Latest / The Daily Writer / Why I Don’t Journal Much Anymore

Transcript

Why I Don’t Journal Much Anymore · The Daily Writer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Writer, where we help writers become authors of their own lives.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Quick story here.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: A little while back, I was chatting with a good friend of mine about our different journaling practices.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And she was saying that she didn't think she was a very good journaler.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, that broke my heart a little bit because she felt guilty for not living up to the imaginary journaling standard she had in her mind.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of writers talk about the value of having a daily journaling practice.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And some writing teachers and influencers have these elaborate systems for how and why and when you should write in a journal.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, back in my 20s and 30s, and for much of my 40s, I'm 52, by the way, for many of those years, I journaled several times a week.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: I was an avid journaler.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't even begin to estimate how many hundreds of thousands of words, probably over a million words, honestly, that I have written in my journals over the decades.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, my first year of college when I was a freshman, that is when I actually started journaling.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got lots and lots and lots of words that I've written in my journals over the decades.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: But five or six years ago, as I started doing a lot more client writing, and as I started taking my writing business a lot more seriously, I knew that I had to be a lot more mindful of how I allocated my writing time and energy.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I noticed that my journaling practice was primarily based in what I call negative emotions.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I mean.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime that I was upset or bothered or confused or feeling out of sorts, I would journal my thoughts and feelings.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes those would be really lengthy entries, like, you know, a couple thousand words.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it would produce some good insight about myself or about my own psychology or why I was feeling a certain way.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But once I started really looking at my journaling practice, I noticed that it was mostly just about me processing my feelings about something.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, was it therapeutic?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, oftentimes it was.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: But did it actually produce a positive, tangible result in my life most of the time?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is if I've been honest, the answer was no.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I've mostly given up journaling and replaced it with writing affirmations and gratitude.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that has made really a huge difference in my life.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: For me at least, journaling was a way to wallow in my negative emotions, but replacing it with affirmations and gratitude and positivity has really given me a daily practice that pulls me upward instead of holding me downward.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, your mileage may vary, of course, because journaling is a very personal practice, and everybody does it differently and it has different effects on different people.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: That said, though, if you journal regularly, but it's not adding a positive outcome to your life and helping shape you into the person that you want to become, then it might be time to reconsider whether it's a good use of your time.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's very easy to get attached to a certain practice in your life because it's been a part of your life for years or even decades, but change can be a really good thing.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, journaling served a purpose for a lot of years, but it was time to mostly let it go.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: The bottom line here is that sometimes the best additions in life are actually subtractions.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks so much for listening.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Keep writing, keep showing up, and I'll see you tomorrow.