My path to self improvement begins with these reflective journaling sessions. I noticed, looking back, that I felt in a more content state when I was consistently writing.
Daily journaling is an excellent enabler of critical self-thinking. All change begins with thinking, so in some sense daily journaling was a practice that forced me to change in the way I wanted to. That’s why its so important to keep it up.
I started a grateful series which allowed me to seek gratitude in the minutia of life. Living in a state of gratitude has proven, to me, to be a very fulfilling and effective way of living.
Part of the latency in the process of writing is having an artificial constraint that “I need to write something today”.
This seems to be a pathway towards Writer’s Block.
To circumvent this issue, I think an effective strategy is to have a queue of already written posts, for the next few days. This serves as a buffer and gives me creative breathing space. It also ensures I publish my posts consistently, and serves as a reason to get up in the morning and get started on something meaningful.
My writing style is very much a reflection of how I think. I think something, and I write it as I think it.
As such, my older pieces serve as time capsules for the way I used to think. A fascinating exercise I’ve completed a few times is performing an audit on my previous posts, and observing the ways in which I think differently. We track progress and growth of so many things, but rarely do we observe progress in our thinking patterns.
It’s fascinating that in a few years I’ll find the way I wrote this post absurd. I’m looking forward to the growth that will get me to that point.
Some action items from this post: