Many years ago, I worked as an underwriter, which meant I looked at people’s documents and financials and could approve or decline a loan based on whether it met the lender’s policy.
Most of my jobs have been looking at data and then making analyses based on that data. It was fun and exciting- and most importantly, it helped me paint a picture of a person or situation. It may not be 100% accurate, but it’s a starting point from not knowing to knowing.
Now imagine having that data about yourself and your life. I’d like to believe it’s a goldmine. For me, journaling is precisely that: getting data from you to you, which you can always use.
I have used journaling all my life in various forms, but I didn’t call it journaling. I thought it was scribbling till I learned it was called journaling.
I have journaled to get clarity when looking for a partner or change in career, other vital moments, or when I was going through a tough time navigating complicated friendships. It’s always been helpful to show me the breadcrumbs I can follow.
What is Journaling with Intention?
Journaling with intention is when we journal intentionally:
To either strategically draw a map for our life or to get answers, i.e. get clarity on our life visions or desires,
To help regulate our emotions and to let journaling be our punching bag when we are going through an upheaval or need consoling.
To enjoy the art of writing and let the art be your guide for self-discovery.
How Does Journaling With Intention Help You?
1. Journaling can help you become the author and architect of your life
Since journaling is getting data from you to you, it is a minefield to help you extract information about yourself — your fears, desires, roadblocks, limitations, strengths, and how you can use it to maneuver every moment in your life.
It can uncover conscious desires and unconscious information about yourself, which is handy as we navigate life.
We’d like to believe that we know ourselves well, but I’d like to argue that we are not self-aware, and most of us act based on unconscious programs operating in our subconscious.
Journaling helps bring our subconscious biases to light and helps us to take action by being fully aware of our goals, desires, fears, and limitations.
Time spent in reflection/Time with ourselves is never wasted. It is like an intimate date with yourself.’
Dr P T Wong
In our fast-paced, action-oriented world, we struggle to sit still and be present, spend time on reflection and contemplation- and let the divine speak.
We are always in a rush.
We are also on a treadmill, constantly busy and seeking highs, making external influences more important than our inner knowledge and guidance.
To me, journaling is pressing that pause button, inviting stillness, hearing what your heart and soul have to say, and giving them the mike for once.
Mathew 6:6: But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place;
Journaling is coming home to ourselves -and asking the main character in the movie of your life- that is you- the necessary questions so that you become the architect of your life and not some subconscious program or hurts and pains of the past.
2. Journaling helps process and alchemize unpleasant feelings and emotions that lay buried in the debris of our psyche
We are also a repressed lot who tend to repress a lot of thoughts, feelings, and emotions that we consider unsavory. We bury them deep in the archives of our memory and spend ample time and energy shoving them down and keeping them down there.
We do not want them to resurface and show their ugly sides.
We don’t realize that all feelings, thoughts, and emotions, savory and unsavory, come from us. It is part of the human experience and not to be rejected.
It is like breathing — inhaling fresh air and exhaling what we don’t need. One is not better than the other. We cannot only inhale or exhale; we need both to live.
So if our feelings include the unsavory ones, repressing and shoving them down does not make them disappear.
Studies talk about the ill effects of repressing feelings and emotions. (If you shove a lot of crap in the attic, it’s going to have of foul smell. What do you expect?)
Through journaling, we can accept our humanness with grace. We can allow ourselves to feel and think these unsavory feelings and thoughts in a safe and contained way. Journaling is safe for us and others as we learn to express ourselves in the safe confines of the journal.
Approving these feelings and emotions helps to alchemize them. It prevents us from having reckless reckless outbursts and hurting ourselves or others who may be the recipients. It can purge everything we are holding on to and drain our energy; it can help us let go of it and treat ourselves with kindness.
We can use all the time and energy that we would have spent on shoving and keeping those feelings unseen on things that we love or that help, enrich, and fulfill us or bring us happiness. It helps alchemize those feelings and thoughts into something more productive and useful for ourselves and others
3. Journaling can help unleash our creativity
We can learn to take life with a pinch of salt, enjoy every moment, and pulse. We can allow the craft of writing to infuse our lives with tenderness, joy, and healing.
We can enjoy the craft of writing just for the pure pleasure of writing and in doing so inspire, guide, and help transform ourselves and others.