Keeping a diary with many modern people is strongly associated with the pastime of young ladies of noble origin of the last century. This stereotype is generously fueled by works of the epistolary genre and cinema with languidly sighing young heroines who trust their first timid love secrets to the diary. Nevertheless, keeping a diary is by no means an old-fashioned undertaking, but a technique quite justifiable from a psychological point of view, which will help to improve the quality of life under certain conditions. To prove this, we'll give you a dozen of positive effects that you will experience first-hand if you start keeping a diary.
- The diary helps to maintain and organize thoughts
The mental process of a person sometimes proceeds with incredible speed. Especially when life is eventful and over-saturated with events. But thoughts disappear from memory as quickly as they appear (if we are not talking about obsessive thoughts that are also desirable to fix, then to get rid of them). Writing them in a diary, you are aware of them and thus communicate with yourself on a qualitatively new level.
- The diary increases work and life productivity
Every day, dozens of ideas, thoughts, and possible solutions to life's problems come to our minds. If you make it a rule to take notes in the diary on this subject every day (at least a few sentences), then after reading it a year later, you will be surprised how wiser and more conscious you became with the experience gained.
- The diary provides an opportunity to pour out the soul, it is safe for yourself and others to express not the most positive emotions
Nobody likes people who constantly complain about life. But there is no doubt that this is an objective psychological need. Therefore, if you have no one to tell about your sorrows, describe them in a diary. Do it as emotionally as possible, not being shy in expressions. This will make it possible to get rid of the negative.
- Keeping a diary improves your storytelling skills
Even if writing is not your thing if you start keeping a diary, then after a very short period you will find that writing and talking about something will become much easier for you. And people will understand you better in a conversation.
- Keeping a diary is a way to get to know yourself and your hidden motives better
Often people complain that they do not understand themselves. And indeed, man is a complex being. Not everything lies on the surface of consciousness. Records of our thoughts and feelings make us think deeply about what our true self wants and find the right solutions.
- Diary is a great confidence training
Keeping a diary will help people suffering from low self-esteem to look at their lives and achievements from a different angle. To do this, you need to record your successes (even small ones) every day. And re-read the notes after some time. This will allow you to see progress and your achievements, what is called "in action".
- The diary can be a kind of therapy for fears
Fear is a natural human emotion. But, when fears are biased, they rather interfere than help to live. "Prescribing" your fear in colors, you kind of anatomize it, understand the root causes, ask questions about what it hides, and how to overcome it. And it helps to cope with it in reality.
- The diary helps to develop such a quality as a discipline
It is difficult to organize everything in your life so that there is enough time for important matters, and for rest, and a while with loved ones. And there are people to whom discipline is at all given with great difficulty. And their life risks becoming chaos. To understand what "eats" your time, and to write the plan for the next day will help the appropriate notes in the diary.
- The diary, as "psychologist himself"
Training of personal growth costs a lot of money. But much of what they say there, you can do for yourself. Talk to yourself in the diary, contact your child, write to him (her) a letter. Write down any trifle that excites you, ask yourself for advice, as if it were a good friend. So you heal the wounds of the soul. After all, the most faithful, the closest person for us is ourselves.
- The diary will help to build up the inner core
A person with a clear life position will be respected by any environment. But sometimes in the information flow, we get lost, where is our opinion, and where is once read or heard. Write topical questions in the diary and try to answer them as honestly as possible, thinking about what you think about this or that issue.
The diary is a universal practice. It includes both a description and a fixation of things we do. But we often forget about inner life. Our inner world, like the outer one, lives by its own rules. If we lose sight of it, chance begins to rule this world. We have already learned how to plan the external because we see cause-effect relationships. Few people see internal connections, but this does not diminish their influence on our lives.
The diary should include both external manifestations of our life (deeds, plans, results, meetings), and internal issues (observations, feelings, impressions, insights), which also require fixing. For example, the Pythagoreans included in the daily plans not only external affairs but also internal questions: what ideas to focus on, what is important on this day? And in the evening they necessarily summed up what was accomplished, how the day was filled, what tasks it was possible to solve.
Is it possible to change a life through a diary?
A diary is a practice of conscious life. Many do not understand the meaning of daily recordings of events. And until a person understands the value of this, the ritual is not worth starting.
How can you understand that it’s time to start keeping a diary?
- a statement of a certain difference between our self-image and how we live and manifest. The statement is the starting point of our thoughts, which can become an incentive practice for fixing the “movements of our souls,” as the Greeks said.
- the desire to produce new thoughts. About 60 thousand thoughts are flashed through our minds daily, of which 95% are repetitive, and only 5% are new. How to produce these new thoughts? How to do something, think? Thoughts come to us in the process of conversation or writing, when we begin to talk about something to another person or describe it on paper. The diary is our interlocutor, we are conducting an internal dialogue with it. In the process, ideas and answers to questions that have long bothered us begin to come.
How to overcome the "fear of a clean slate"?
We need to think about three faces.
First: me and my inner world, that is, my experience, feelings, sensations. What happens in my inner world in a day, a week, a month. What do I live with?
The second side is me and my relationship with other people. What are they filled with? The third facet is me in the stream of events. For example, a person asks himself the question: "Who am I?" And he is looking for an answer - a man, a professional, father, mother, daughter, son, brother, husband. You need to write as many answers as possible to find that very deep meaning. Then find the moral choices that were during the day - ask questions to your inner world.
The practice of keeping a diary allows us not only to ascertain what happened. We can see from the outside those situations that we don’t like and begin to conduct internal work to correct them.
It is also good to work out relationships with other people. Write down what annoys you about people, what inspires you. Just don't be fooled by yourself. And, most likely, you will find that many of the described characteristics are inherent in yourself. That is why you react to them like that. This is where work on yourself begins.
The diary is also great for practicing gratitude. Bring in all the moments and all the people to whom you are grateful on this day. The more thankfulness you give, the more good things come into your life.
Author bio:
Melisa Marzett is a successful freelance writer who writes articles on this and that for essay-editor.net. She is interested in psychology, traveling, movies, fashion, handmade, cooking when she is in the mood and sports. Not a day goes by without her exercising. She believes firmly that a healthy mind in a healthy body.
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