I’m ashamed to admit I no longer keep a journal. I got out of the habit 20 years ago and have yet to start again. It’s a tragedy, so many things lost.
A journal can be key to understanding yourself, and your relationships with people who matter most: parents, friends, children. We live with hectic schedules and temporary circumstances. It’s easy to get side-tracked, to forget goals, to lose focus. Daily recording helps us confront ourselves, our lives, daily. It keeps us on track.
Your journal becomes a net to accumulate personal insights and understandings, a map for inward searching, for finding yourself. In your journal, you learn and remember how you felt, how you overcame, how you endured. You learn to recognize and control inconsistencies between your beliefs and your behavior.
From knowing yourself, you can learn how you fit into the world, and that understanding can give meaning to what you do, and can provide a purpose for your life. We all have a natural desire to belong, to be needed, to matter. You matter, your life is worth writing down. Your journal will prove that to you.
