Why keep a journal?

Every few months, I try to go through my daily journal. The goal is to extract any lessons, themes, patterns, or quotes that may help me now, or sometime in the future. Here are some of the lessons I learned going through my journal.

1. If you love yourself more than others and STILL beat yourself up sometimes, why are you surprised when others do it? And more importantly, why do you care?

2. Any time you put off a decision, anxiety creeps in. Make good decisions quickly. Even if you're wrong, the stress from the action is less bitter than the anxiety. Plus, you have more time to work on troubleshooting.

3. "Responsibility is concerned with what is important in perpetuity, while feelings seek momentary comfort."

4. Do things the way they're supposed to be done, and take confidence in that.

5. "Worry about what you can do today. Tomorrow doesn't exist."

6. Don't ever let your journal become "pretty". Fill it with your most tangled thoughts & release yourself from their burden.

7. You can't have multiple "main things". That's an oxymoron.

   “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” -Stephen Covey

8. Good questions to ask before big decisions: Will my future self be glad I did this? Will this be significant to me 30+ years from now?

9. What does your ideal day look like? Could you make most of your days look like that? How close can you get?

10. Bad writing is a sign that you

    A) didn't prepare/outline well enough

    B) didn’t do sufficient reading/research

11. "Write like a desperate amateur, and edit like a detached professional."

12. You always have to sacrifice SOMETHING. You can't have it all. Something has to give.

Journaling is a low-hanging fruit for improving self-awareness and mental health for 99% of people. If you haven’t given it a shot, try to write just a few sentences at the end of your day. It can be about how your day went, how you’re feeling, what you’re grateful for, ANYTHING.

At first, the habit is more important than what you write. And as you write, and experiment with different styles, prompts, or techniques, you’ll slowly stumble upon what works for YOU. And then something fun happens: you begin to connect the dots and figure out just what makes you tick.

You identify triggers for anxiety, people who make you uncomfortable, and the things that make you feel calm. When you have that awareness, it doesn’t make doing the right things any easier, but it does make it clear exactly what the right and wrong things are.

In other words, journaling is the key to awareness, and awareness is the key to taking control of your life.

So get to writing.