Episode 33: Journaling

[00:00:00] Speaker: My life has benefited incredibly from the practice of journaling. I have found that our mind can only hold so much information at once before it gets hard to keep track of everything. But a thought written out on paper can be as long and as complex as you want. When you write out that complex thought, you can go back through it and find out where your thoughts were not clear or where they didn't make sense, and you can refine it.

Journaling is less so a process of writing and more so a very active way of thinking. At the end, you have a very coherent, thought out piece of writing that has just organized your thoughts internally as well. I don't know that we are really capable of thinking without bouncing our thoughts off of other people.

Without other people to balance out our views, we can really spiral into crazy. But writing has the magical effect of allowing us to see our own thoughts as an outsider. Once they're on paper, we're observing the idea.

It's almost like we get to hear someone else say it and decide whether or not the idea is crazy. I mean, even when we are thinking, something similar to a conversation plays out anyways. At least in my mind, and I'm pretty sure for a lot of other people as well. Where you have a thought, and then another part of you responds to that thought.

Some thoughts are just a little too complex to hold all at once. And so, writing it out gives you that opportunity to I'm going to read it out loud. There are few things on God's good earth as good for a person as journaling. Journaling seems like it can mean different things to different people, and in fact when I was younger, I had a much more limited definition of journaling than I do now.

Back then, journaling as I understood it was like a daily log or I didn't really enjoy writing about my daily activities very much, nor did I feel very comfortable spilling out my deeper feelings onto something that could easily be read by someone else. Not that there's anything wrong with journaling in that way.

Journaling as I've come to think of it now, is a way for me to organize my thoughts. It's a way for me to put the disconnected thoughts, feelings, and understandings onto paper so that I can more easily visualize how those things are related to each other. When I start writing an episode for this podcast, it's amazing to me how bad the first draft usually is.

As of yet, I cannot put together a decent episode on the fly without spending time on it. Probably because the act of writing it all out is how I'm able to take all these pieces that don't fit together very well and make sense of them. In turn, seeing thoughts and feelings begin to make sense on paper helps me to make more sense of them in my mind.

It's this beautiful cycle that improves upon itself. I have thoughts, I have feelings, I have a paradigm or a frame of reference. By which I understand the world around me, and they only vaguely seem to connect to each other. When I write them down, I can make sense of them, after which I can hold them in my mind in a more cohesive way which allows me to then understand more things, as I have a new understanding that can help me understand things that I couldn't before.

Then the cycle starts over and builds upon itself. So, I don't journal about how my day went so much, but rather I find myself recording little thoughts throughout the day that are of interest to me. When I have time, I take those little notes that I made throughout the day and see if any of them still resonate with me, and then I just let my thoughts spill out.

Like I said earlier, it usually starts out as a mess. Sometimes, and especially when we're going through major transitions in our lives, or a difficult challenge, it's almost like we can start getting a buildup of lots of little fears and negative thoughts. With so many new things to adjust to, it can get harder and harder to internally process so many things at once.

When our minds are not up to the task of handling all of these changes in such a short time, we start melting down and going into depressions, acting out, and just generally feeling terrible. We need a release from the things that are overwhelming our mind. We need ways to clear enough out of our minds so that we can focus on and prioritize our most significant problems.

There are lots of things we can do that incrementally make things better for us. We can take a walk, we can get outside, we can exercise, we can talk with a friend, or, my favorite, we can journal. I think the way most of us typically manage is by finding someone we trust that isn't going to judge us too much and talking to them.

In turn, those people will often try to help us by taking what we tell them and helping us make sense of it. This is effectively what a therapist does. We can't always afford a therapist that we trust, and we don't always have a person we feel safe confiding in. And as good as exercise is, it does not necessarily solve your problem.

So sometimes we're left alone with this buildup of negativity that has nowhere to go because our minds are simply overwhelmed and cannot do it alone. Journaling thankfully is free, and a piece of paper can be trusted to keep quiet if you're careful. Also, you can journal. And sometimes, especially during our hardest times, we need more time than any person can reasonably give us to help organize our thoughts.

When we get our thoughts out onto paper, it doesn't have to be this vomit of negativity. Although, I hear that can be helpful. But for me, it's more of an opportunity to write an explanation for why I might be uncomfortable, or scared, or confused. It allows me to put a name to things I am experiencing, which makes my mind less afraid of.

We seem to be hardwired to be afraid of what we don't know more than the dangerous things that we do. This is why I think so many of us as children were afraid of the dark. Darkness removes knowledge from us by hiding things around us and taking what was once known and putting it into the realm of the unknown.

And really, what can be more frightening than the unknown? If you've ever watched a horror movie, maybe you realize that it's not the creature or the antagonist itself that is all that scary. But rather, it's the unpredictability and the fact that we don't know most of the time where it is or what it is doing.

A guy chasing after you with a chainsaw is going to be frightening. But in a way, simply knowing that there's a guy out there somewhere that wants to kill you with a chainsaw, but not knowing where he is. Or, when he will try to do it, is far more frightening. There's a kind of control of our world that we gain when we understand a thing.

I really don't love swimming in murky water. I do it anyway, but it disturbs me that I have no clue about what is beneath me or next to me. I like to think that I'm brave, but at my center, I am just as susceptible to fear as the next person. I fear the unknown. I fear failure. I fear death. Embarrassment, I fear death, I fear aging, I fear disappointing people I care about.

But through these fears, I've been driven to seek more understanding that in turn has made me less afraid of these things. Journaling, or simply writing, is one of the greatest gifts mankind has ever received. In a world that seems to be destined to become more and more complex as time passes, writing and or journaling is a lifeline for us to understand this ever changing world that we inhabit.

Journaling allows us to step outside of the jumbled, dreamlike state of our thoughts and to put our feet on firm ground. I choose to share much of what I write. But, one of the beautiful things about writing is there's no need for us to share it with anyone. The joy and the pleasure we receive from it can be entirely our own.

We're all practitioners of the nonsensical sometimes. Half the time, we can't even explain why we entertain some silly notions, or behave in unproductive ways. And maybe we'll never know why, But you certainly will never know why if you do not learn to seriously think about those beliefs and behaviors.

Even another person is limited in how much they can help you because they are not experiencing what you are. So consider becoming the best therapist you could ever have. And start spending time on self reflection and writing about it. The more we understand ourselves, the more power we gain over ourselves in the process.

When you journal, you are turning the lights on in your mind, and those dark corners of your mind become illuminated. Journaling is just the process of dragging things into the light, so we don't have to be afraid or controlled anymore by the parts of us that try to stay hidden. Something beautiful about coming to understand ourselves is that it allows us to make room in our mind to understand the world outside of us.

In a world that surrounds us with darkness, the pen can become like the sun.