The Power of Journaling

Have you ever wondered what your brain was up to when you aren’t paying attention.

Your mind is always thinking, and more often than not it is thinking the same thing over and over and over again, however, that thought process is below the surface of all of the things we know we are thinking to get through the day.

Think of your mind as a cluttered desk. On the surface you have all of your day to day stuff. To do lists, routine tasks, the stuff you think you should do but never remember to get to, random tidbits like paper clips and rubber bands, leaky pens, today’s newspaper, and a few reminders that you have already forgotten about.

Looking at that pile of busy-iness, no one could really decipher what your job is, or even what you do each day.  They would have to dig a little deeper to find out. For example, if you organized and scooped off that very top layer, underneath, you might find the big desk calendar filled out with important dates, meetings, birthdays, anniversaries and other important milestones in your weeks and months. You would get rid of the newspaper and maybe just keep the article that struck you, the random sticky note reminders would get dealt with or thrown away leaving only the most essential.

On this level we see what informs the rhythms of your day.  But what you really do, is in the desk. The neatly organize files, the notebook with your goals, your company’s mission statement, the real meat of what drives you lies well beneath the clutter. Its the stuff we never look at but tells us what to do and how to do it.

So back to journaling.

Journaling is like organizing your desk. Your journal is where your write to clear away all of the scattered surface thinking, and figure out where it goes, or if you need it at all. Regular journaling uncovers the second layer of thought so you can see what shapes the patterns that you keep repeating. When you write the same thing or the same thought everyday, you can be sure it is part of what drives you. Journaling is also a way to open the desk and really dive into what makes you tick. Your dreams are in there, your goals, your values, your beliefs. The very scaffolding around which you build your life.

And what is the point of uncovering all of this underlying stuff? If you see it, you have a choice in the matter. All that stuff on the top of the desk is just mindless matter until you look at it, and decide to keep it, change it or toss it. And the same is true for the stuff in the brain. The only trick is that in both cases you have to be able to look at it first. And since thoughts don’t handily print out of your ear, you write them down. And then decide.

So what is going on in your mind that needs to be tossed or changed? Get to writing and find out!

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