THE PROBLEM
I’ve seen it too many times.
I’ll be at a craft show, with my journals on display, and someone sees my table and a smile comes on their face. Journals make them happy.
Until journals make them sad. Because if I ask them if they like to journal, shame and disappointment take over, and all the joy disappears. Experience has taught these people that, as much as they love the idea of being a journaler, somehow they just don’t measure up. They’ve tried, and the habit just didn’t stick.
Maybe you can relate. One too many times, a really nice-looking journal got your hopes up, and you thought you’d give it one more try. And then it just didn’t work out the way you thought it would. Maybe it felt uncomfortable staring at a blank page and you didn’t know what to write. Or you got a good running start but when you read it back to yourself, all you could think of was how boring you sound. Or the first couple of days were just fine and then suddenly it was a month later and the pages were still mostly blank.
It’s time to put an end to this kind of shame and disappointment.
WHY?
Because you deserve the joy that you felt when you first picked up a journal that tickled your fancy. Reclaiming that joy might take some work, but it’s the kind of work that you can do. You’re up to the challenge this time. You CAN be a journaler.
Now, what qualifies you for this privileged status? Time will tell. The secret is going to be figuring out what expectations you’re putting on yourself, and then deciding if those expectations really count, or if you want to replace them with other expectations.
Because really, the rules of journaling are that YOU decide the rules. I won’t say there ARE no rules. You’ve been let down in the past, and that’s because you broke the rules you had made for yourself. But you get to decide if those rules stick around, or if they don’t apply to what you’re trying to accomplish.
THE RULES
So, let’s talk about some of these rules.
- For instance, many journaling experts will say to just write down whatever pops in your head and don’t worry about spelling. For myself, I’ve decided that I want to enjoy reading back over what I’ve written. And spelling mistakes make me feel stupid. So I write with an eraseable pen, and I correct my spelling mistakes as I go. It doesn’t interrupt my flow of thought to correct a spelling mistake, so this is a rule I let myself follow. If paying attention to spelling interrupts your thought flow, then ignore your spelling and just keep writing. But if spelling errors interrupt your flow of thought, then erase away!
- Another rule you might have made for yourself is that you can only consider yourself successful if you establish a daily habit of journaling. While there are scientifically proven benefits to a regular journal practice and this may be a goal you want to strive for, this is still a rule that you can jettison if it’s keeping you stuck. In fact, here’s a link to studies that say you can still reap benefits from journaling even if you don’t journal every day.
- And if you arbitrarily decide you’re bound and determined to be a daily journaler, perfection doesn’t have to come right away. Take some advice from the book Atomic Habits – push yourself just 4% out of your comfort zone, because that’s where growth is most likely to be sustainable. And if you miss a day, just make doubly sure the next day you don’t reinforce the habit of NOT journaling. Each day you are either reinforcing the habit you had yesterday (skipping journaling), or the habit you will continue tomorrow (daily journaling). You get to choose which of those two habits defines you.
- One rule I’d really recommend establishing for yourself is “Be kind to yourself.” It can feel really scary putting your thoughts on paper, in black and white, where they’re open to scrutiny. Some of us give up journaling because we’ve been told that only crazy people talk to themselves, and writing in a journal feels too much like “crazy.” We might limit what we say, so we can escape the judgment we fear if we let honesty take the reins.
- But one of the main benefits of journaling is self-discovery, and that’s easier to attain when you’re curious about where your thoughts are coming from, instead of judging whether they’re socially acceptable or not. Again, which rules you keep are open to debate: if you decide it’s important to hold your thoughts to a moral standard, you can do that – but I highly recommend that you hold off final judgment until you’ve got the bigger story of how you got to thinking that way – and the best way to get the bigger story is to be empathetic and curious, so that honesty feels safe and rewarded. You can’t hold your thoughts to a moral standard if you’re not honest about what those thoughts really are.
CONCLUSION
That covers the rules I’m aware of that people put on themselves. Maybe you know of more; great! Take a look at your rules and why you find them valuable, and shape those rules into a form that works toward your goals. Write them down for yourself, and keep coming back to them to re-evaluate how they’re serving you or how to change them so they fit you better.
And then, rejoice when these rules help you become the kind of journaler you can take pride in being.