Growth though Journaling

I’m someone who always wants to improve. While I take great pride in my professional and personal accomplishments, I have this underlying itch to just do better, be better, live better. But often there are impediments and frustrations that hold that type of growth mindset back. I know when they rear their head, I see it coming, but I don’t always have the strength to push through it and stay on that course. Then I rediscovered journaling.

Gone are the days of a flimsily locked diary and gel pens kept in my nightstand drawer, and that’s okay. But so too have I lost that ability to share my thoughts and feelings with just myself and criticize the emotions, gut reactions, and outcomes that came from those life experiences. I feel like I lost the ability to lay it all out there when I kept everything bottled up in my whirring head, and I lost a key element to healthy self-reflection that is simply dedicating time to exploring your thoughts in a quiet, dedicated way.

At one point during a particularly difficult workday, I felt that need to get out from behind of my desk and stretch my legs. I had no particular destination, but my legs brought me to the office supplies section of a general store where I grabbed a blank notebook, and I had some pretty big ideas on how I would use it. It took me weeks to put in my first entry, despite the notebook laying like a loyal canine on my desk beside me. Finally, during another particularly difficult workday, I dumped all of my thoughts onto those pages, and for the first time in a while I had cleared the air in my head and felt content.

I have made several more entries since that moment. And I don’t always go back to what I’ve written, but challenging myself to put those emotions into words and think about my reactions constructively has allowed me to recognize my faults, identify where triggers may arise, and reaffirm what matters most to me. Not surprisingly, the same benefits can be wrought—with honestly very little effort—if I take the time to apply these journaling skills to my professional development.

We often automatically think of feedback as only coming from external sources. Those opinions are, of course, invaluable and should still be acquired whenever possible. But what I feel we have lost as professionals is an ability or interest of looking inwards and finding time to allow our true selves to speak. Who knows what we can learn. I look forward to finding out.