You should journal. Here is why.
another krappy newsletter #39
Sup homies?
I got my second shot of the Moderna vaccine last week.
I cannot begin to explain to you how exciting it was to lick all of the door knobs on the way out of CVS. I still can’t stop myself. Supermarkets, doctors’ offices, friends’ places. No knob is safe.
If I am visiting you soon, sorry in advance for slobbing on your knob.
On to the newsletter!
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You should journal. Here is why.
Over the last 60 days, I hand wrote 174 pages into a journal.
Today, I can confidently state that I wish I started 10 years ago.
Evolution of my feelings on journaling
When I was younger, I was resistant to the idea of keeping a daily log of my thoughts. It sounded childish.
As I got older, I noticed the only people I knew who “journaled” were “wanderlust losers who couldn’t deal with reality.” Younger me’s words. Not mine.
Just like meditation, I categorically shut journaling out because I saw “losers” doing it.
Ryan Holiday changed my mind. Not instantaneously. But several years into reading his various takes on journaling, the idea to give it a try penetrated my thick skull. So two months ago, I started doing a stream of consciousness writing exercise called “morning pages”.
It was awkward at first. My hand cramped up. The inconsistent flow of the ink from the pen to paper annoyed me. Every page felt like this:
But none of that stopped me because I immediately felt the benefits of journaling. So much so that I found myself writing in my journal about how frustrated I was that no one articulated the benefits earlier.
Unfortunately, people do a poor job of explaining why you should journal. My hope is that I can correct that travesty and convince you to pick up a pen and jot down your silly little thoughts.
Three reasons why I will continue journaling
1. Figuring out what I actually think
My default mode of thinking is to think exactly what everyone around me thinks. If you are human, this is your default as well. Imitation, or “mimesis”, is the fundamental mechanism of human behavior.
We know this. It is why we say things like:
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”
“He is a bad/good influence”
We inherit the behaviors of those we surround ourselves with.
The influence of others on our behavior is so strong that it is used as a jump start for big changes in people’s lives.
People who want to lose weight join a CrossFit gym.
People who want to become an engineer go to engineering school.
People who want to be hipsters move to Brooklyn.
We copy those around us.
We want what we want because other people want it
This tendency to imitate extends through everything. What we think. What we do with our time. Even what we desire. That is the foundation of René Girard’s mimetic desire theory.
Girard posited:
Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.
This phenomenon creates competition for the object of desire.
An obvious example of this is the fierce competition to get into an elite college. Everyone desires to get in to one because everyone desires to get in to one.
Girard talked a lot about the ups and the downs of this competitive landscape.
Notable ups:
"It is because of this unprecedented capacity to promote competition within limits that always remain socially, if not individually, acceptable that we have all the amazing achievements of the modern world"
The competition to get into an elite college pushed the best and the brightest minds to be better. Without that competition perhaps they coast on their natural gifts and never achieve their full potential.
Notable downs:
Competition stifles progress once it becomes an end in itself: "rivals are more apt to forget about whatever objects are the cause of the rivalry and instead become more fascinated with one another."
In the blood thirsty waters of trying to get into college, it is common for kids (like me in high school) to become more obsessed with their class rank than the subject matter being studied. This obsession with competing against your other classmates becomes your primary drive rather than answering fundamental questions like “do I even give a shit about AP European History?” This type of story always ends with a kid who doesn’t know what they want to do with their life.
What side of competition are you on?
If you let your tendency to imitate other people run wild, you get either very positive or very negative outcomes. Thus, it is important to know when you are using competition versus when competition is using you.
How do you tell the difference?
Journaling.
Journaling is the antidote to mimesis.
The power of others on our behavior is so strong that in order to understand what we truly desire, we need to retreat into solitude and talk to ourselves.
Journaling gives you a way to structure this conversation. There, in the depths of solitude, you learn what YOU think, desire, and want.
Thinking about taking a new job or moving to a new city? The only way you can find out if that’s the real thing you want to do is to go write about it. No one can help you answer those questions except yourself.
Journaling helps you figure out who you are.
2. Journaling decreases my anxiety
My Achilles heel is baked goods. I could eat an entire plate of cookies if you let me. But after baked goods, my second biggest weakness is I am a baseline super anxious person.
Things bounce around in my mind all day every day. I worry about everything such as:
Did I take the chicken out to thaw for dinner?
Does that person from 15 years ago hate me?
Why am I worrying all the time?
Journaling allows me to take every one of these worries and trap them on the page. Strangely, this simple act significantly reduces the amount I worry. Like I struck an agreement with my brain that if I wrote it down, it would shut the fuck up.
It also allows me to see the things that keep coming up over and over again. I start to find that the same set of topics cause the majority of my worrying. Day over day. Week over week. I realize that I need to act on this recurring worry or it will forever echo in my mind.
So overall, journaling attacks my anxiety in two ways:
Allows my mind to release its obsessive focus on small trivial shit like picking up the dry cleaning.
Identifies the major contributors to anxiety that I need to act on.
3. Silencing my inner critic
Your inner critic is a voice in your head that dislikes everything you make.
Ted thinks everything I write sucks. Often times, he is correct. That sentence did suck. But at the early stages of creating something, this reflexive shutting down of new thoughts is not helpful. Ted shines during the editing phase. However, to get to the editing phase, you have to first go through the writing phase.
The writing phase is a quantity game. It is all about raw creation of a massive amount of thoughts. Often times, I have to create many many pages of work before I even find a single sentence I want to keep. This is a concept that Julian refers to as the creativity faucet.
Journaling (specifically morning pages) allows me to clear the wastewater out of my creativity faucet. And boy oh boy is there wastewater! For example, of those 176 pages I created over the last two months, approximately one page worth of content total made its way in to the articles I published on this newsletter. That ratio was unfathomable to me three months ago. Now it is just routine.
Journaling taught me to stop being so precious about my writing. I now realize that most of what I write is going to suck and will never see the light of day. This realization actually helps train Ted to wait for his moment. I tell him “Right now, we just write. I will bring you out later when I need a rude asshole to tell me what sucks.” This trains my creative brain (who I call Vern) to keep generating ideas instead of allowing Ted to shut them down.
This revelation made writing super easy. All I have to do is just write and not edit it.
Journaling will change your life
If you don’t journal, you should start tomorrow. It can change your life. If you think that is hyperbole, let’s take a look at my example.
In the last 60 days, journaling helped me:
Decide to change jobs
Write more than I ever have before
Decide to move to a new city
It is not an exaggeration to say that without journaling my life would look a lot different today and that is after only two months of doing it!
So why not give journaling a whirl. What do you have to lose?
What has been your experience with journaling? Email me or leave a comment below. I read everything.
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?
I've been journaling for a while now, and it has been a game-changer for me. It helps me process my thoughts, emotions, and experiences in a way that nothing else can. And I couldn't agree more with the author's point about journaling being a form of therapy that doesn't require a therapist.
For anyone looking to start or enhance their journaling practice, I highly recommend checking out the best journaling techniques mentioned in this article about best journaling techniques (https://productive.fish/blog/journaling/). It's packed with awesome insights and practical tips to make your journaling journey even more fulfilling.