Dear diary,

Today, I killed it.

xoxo

Your ever grinding part-time creator.

Journaling is fancy speak for keeping a diary, you know that thing teenage girls got teased for relentlessly. But it did not begin with infatuated girls in suburbia, the act of journaling is as old as written language. Cave art anyone?

Fast forward to the 21st century, and you can't turn anywhere without being told to journal.

I am here to say, if you don't journal, you don't have to, it's not compulsory to success.

But you will miss out on a lot if you don't do it, and here are the top 3 benefits that came to mind on a Sunday evening.

1. CLARITY

Have you ever gotten into an argument with friends about which superhero had the best superpower? No? Just me? Ok.

The point is, move aside MCU and DC, we humans already have the best superpower. One that has been working wonders for ages. That superpower made all those comic heroes exist, literally, this mere human ability gave birth to superheroes.

That superpower is — Our Thoughts.

Yes, thoughts, imaginations, creativity, projections. That ability to make up things in your head, that's your superpower. For as a man thinketh, so is he.

So, what has this got to do with journaling? Well, back in the olden days, as my nieces and nephews would call it, people spent more time being introspective. In our new age, everyone is super busy jumping from one activity to the other, from one social media platform to the other. And just as we are hyperactive in our actions, so also is our mind, our thoughts, our superpower.

Journaling helps me capture those thoughts (capture is such a powerful verb cause just reading the word made me imagine catching fireflies and storing them in a jar). Come to think of it, that's exactly what journaling does — helps you capture the gems fleeting about between your ears and storing them on the pages of a book.

So why do we want to capture these thoughts? CLARITY.

You want to understand, analyse and manifest in a literal form, your thoughts, your desire, your creativity. So, journal.

2. PLANNING

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

I am sure your eyes glossed over that quote, cause yeah yeah, we all know it at heart. If we had a pound for every time we have heard that quote we would have …how much? Not sure.

But it still stands. You need a plan, I need a plan, we all need a plan. Dreams, dreams, dreams become reality with a plan.

Journaling helps me plan. I try to answer the most important questions about whatever I desire with these fundamental prompts:

What do I want?

Why do I want it?

When do I want it?

How do I get it?

Journaling gives you the time and space to sit down with yourself and work these out.

3. COURSE CORRECT

You know that 'Where did time go feeling?'

You put your head down one minute, you look up the next, and it's July and you are in worse shape than how you started the year, you haven't written that book you were so sure would be ready for publication by now and your finances is still a mess. You had all these high hopes in January, where did that go?

It went the way of my errant bobby pins, that's for sure.

Except, *slams hands on the table for effect* you keep track.

You need to stay aware people, these doors and corners, that's how they get you. (If you guys don't get the Miller reference, I would be sorely disappointed).

The point is, track these things, track everything; your plans, your actions, your habits, your feelings, your food, your time, your intentions, your dreams. Stay on top of it by journaling regularly. Don't get caught out months into the year realising you lost track weeks before and you can't even detect where you went off track, because you weren't paying attention.

Just journal, even if it is out of a sense of FOMO, cause everyone else is doing it.

And talking about FOMO, click on this link to sign up to my monthly newsletter, not just because everyone is doing it, but also, you get useful tidbits and reminders, that your dreams are valid.

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