Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
Your journal is like your best friend. You don’t have to pretend with it, you can be honest and write exactly how you feel. Bukola Ogunwale
Unwavering faith and extraordinary effort lead to great things in our lives. One of the worst things we do is give up before we reach the end of the time we’ve set to achieve our goal. Often the last days, weeks, or months make a big difference, but it can be tempting to quit before we reach our goal, when it seems far away.
What if failure happens when we give up too soon? We don’t set enough goals, or we don’t have faith in ourselves to go after what we want. Journaling is a practice that can help us sort out what we want, and if we read what we’ve written over the years we will realize many of our fears never came to pass, and by putting them on the page we freed our mind to concentrate on other things.
Journaling is a process we can use to manage anxiety, and healthily express our feelings, and it can help us identify what makes us anxious. It might help us become aware of unhealthy thought patterns and challenge ourselves to change them. When I think this, I should think this instead. When I’m feeling this way I should go for a walk.
In our journal we can question our thoughts, try on ideas, and investigate what interests us, we can figure out who we are and who we would like to become.
I’ve come across ideas on the negative effects of journaling, and as someone who has kept a journal for almost fifty years, I question what could be negative about it. If we read our journals we might think we were more negative than we are, because we tend to dump our negative feelings onto the page. This frees our mind for the positive things. Our journal is not a repository for everything going on in our lives – at least mine isn’t.
I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Joan Didion
A journal is not another thing to tick off on my to-do list. It is not an onerous practice. It is something I get to do, not something I have to do. If you watch videos or read articles on journaling you will find each person that journals has a different way of doing it. Each one of us must create a practice that works for us, and we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for not writing in it as often as we think we should, or not creating a pretty journal.
One of the reasons for putting illustrations in our journal is sometimes we can’t express in words what is going on in our lives, or we don’t want what we are thinking to be found by someone and used against us. We can use Neurographic art which is dumping what is in our mind onto the page as a scribble and then embellishing it and turning it into a work of art by darkening lines, creating and adding shapes, and adding color, or leaving it black and white.
We can create patterns using straight lines, C-shapes, S-shapes, circles, and dots. We can create unlimited patterns, and there are set patterns called Zen tangles which are copy-written patterns. Anyone can use the patterns but only certified teachers can teach them, and the same goes for Neurographic art, but the concepts behind both are simple. I question copywriting patterns as if someone can own the creative process.
Journaling is a practice that can help us create a life we love, become the person we would like to be, and track our growth and goals. One practice I’m adopting from another journal keeper is writing quotes and great ideas inside the front cover, and writing my goals inside the back cover – two spaces I’ve left mostly blank over all these years.
If you want to start a journal let it develop as a practice that fits into your life. If you miss days, weeks, or months of entries, pick it up and write when you are in the mood. I’ve missed days, weeks, and months, but never years.
Your journal will stand as a chronicle of your growth, your hopes, your fears, your dreams, your ambitions, your sorrows, your serendipities. Kathleen Adams
A journal can offer you a place to be someone, anyone, who you want to be. Brian Ledger
Journal what you love, what you hate, what’s in your head, what’s important. Journaling organizes your thoughts; allows you to see things in a concrete way that otherwise you might not see. Kay WalkingStick
Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.
