A journal is not just a simple diary, periodical chronicle or record. It is a window where you or any one reading your journal sees you from inside and through your subconscious mind.
A journal is a market place of ideas, thoughts, fears, hopes and aspirations, and the only way to reach it is through your pen.
The act of writing a journal can be your ticket to self-discovery.
Because you can be anonymous in your journal, you can write anything and everything that comes in your mind.
You can also use your journal like a psychologist. Psychologists use this as a tool in analyzing the situation of his subject.
You will easily understand your present condition, good or bad because you will be looking at it from the different side of the fence. This is how psychologists assess ones condition, looking at the matter from a different point of view.
Writers on their part use journals to write ideas, facts, feelings and snippets of conversation.
It is in the journal that most writers unleash their creative ideas that make them effective in their field. It is a log of their creative ideas, which they use later on for their stories.
The way to use your journal effectively is to write anything without having to think of where your writing will bring you.
Let the ideas fall freely. Do not stop until you ran out of things to write.
As you go along, you will realize that when you try to arrange conscious thoughts, your subconscious mind tosses ideas from your mind down your arm and final to the end where the pen is.
Writing also helps you develop ideas from deep in your mind, which you would not have thought exist.
You will realize that after a while, you have written along journal with clear pattern of thought that you initially did not have before you started writing.
Journals can also help improve your relationship with family members by understanding their fears, hopes and aspirations. This writing will help you understand who they are from beneath the person you see in front of you.
Writing journals also help release tension by having to write those things you would have said that might hurt the feelings of another person.
After writing that ugly words you long to utter, you will then have cooled down and realize that those things if you had said them may create nuisance and might create a wall and not a bridge to your relationship.
When you feel you have released your anger, you can tear the paper apart and you will realize you are not angry anymore and can face the world smiling. You will also understand the situation more when you have cleared the cobweb in your mind.
You have done two things; avoid hurting the feelings of your partner by releasing the tension on paper and clearing your mind to understand the situation clearer without a heavy heart.
I also have a friend who writes on her journal very often. She has a small notebook she brings around and writes anything that happen, when she finds the time, she expounds on them. She ends up writing a book of events that turned her into an author from being fondly called scribbling Anne.
