When you listen to the stories of all the successful people, you’ll find a personal habit making frequent appearances in the stories. This habit is the habit of journaling on a daily basis. It seems simple enough, and yet many people find it hard to sustain over a long period of time. You might feel fired up enough to maintain a journal for a week and sometimes even for a month, but gradually you start forgetting the intention that you had set at the beginning. The strains of the daily life begin taking a toll on your determination and you start questioning the need for journaling before ultimately forsaking it for good.
We’re not here to tell you that journaling daily is easier than you think, because it is indeed a difficult task for a busy person. That being said, if you’re serious about taking on journaling everyday, then there are certain rituals and practices that can help you get there.
- Each night before you call it a day, sit down with a notebook and a pen, and write a little something about the day that you just had. Whether experiences or observations, don’t hold yourself back. Some things might seem trivial enough to note down, but don’t judge yourself for penning them. Just remember that anything that has struck a chord with you is worth noting down. Listing things out is an integral exercise in the AOYL program, since writing about things that have touched you in any way is immensely empowering.
- If you’re someone with a bad memory, you might have trouble recalling all noteworthy events at the end of the day. What you can do is, as you go about your day, squeeze in some time to write about things as they happen to you. You don’t have to write everything down, just marking a reminder to the experience or observation would be enough. You can expound on it later when you get time.
- Journaling doesn’t always has to be about pouring your heart out into words. Especially, if you’re just a beginner in journaling, it might feel emotionally and mentally exhausting to stir up thoughts and feelings so frequently for the purpose of writing it all down. What you can do instead is describe the event, experience, or observation with a single sentence. Summarize everything into a couple of words, these will be enough to remind you of the related sentiment.
- Don’t stop at dumping your ideas into the notebook day after day. Every once a while, take a look at what you’ve written. Some of it will make sense, some of them won’t. But some of the times you may find insights to the enigmatic life questions like who you are, what you expect from your life, what you expect from others, what makes you happy or sad, and so on.
The AOYL program and workshops are designed to take you on an introspective journey, and listing out thoughts, ideas, experiences and feelings will be a huge part of this journey. Because this is how you can give a concrete shape to your most random mind-trips.
This article was in part inspired by following article by Jessica Stillman:
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/never-been-able-to-keep-a-journal-before-this-is-journal-format-for-you.html
