Some real life impacts of keeping a journal

There have been real life changes I have made in my life because of journaling. For the most part, I think the impacts will be noticed over time and not all at once. As if my journaling plants seeds that grow within me. But there have been a few times when the impact has been immediately clear. Let me tell you about those.

1. Detecting my patterns

In 2020, I was cleaning out the notes on my phone. And I found a note from 2016 called “journal entry.” I rarely make journal entries on my phone, so it must have been something I HAD to pour out of me and didn’t have my hard copy journal with me. The entry was nearly ver.bat.im. what I had written in my journal just last night. I had thought it was an original thought last night, and I had thought it was an original thought four years ago. So I pulled out my notebooks from the past four years, and I flipped through the pages. Day in and day out, the turmoil felt fresh and new. But looking at it like this, in a bigger picture, I saw that my turmoil had been tormenting me for years. And the truth of the matter was, I could change it. I was staying stuck in the turmoil because it was easier than confronting it.

It was clear to me then what my future would look like. I’ve been writing the same story for four years. Four! Fucking! Years! (And it was actually longer, when I looked back further in my journals!). As they say, you can’t see the forest through the trees. Every day I was seeing the trees, and my journals allowed me to see the whole forest. And I knew that four years from now, I didn’t want my story to be the same. I had a lot of excuses for staying stuck that I had to process through, but the awareness brought to me by my journal was everything I needed to get moving.

It was in this very moment, I realized I was writing the story of my life. And the story I was writing wasn’t the one I had dreamt of.

2. Getting to the bottom of my fears, and then debunking them

A lot of times our feelings are primal. We can’t give modern day logic to them. Feeling fear is no different. It’s primal. Fear comes from a source we don’t understand but it’s powerful and boyyyyy can it hold us back. It’s one we evolved with, that was intended to protect us and keep us safe. But in modern times, it can prevent us from taking risks, unless we can see it clearly.

Don’t get me wrong! Fear is a good emotion, and it’s one that truly can keep us safe in certain situations! Your spidey senses are real and you should notice them! But if fear is holding you back from achieving your dreams, ask yourself where it’s coming from, and if its real.

Through journaling, I realized that my dreams weren’t being realized because I was scared of all the “what ifs.” What if I quit my job and then I can never get back into my industry and I wasted $130k in student loan debt and 14 years of my life building a career that I just ended. What if I don’t succeed. What if I travel and I hate it. What if I try and I fail.

For years I was stuck on these what ifs. And then what day, I realized, fear is here to keep me safe, and how it does that is by keeping me stuck. And I wrote, “I can be stuck for forever, or I can be scared for a little bit. Stuck or Scared.”

And I chose to be scared for a little bit.

The reality is, I wasn’t being chased by a predator, or gathering food in a drought, or lost in an unknown ecosystem with no idea how to survive. In the modern world, the realities of my failure weren’t as life or death as I was making them out to be. Worst case scenario, I live my parents and get myself back on my feet (TBH this is a pretty bad one that I do not like at all, but that’s OK cause it keeps me extra motivated).

Now it’s been more than a year since I made this realization, and made big changes in my life. And the scariest thing is to imagine myself still writing the old narrative.