Journal: Experience the power of FOCUS

Journal: Writing Journal and Diary are different. Journal is written with explicit things in mind. It is like writing the experiences very specific to an already predefined goal. This tracks your progress towards that particular objective. For example, if you have decided to set a goal to lose weight by certain amount in certain period of time then the journal defines the experiences of the actions that you have taken on daily basis to achieve the desired objective. For example, a gratitude journal specifically defines the relevant experiences and the relevant persons to whom one wants to express their gratitude.

Words: Word is powerful. Words reflect the internal dialogue, our own self talk that happens inside our head. For example, if someone says, “I can’t do it”. This means that the person is under the gun at work. The language made out of the words is the label of our experience. We judge the experience as good or bad.  For example, “This practice is not going anywhere. What a waste of time?” This creates plasticity in the brain. Words create impression and psychological effect.

Emotionalise with words: While writing journal, it is important to pick up the right words that provide the positive vibes and positive emotion to us. Emotionalise our experience with the words. For ex, use words such as awesome, great, love, wonderful & beautiful. The deeper level of the mind can understand the picture and hence to make greater impression of our experiences, one can also draw pictures of the experiences in the journal.

Set the direction: Journaling is nothing but a selective memory retrieval mechanism of our experiences that have taken place in a day and reinforcing and storing the experiences back again in the brain by writing with the carefully crafted words and pictures. This practice when done on daily basis as rituals, it not only programs your brain with specific experiences but also tunes the brain to automatically look for such specific experiences that would happen in future.

Power of focus: Over a period of time, as we develop the habit of journaling, we get to become more focused on the specific task that has the priority in life. As per the recent research, our brain can’t able to multitask. So, doing one thing at a time is much smarter way than doing many things at one time. The habit of journaling makes us more focussed and keeps us in compliance with the natural design of the brain. The power of focus allows us to concentrate all our energies 100% for a single task than distributing the energies 20% to five different tasks.

Childish play: Many times, we think we operate life at pro level but in reality we deal life at kindergarten level. Initially, when I was introduced the concept of writing a journal, I thought it was a childish play & waste of time. But, after having my first-hand experience, all I can say is that we operate really at a pro level in real life with the development of such a new habit.

So, just a give a try for a month of this practice & if it works then inevitably it becomes your new habit.