“Tom, you might want these.”
My sister then gave me three journals wrapped in plastic. I was dumbfounded. For context, I was just about to embark on an internship at Walt Disney World. My sister knew this experience would be life-changing for me as a young student, so she encouraged me to write my adventures down in a journal during my eight months working for the mouse.
Little did I know that these little hand-sized journals would change my entire life. I didn’t know I would become more stoic, self-aware, happy, and emotionally intelligent just by writing every single day in a journal.
My sister gave me an incredible gift, and here’s why you need to seriously consider journaling as a young person too.
Why Journaling is so Important
Journaling is like fishing in a raging river. Every now and then, you’ll catch a big fish, right? And if you weren’t fishing, you would’ve never caught anything valuable in the first place. Journaling is sort of like that, wherein we “catch” our thoughts to reflect on them.
Scientists say that the mind thinks between 60,000 - 80,000 thoughts per day, which is about 3,000 thoughts per hour. Most people capture none of them.
Capturing our thoughts is crucial, because if we didn’t capture them, we’d remember nothing. The definition of self-awareness is a constant knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires. You might think you know your own feelings, but do this quick experiment with me..
Can you remember a single thought you had last Thursday?
If you can, we seriously need to talk because you have skills. If not, I just proved the importance of journaling to know what we’re thinking. Recording your thoughts on paper is the first step toward truly knowing your feelings, motives, and desires.
How to Start Journaling
At the top of your journal entry, list the date. Great, now focus on the thing that’s got you the most emotional right now. For instance, are you happy, sad, angry, or nostalgic? Whichever one of those you are, talk about why you feel that way.
Then talk about what you did today. Did anything noteworthy happen? You may have some interesting lessons you learned about yourself and the people around you. Record it.
Then talk about the future. What’s got you excited or worried about tomorrow, next week, next month, or even next year? Those are the three crucial segments of any great journal entry.
Two Other Benefits of Journaling
My first month of journaling was basically me screaming headfirst into the parchment. I was angry at the world, had a lot of complaints, and finally something was listening! The great thing about journaling is, the paper will never cut you off, change the subject, or shame you.
I started noticing I became less angry. I wrote about things that bothered me, so I got stuff off my chest. I talked through why certain behaviors from other people made me upset, and I pondered how I could avoid getting upset in the future.
Have you ever had a heart-to-heart conversation with a friend? It felt good to talk about things that were bothering you, right? Well, it’s the same thing for a journal, except it’s in written format instead of spoken format.
Perhaps the coolest part of journaling is that it’s a record. It’s like stamping your shoe into wet cement. You can look back on what you were thinking weeks, months, and even years ago. You can see what was worrying you all those days ago, and how most of your worries never materialized into anything sinister.
You really start to see it in broad daylight how much your fears and worries aren’t always warranted.
The Importance of Self-Awareness
Why is journaling so great, especially for 20-somethings? Because many of us don’t know what we want. We do not know which major to choose, which job to shoot for, where to live after graduation, and what kind of person we want to be.
Journaling will give you the answers to all of those questions like a perfectly wrapped Christmas present. The benefits of journaling compound over time, so feel free to talk about what major you want over and over for weeks on end. You should really ruminate on it!
The two major questions facing college students today seem to be:
- Who am I?
- Who do I want to be?
In time, with practice and dedication, journaling will help answer both of those questions. You may be surprised how effective scribbling a few words down every day can be. It just might change your life, which is exactly what it did for me.