The One Writing Shift I Did That Leveled Up My Journaling
Embrace talking to yourself
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I have never been consistent with keeping a journal, but I’ve always wanted to be. When I was younger, the purpose of my journal was to keep a record of my days. In grade school, I remember writing about the cute boys in school, or petty arguments with frenemies. I would write about being envious of silly things from my classmates. I would write about the teachers I didn’t like. Needless to say, I kinda wasted paper. I never wrote about serious heartbreaks, like what I felt when I was separated from my mom and brothers when I was younger. In my journal, those were taboo too. Eventually, I just stopped writing in a journal, I didn’t see any value in it.
In the years that I didn’t write, I suffered even more mental, emotional, and physical trauma and had no space to really process everything that was happening in my life. Recently, I started to write again but with a major shift in my voice as suggested by my therapist and it’s really helped with my mental health.
Here’s what I do:
Instead of writing in the present voice talking to a diary, I write as the version of myself that I want to become, talking to myself now.
I do this:
“You were so productive today!”Instead of:
“Dear Diary, I was so productive today…”
Journaling as a form of therapy
This shift in my voice accomplishes two things at once. It pushes me to be my own best friend, and it brings me closer to the version of me that I want to be.
As humans, one of our shortcomings is that we’ve always been so much harder on ourselves than others. I know I still need to be better at this, but writing in this voice in my journal gives me one way of practicing to be kinder to myself, not just in my head but on paper.
I know I’m not alone, in having felt like the version of me that I want to be is so far from reality. The TED talk of faking it till you become it wouldn’t be as successful and far-reaching if most of us didn’t share this sentiment. In some ways, this practice is very similar to that. If you constantly talk to yourself as the person you want to become, the habits and things that you need to do in order to be that version of yourself stays on top of your mind. Small habits snowball and before you know it, you’ve grown closer and evolved to a better version of yourself.
In public and in social media, I may seem to be self-defeating but I realize as I re-read my journal entries how much I’ve grown and evolved over the past years. This is another advantage of writing in this way. When you write to a diary things that happened stay in the past. But for me, re-reading my journals now, which are written in this form gives me another level of reflection. My present self then hears from my ideal version of me at that point in time, talking to the actual version of me at that time. It’s a little bit confusing, but at the end of the day, it feels like I’m actively reflecting looking at different mirrors, rather than looking at a picture of the past. I highly suggest trying this technique out.
If you journal and have specific techniques that work for you I’d love to hear it. Please leave a comment. I’m always looking for improvements in how I do things. And if you end up doing this technique, and it helps or hurts you I’d also love to hear from you as well!
