective of all.

Pros:

  • Ruthless in revealing your weaknesses and shortcomings.

  • Good for discovering the true motives behind your actions (or inactions).

  • Helps to dissolve that pompous ego we all suffer from.

  • Logically deconstructs irrational emotions and fears.

Cons:

  • Can be painful.

Who’s it for? Anybody who needs some honest-to-god straightening out. If you feel that your mind is controlling you instead of you being in control of it, some cold, hard introspection will do you a world of good.

Personally, I don’t adhere to any particular style; I incorporate them all into my daily practice.

How to Start

  1. Buy a journal.

  2. Buy some nice pens (small thing that makes the entire process more enjoyable).

  3. Pick a time to write. Some people like writing as part of their morning routine. Personally, I like to write before bed.

  4. Write every day, holding nothing back.

  5. Rinse + Repeat

I’m not trying to be a smartass here. There is no secret, just start writing.

Make it your goal to write at least one page every day.

The most important thing when starting out is to keep an open mind and to get into the habit of writing every single day.

As you get more comfortable with the process and you start to observe how your mind operates, you will begin to dive deeper into the unexplored depths of your own self.

Hopefully, you’ll learn a thing or two about yourself along the way–I certainly have.

Go out and start writing.

Until next time,

TMM

http://www.themillennialmonk.com/keep-daily-journal/