[eddy_chan]

I have been journaling for 9 years now. Actually closer to 12 but we'll discount the first 3 years because it was done haphazardly handwritten in notebooks in fits and bursts. Repeatedly throughout the journals I wrote about how circular it felt whenever I was examining the deeper self. It felt like I had written this or that before and then I came to the realisation that the deepest sense of self or sense of consciousness never really changes throughout life. You are who you are. What surprised me was the regularity that predictions or goals written in the past would come true in the future. Seemingly impossible (within a realm of reason) things would always come true given enough time, enough persistence and enough continuous progression. And if it hasn't come true yet, have you moved along the scale of making it happen?

That's where journaling becomes powerful. It lets you hold yourself accountable, lets you measure your current self against your past self. It lets you document those little life victories, those turning points to judge whether a past decision was good or not. Life is a combinatorially explosive decision tree (borrowed from John Vervaeke), journaling helps you to better guess the best future path and keep you on it.

[network2592]

> Life is a combinatorially explosive decision tree (borrowed from John Vervaeke), journaling helps you to better guess the best future path and keep you on it

Beautiful turn of phrase.

[gbersac]

Damn, my experience with journaling is so different! I write whatever comes to my mind, usually some existential turmoil or insatisfaction. Just writing them make me feel so much better. It help the bad feeling go away and grow over it. Over time, those small changes adds up and I really think I'm someone very different than someone who I wouldn't without it.

[lazide]

Same for me - journaling has been huge, as it lets me get thoughts and feelings out of my head, and makes them ‘real’ where I can deal with them - even if dealing with them is just shrugging and moving it, or laughing at myself. It makes a huge difference in processing them.

Part of it is sometimes in my head they are swirling so fast they are hard to process or recognize, and if too much is going on, it gets frustrating and exhausting trying to keep coherent enough I can remember any of them enough to do anything about it, even to let them go.

Meditation also helps, though for meditation a huge part is just bringing my mind to be aware of my body too, so it can process whatever is going on there.

I find the work we do to be quite mentally stimulating - sometimes to the point of exhaustion, and without balancing it out with a corresponding amount of attention to our physical body and exercise, it’s easy to get unbalanced and unhealthy.

And since our minds sit on the foundation of our body, that is a recipe for not being in good shape overall.

[hackerlight]

Does re-reading previous entries add value?

[grigri907]

Reading old journals used to be tedious and embarrassing. It was frustrating to see how many times I had profound, "life changing" realizations, only to discover I've had the same realization over and over again in the years preceding - seemingly never retaining the lessons and ideas.

One thing that helped was building in space for dialogue with myself. Now, I only write original journal entries on the left side of a notebook and leave the right side for future responses. I make a habit of revisiting journal entries from a week, a month, and a year prior, etc, and expounding on the right side of the page with lessons learned later, counter points, and context from an "outside" perspective.

Naturally, this forms a sort of distillation of ideas, refining the concepts most relevant to me at any given moment, and keeping them present in my mind. It promotes a sense of continuity of self, and self-compassion as I'm frequently reminded of my growth and ability to change.

[mxuribe]

> ...Now, I only write original journal entries on the left side of a notebook and leave the right side for future responses. I make a habit of revisiting journal entries from a week, a month, and a year prior, etc, and expounding on the right side of the page with lessons learned later, counter points, and context from an "outside" perspective...

This is the sort of thing that if one was a famous person...then after their death, historians would consider a gold mine to discover! For example, when the journal of Nikola Tesla waas found and in addition he had entries years l;ater of his thoughts about aid original entries, that would be doubly-amazing. This is no less amazing of an idea for us mere mortals! Thank you for sharing this seemingly simple but awesomely wonderfuly idea!!!

[yawn]

I've experienced the same repetitive realizations/ideas. I have kept 3 different files going back 10+ years: did.md which contains notes/thoughts about any interesting events by date, ideas.md which contains business/project ideas, and resolutions-yyyy.md. Whenever I revisit them, I'm always struck by the same thoughts/ideas that come up over and over again. The ideas.md file is the one that cracks me up the most--I have repeating project ideas with the same/similar set of features that occur every few years.

[eddy_chan]

Yes it does. I don't journal every day, I keep each year to about 40-50 A4 pages and I won't write down all the banal stuff. The value lies in the fact that I will usually look at what life was like a year ago, 3 years ago, 5 years, 10 years ago and past-self is there telling me without the rose-tinted glasses. It makes me grateful for what I have today. If I need motivation today, the struggles that were written down serve as a reminder of what needed to be done to get to the present and that effort is required now to get to a higher plane tomorrow, next year, 5 years from now.