Creating a Personal Journal

Why Keep a Personal Journal
Journal writing is a voyage to the interior. (Christina Baldwin

Constant updates to add for your personal history
If your personal history hasn’t been published posthumously, you are still alive and you will have more life to write about. Well, what do you do until you are ready to update it? Keep a journal. Now, I’m not talking about a diary. A diary, to me, is just a record what you’re doing everyday. A journal, on the other hand does that too, but it includes thoughts, opinions, reactions, insights, feelings, etc.

I try to write in my journal everyday. You might not be able to or even want to, so try for a least once a week anyway. But, I think, if you reading good books, watching the news closely, paying attention to your family, and thinking about life in general, you’ll probably want to write more often.

It is amazing how the mind almost compels us to want to record our reactions if we are actively keeping a journal. And keeping a journal, in turn, seems to cause you to pay more attention to what is going on around you and in your family, especially if you have children. However, there are other benefits to keeping a journal besides just keeping track of what’s happening. Consider the following items:

Gives You a Change To Sound Off Even If No One Cares
Journals give you a chance to sound off on whatever topic that is gripping your attention at the moment. If no one wants to hear your opinion, you can at least tell yourself.

This helps you to get those stirrings of the mind or soul out in the open for you to get a better look at them. Sometimes writing down what’s on your mind helps you to see if they have any real value.

Someone once said when asked what he thought about a certain thing said he did not know yet as he had not written about it. As a result of putting your thoughts down on paper, you might decide to quit worrying about it because it didn’t sound all that important anyway.

Keep Detailed Notes On Events
You can keep detailed notes on events so they can be recounted at a later date. The memory fades very fast. But it is amazing how the memory will respond when you read your detailed notes on a past event in family history.

Record Conversations
You can record conversations with family members. And instead of paraphrasing what was said, try to remember the exact words and put them in quotes. Written out conversations are far easier to read than paraphrasing. After all, you don’t see paraphrasing of conversations in novels.

Record Feelings
Record feelings about people and events that you know about or have witnessed. Feelings have a tendency to slip away and are hard to recall sometimes. Here you have a chance to record them at the time of the event. At a later date, you can compare your present feelings with how you felt about it then.

Record Insights
Record personal insights gained because of events witnessed, speeches heard or books read. This will tell who you are better than anything I can think of. Again, insights and feelings do slip away. And if they come back, often times they do not come back with the same impact.

What I like to do is divide the paper in half or thirds:

I personally think this is one of the very best techniques for self-discovery and personal evaluation that has every been thought up.

Record Medical Problems or Treatments
Record medical problems or treatments for yourself or family members as they happened. This might be critical at some future time if a doctor is trying to see if a past condition might be the cause of the present illness. This is particularly true if the doctors wants to know if the condition is hereditary or not.

Capture Ideas Before They Vanish
Writing down ideas allow you to hold on to them. Many people who have names in literature, politics or business find it necessary to have a paper memory. Those who have thought keeping notes a pain, have lived to regret it.

Helps You To Make Up Your Mind
Use your journal to make up your mind about things. Record the pros on one side of the page and the cons on the other. Here, again, you get those stirrings of the mind out in the open. And here again, you can go back over them again in the future to see if you were justified in your decision.

Record Reactions
Recording facts is good, but what is just as important is your reactions to them. This gives you a chance to see if you reactions were correct as the future unfolds. Again, these reactions may not come back again and if they do they never seem to come back with the same impact.

Pour Out Your Soul
Don’t be afraid to pour out your soul. Who has not remembered speeches that were given by people who were mad and didn’t care who heard them or how they sounded.

Carry A Small Notebook
Since most thoughts and insights seem to come whenever they want and not when you are sitting down with pen and paper or when at your computer. You may want to carry a small notebook or 3x5 cards to write down those brilliant flashes of inspiration.

You have to be ready. If does get hard, however, to record them especially when your driving down the freeway at 75 miles an hour. So be careful.

Gives You a Chance To See What Interest You The Most
Writing about what impresses you in your journal can point out to you what subjects give you the greatest satisfaction to think about. Genius has been described as thinking about things which gives us the greatest satisfaction without effort and which we would hate to forego. You may find out what you are a genius at something by seeing what you write about the most.

Place To Record Accumulated Knowledge
A well know publisher of the past gave this advise to every new employee. Become immediately an expert on anything that interests you and it doesn’t matter what it is.

Keep a record of what you learn. And you will find that you will be attracted to or be attracted by other people of like interest. Your opinions will be valued and sought for. If you keep up your interest, you may find yourself in communications with others around the world. The Internet has made this a reality.

Writing Encourages More Reading
Writing on a regular basis may encourage you to read more good books. Reading good books, in turn creates great thoughts for you to write about.

Journals Show You What You Need To Know More About
Use your journal to write down what things you are indeed vague about and what you would like to know. This will help you decide what you need to read about next. You will be now on the look out for what you need. You mind is now prepared to received what you are looking for. Louie Pasture once said that “Chance favors the prepared Mind”, or as the longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer once remarked, “You get lucky.” It only when you can tell yourself what you need that you are in a mental state to receive it.

Journal Is A Measure To See If You Are Making Progress
Writing helps you to see if you are making any progress in your intellectual development. You can see if you are writing often. You can go over pass entries and see if you are thinking more clearly. You can check your language to see if it is getting more precise or are you needing to rewrite to make yourself clear.

As you keep a journal over the years, you can see how your interests change. You can also see how your opinions have changed about the issues of life over the years. It is interesting to see what was important in the past is of no consequence now.

Not Everything In Your Journal Goes Into Your Personal History
You will only pick out those things which show who you are, not the fact that you went golfing last Saturday. You’ll be pulling out feelings over major events in your life or events in the world that effected you. You’ll be including what you have learned and what changes you made as a results of events you personal experienced or saw on TV. You’ll be taking out experiences with family and friends which you want your descendants to know about. I think you get the idea.

All this and more can be yours by just keeping a journal. Anyone can keep one, even children. So please consider keeping one of your own.