How do you track records of your readings, your wishes and the progression you make on your path to enlightenment? Most people is not used to write, even when they are advised to. Every exercise suggested in the many books on self development demands you to fix your thoughts on paper.
When you will eventually recognize how useful this task is, you will face the problem to keep your notes in some place where you will be able to easily get back to them. I will suggest some tools I tried.
Tracking the events of our spiritual life is absolutely useful and of primary importance, and if we also keep an eye to our everyday tasks, we will feel more in control of our life, making our thoughts more positive.
You certainly know personal organizers, there are many brands, shapes, materials, different prices. Probably you already use one, to keep track of expenses or appointments. I used mainly two different organizers over a period of time, for work, personal, and family issues. I also used them to memorize thoughts, inner experiences, facts of what we might call the invisible life .
If you use a Filofax, you know you have quite a free choice in organizing your records, you can label sections for quick reference and successfully balance your outer life with your inner life.
Franklin Covey organizers borrow their name from the famous personal development writer of “7 habits of highly effective people”, worldwide best seller and incredible manual on how to live a balanced life. Compared to Filofax they are more complete, rather a “system” for living than an organizer, with predetermined procedures to follow. They became object of cult for many enthusiasts, who religiously followed this way of thinking and managing life. Excellent tools.
I personally prefer more freedom in organizing my daily tasks and taking my notes, so I would dare to say I am more oriented toward Filofax. I prefer to be able to change layouts and forms, and their location in the organizer, with a lot of blank paper to jot an idea, an insight…or a phone number.
Now the price. They can be very expensive, if bounded in leather. I would suggest you to use the most expensive you can afford. These little books are the repository of your life and your thoughts, how much do you value your life, and how much do you value yourself?
These are two examples amongst many available in the market, what is important is to start to use a tool that will help you to put some order in your thoughts, and remember, when you write something you are taking a conscious decision about your life, it does not matter whether it is a brilliant idea or the appointment with the doctor, it’s something you create.
So, what do you use to write your life?
Elio: I’ve been keeping journals since the fourth grade. Once I realized how many journals I had filled up, I started organizing them by putting numbers on the outside so I know their chronological order. The books from my childhood and teen years live in a box in my garage.
I found that by writing my reaction to everyday events, I can tell what mindset I was in during that phase in my life, and can therefore measure how far I’ve come in spiritual development.
I simply buy empty journals, the kind with lines on them. I date each entry and write as much or as little as I feel. It really is a good stress reliever, because I can complain to the book and not to anyone else. Then again, I’ve read that one should always keep a gratitude journal devoted to only positive writings. I tried but the urge to keep it up never stuck with me.
I’m not sure what you mean about Filofax. Last I checked, it was a round twirly thing to put your phone numbers in. You write the numbers on small index cards arranged alphabetically.
@ Jessica
I am glad to find someone who writes! Your method is efficient and precise, and you do exactly what it’s supposed to.
Yes, a gratitude jornal is a great idea, too.
Have just a look to Filofax in the post link…I love them
Elio, I have to confess I kept a regular journal 10 years ago and stopped.
What about a computer? I find it very versatile and am seriously considering doing a lot of writing anyway on it. Writing is part of my spiritual journey–it is my way to get what is going on with my soul in front of my eyes in clear sight. It hardens the new growing areas into something less changeable, or at least better considered. I do not need an eraser or TippEx when my spelling gets lost.
When I need to remember something I am changing from a diary to my cell phone already.
My home is far too clutterred with all kinds of books! And electronic stuff is easy to share, which is becoming more important for me now. And I’ll keep the hand-work to drawing, painting and pottery that I can give away as much as I want to!
As long as you don’t stop blogging!!!!!
Antoinette
I stopped keeping a personal diary some time ago as it was seized by the authorities to use as an exhibit in an embarrassing legal case. Before that, from my boy scout days, I had religiously kept one and posted everyday. I now depend on letting off steam on my blog!
Hi Elio, during my teenage years I used to write in my diary daily, but then when I was around 15 someone that I thought was
my friend took my diary and spread it around my entire school, every where I went kids had bits and pieces torn out of my diary. Needless to say that was a very painfull time for me, so I stopped
keeping journals.
Later in my twenties I started again but after about ten years I noticed that my diaries were filled with negativity, problems worries, stress and when I read them over I would get depressed all over again so I stopped writing them. These days I have fallen in love with gratitude journals, and I find that now that I am remembering things I am grateful for on a daily basis, I actually have less and less to complain about.
@Antoinette, rummuser, Carol
Thank you for your comments. It looks like the most part of you keep or have kept a journal. Whatever the form of it, it’s a remarkable activity. I also use a PDA, to keep in my pocket when I’m too lazy to carry my filofax with me
I will talk more about the “gratitude journal” in another post.
Love & Abundance
Elio
I love journaling and buy a large diary every year so that I can write everything down I keep records of conversations (this has often got me out of a jam), my thoughts, my goals, wishes and dreams, my 5 things to be grateful for each day and moments I do not wish to forget, sometimes I will add a drawing or even a photo or pic when it seems appropriate.
I have this amazing repository of memories that go back years, although it is a very heavy box to move house with
@ Annie
You really do a lovely job. It’s nice go back to those memories after a couple of years, isn’it
Hi all, so good to know lots of us keep journals. There certainly are inherent flaws in the journalling system, as some of you have pointed out. To have a journal stolen and distributed to others is actually now a subject of a Disney movie. It must have been a painful experience to live through, Carol.
And to want to skip the handwriting altogether and move to digital memory-making is a convenient luxury we now have thanks to technology. But when I go over old journals, I get clues from my handwriting about what state of mind I was in when I wrote it. Is the writing careful, rushed, sloppy, neat? Did I cross my t’s? How high did I cross them? That clues me in to the self esteem I had at the time, I think.
And I was always nervous about the content of what I wrote because of the “what if’s” of an imaginary court case. I feel for you, rummuser, that you had to be exposed like that when you weren’t expecting it. I used to write backwards just like DaVinci to further encode my secret writings. A court would be able to figure that out fairly simply, though. And now I’m still a great backwards writer.