As technology advances, information and people can reach us wherever we are if we let it. Most cell phones let you receive text messages. Some phones let you read your email while you await your flight. I surf the web on my iPhone and it blows me away. That’s a lot of connectivity. And it’s a great help in professional writing.
After the research is done, though, some time should be spent in thought. It’s necessary to be clear in your personal thoughts to get your best writing. Disconnecting is a way to do that.
Disconnect to Reconnect
Disconnecting is a tough choice these days what with all the ways and people that you need to be in touch with. From time to time you have to relax your collection of data and communication with others, so that you can hear yourself.
Barbara Brown Taylor wrote a remarkable book a few years back, When God is Silent. Her’s is a brief discourse on the reason we sometimes think we can’t hear God. She contends, fairly, that it’s because we’re making too much noise with our own insights, plans and choices.
That’s a really cheesy nutshell review of a splendid book. The point is I think it’s true, that we make so much mental noise and are bombarded with so much data until we can hardly understand how we interpret it all. Disconnecting gives us space to think things through.
Personal Journals
Disconnecting will afford you time to find where you stand. Keeping a personal journal can actually help you with this so that you can reconnect to your most authentic self. It’s this best version of yourself that you want to bring to the work at hand. Here are some things you can get out of keeping a personal journal.
- Relieve stress
- Achieve greater clarity
- Express creative ideas
- It can be an invaluable record of events in your life
- Journaling is a form of cherishing
When you make time to keep a personal journal, you are making time for yourself. That’s one of the reasons journaling is often overlooked—how often is it that the last person on your agenda is you? How often are you left off the list completely? Journaling doesn’t take a long time, or it can. But the time it takes is well worth it. After my journal times, I find myself refreshed and more peaceful. Calmness and openness that I gain make me more amenable to what the day will bring.
Writing out the thoughts in your head, means you get to focus just on them—without receiving new input from the news, friends, the internet. Just you and your thoughts. You can write them down and make connections and separations that are overlooked in the usual fast pace that you may be keeping. After reviewing ideas and thoughts more closely, you may even change your stance on a matter or two.
You can step outside yourself. Playing a role other than your usual position, can be a way of walking in someone else’s shoes. This can be a very powerful aid when you have the need to really express empathy. You may come to empathy where you had no hint of it before, if you write your way through.
When you write for you, it’s like pulling your thoughts out and making something concrete of them. The very action of writing in a personal journal can be quite freeing. And, with the benefit of relieving stress, comes the freedom to express yourself creatively. If you’re moved to draw, or list or diagram or stick in a photograph, by all means do it. You may want to write a poem or short story, this is your space to be all that you are.
Where was your head at a particular time in your life. It’s really an interesting to get a mental snapshot of who you are and look back at it down the line. You can track your life changes and growth as a person by writing a personal journal, and looking back from time to time. Tracking may be too formal. You can get an idea of your present and future self, by having a clearer understanding of your past self.
And if you never look back through your old journals, (I once read about a lady who would periodically burn her old journals in a magnificent bonfire), just keeping them, creates something intangible inside. Often in ways that I can’t define, writing in my journal can inform me about who I am and have me grounded in my life. And when I look back at them, I have found myself laughing out loud sometimes at just where my head was.
In my life, gratitude is very important. I have countless things and people to be grateful for and I never want to overlook that. Writing in your journal, reviewing your life sometimes moment by moment or in much larger chunks, lets you hold it more closely, more deliberately. It can be a joyous and amazing experience.
I wrote through my maternal grandmother’s illness. There were times when I would be writing and I would find myself crying, so accurate were the words I’d written. And I was fine with that. In fact I was grateful. In my notebook I created an accurate picture of what I was going through and that meant everything to me. Because, the last days that she and I shared were priceless.
Without reading those entries, I can call up the memories that we made in that time and smile or be moved to tears of joy, of appreciation, of gratitude. You can have these memories without keeping a journal. But I think writing them can do something empowering for you, as it does for me. Gratitude is one of the most powerful things that you can do for yourself. I have no idea how it works only proof in my life experiences that it does work.
How to Keep a Personal Journal
There are a number of ways that you can keep a personal journal. What I’m presenting here, is the frame for journaling sessions that have worked for me.
- Prepare to write:
- What to write:
- When to write:
- Where to write:
One variation on this practice is to use meditation. I find that many times my thoughts will run together, crawling over each other the get to the page. When I have the patience and discipline, it seems to help to quiet my thoughts, reducing or removing any sense of frenzied hurry to write.
Explore your thoughts freely and fully, writing what comes to you. Switch your perspective and position on a topic, and write quickly. Write what comes seemingly from your hands and not your head. Try to write quickly for five minutes to ten minutes.
After the initial quick writing, take your time and go wherever your thoughts take you.
Books say to write daily. Many people who keep journals don’t write in them daily. I fall into the latter, though I try to write daily. More important, I think, than writing daily is to date each entry.
I try to write first thing in the morning, before new information enters, before my inner critic wakes. And if there’s anything pressing me, I will write in the evening as well.
Some people are now keeping online journals. I’ve tried this and it worked for a while. However, my favorite process is to keep my thoughts in a composition notebook. My assessment is that I’m better connected when I write longhand.
As you get into the habit of keeping a personal journal, you will find that some things done differently will work better for you. Do what works, and keep writing.
If you don’t keep a personal journal already, I hope I’ve managed to get you thinking about it at least. Let me know what you think. If you do keep a personal journal, I’d love to hear how it benefits you.
A good resource:
Inspiration For You to Keep a Personal Journal
Related entries:
what’s allowed to feed the writing fire
at least take notes
creativity tapped out? i think not
