“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” – W.B. Yeats

People keep journals for many different reasons. I believe we write down the things that hang us up or make sense out of our lives. There are all sorts of journals that limit how much you can write, a quarter page to a couple of lines, but when it comes to journaling, more is better. I’ve heard somewhere that we think about the same basic thirty thoughts 90% of the time. They circle around in different guises, wearing different masks, but it is essentially the same thing, recycled thinking. Journaling is a tool that can shake up routine thinking, and hone our understanding. When we write we have the chance to see what we repeat. It’s right there on the page in front of us. When we write long enough and hard enough, we get down to another layer of our thought process for a new idea to emerge, perhaps an idea that has been patiently waiting in the wings. Writing it out gives our mind the room for a new way of seeing things.

All that writing clears out the clutter so we can appreciate what’s really important, instead of dwelling on what keeps us from what we really want. A new idea is released from the rock of all that repetition because of the volumes of writing that went before it. A new seed of thought finally has a place to bloom within us. When we bring everything we feel or think to one topic, one person, one situation, we can transform it. Nathalie Goldburg would say, we write it down to the bones. (Which, by the way, is an amazing book.) We write until we get to what really matters, the real issues. We can’t make sense of how we feel until we’ve lifted every rock, uncovered every feeling. Just like anything else, it takes work to get at what has real meaning.

I also believe there is a magic time. A time of the day or night that is most condusive to clearing out the clogs, and getting all the thoughts or ideas that pester us, out on the page. A time when we are the clearest about how we feel about our lives, or are more in tune with our subtler thoughts and feelings. I know for me it’s early morning, and I take advantage of this. Julia Cameron has her morning pages, but if you’re a night owl they could just as easily be evening pages. It’s such a great idea. You write for three pages no matter what, even if there’s nothing left to say, keep going. In fact there is no limit to how much you want to write, maybe it’s 10 or 20 pages. It takes a lot of writing to clear out all the usual suspects roaming around in our heads. Doing this everyday gives our repetitive thinking a chance to come out, be heard, and then we can move on to what’s hiding underneath. That’s usually where the really juicy stuff that needs our attention resides. Once we get it out on paper, it becomes more concrete and easier to see and deal with, then we can actually connect the loose ends. 

“Write what should not be forgotten.” – Isabel Allende

Once we have all that writing out over weeks, or months, we can begin to see the pattern. Then it magically condenses and gives us a better understanding of the deeper connections we are trying to make. This is what helps us move forward, to move on to what’s next. It’s like a treasure map of our soul. If we write enough, we see all of these ideas, right or wrong, that construct our life. The trick is seeing them, and I think they want to be seen, they need our attention. Until they are out on paper, out in the open, they can elude us. Until then, they are are an endless loop running through our brains with no rhyme or reason. The writing, the examining, give our thoughts a shape. We have to see the shape of our thinking in order to understand it or change it.

That is the magic of writing, it creates more concrete connections, it generates the raw material we can actually work with. So what are your top 5 things you think about? If you didn’t what would come next? The act of writing is a magic wand, it shows us the life we have and leads us to the life we want. Abracadabra.

kb