Our thoughts are one of the most useful tools we have.
But they can also be troublesome.
Their potential to narrate breakthroughs and life-changing ideas is the same as their ability to drive us insane.
According to Stoics, the best tool that helps us make more sense of our thoughts is journaling.
It’s likely you’ve heard about it before, and if you are here, it means you are curious to learn more.
In this short introduction to journaling we explain why it can be so effective when practiced regularly, and list the benefits you can expect from it, if you make journaling your habit.
All this followed by a practical part! Cause there’s no real-life benefit without putting knowledge into action, obviously.
Our cognitive minds tend to organize thoughts in a way similar to ever-expanding nets, or mind-maps. They are very plastic and movable structures.
In this form, it’s challenging to make narrative sense of your thoughts and trace the causality interwoven in them.
Writing engages a process called linear thinking. It is a structure we can use to help our thoughts flow in a straightforward, logical way.
When you are thinking or journaling, you are operating in the first-person mode. That usually makes you attached to whatever the mind is coming up with.
If write about those things, you can then go back and review your thought process, gaining a more objective third-person perspective.
This view from a distance will inform your usual first-person perspective, bringing you much closer to seeing the truth of your situation.
To understand this, let’s look at the causality of journaling practice:
You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
— Marcus Aurelius
And many more.
The good news? We have all these (and more) in stoic. app!
Continue to your first guided journal entry