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Wednesday, April 16th 2008 by Shanel Yang
Why diary? The question should be “why not diary?” since all the successful people in history kept one. Or, they wrote long, factually detailed letters to their friends and family that were all saved, and those letters were essentially diaries shared with only a few, trusted individuals.
They kept diaries because the very act of writing down your thoughts, feelings, hopes, and fears helps you make sense of them and helps you remember them. And, if you don’t remember them, you can always go back and read about them to refresh your memory. In short, diaries make sense of you and the world around you. At least, it’s a very good place to start.
One reader, after reading “25 Statements for Happiness,” asked me how he could get there from here. I sent him a free copy of my eBook Cuckoo in Your Nest!, recommended he read “Think and Grow Rich” and “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” that he get a copy of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, and that he keep an eye out for this article about diarying. Dear Reader, this one’s for you!
10 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP A DIARY
1. Really be yourself. A diary is a safe place where you can write whatever you want—typos, misspellings, bad grammar, and all! No one will judge you. There will be no test. Everything you record is for your eyes only. You don’t even have to reread your entries if you don’t want to. The point is to have a place to vent, rant, celebrate, question, act silly, be mean, be proud, be jealous, be vain, be vindictive, be holier-than-thou, be unpolitically correct, or do absolutely anything you want, without constantly worrying about what people will think or do if they only knew. Until you have at least one place in your life to be real and one person to be real with, you will never know who you really are. Start with a diary, and be yourself.
2. Really know yourself. When you are finally free to do, say, think, and feel whatever you want to at least one person (even if it’s only to yourself in your diary), then you can finally start to really know yourself. Ask yourself the following questions, and answer them as honestly and as fully as possible:
a. What is your earliest memory of happiness?
b. What did you love doing most as a child?
c. Why did you enjoy that activity so much?
d. Why did you stop doing it?
e. Will it make you happy to do it now? If not, why not?
Try to do this for every year of your life that you can remember. In this way, you will slowly get to know yourself better and better. Don’t judge. Just record your memories and your current feelings and thoughts about them. Let them come, and let them go. Write down as much as you can about everything you remember, think, and feel. Enjoy the process of getting to know yourself, perhaps for the first time in your life. Don’t be frightened by anything you learn. Accept all of your many complex sides as worthy and valuable contributions to the totality of you.
3. Get the facts straight. Most of us can’t remember what we had for lunch yesterday, let alone the important events of our past. Why is it important to try to accurately remember our past? Because most experts agree that understanding it—the good, the bad, and the ugly—helps us succeed now and in the future.
4. Stop judging yourself. If we are unhappy with our lives, chances are we blame ourselves for at least some of our unhappiness. We look back at certain decisions we made with regret and, sometimes, even, shame. This is not good. If we blame ourselves, we carry this negativity with us, always, in our subconscious; and, it affects everything we do. In a sense, we are sabotaging our own happiness by constantly, albeit, subconsciously, telling ourselves we don’t deserve to be happy.
Ironically, we have to go into the eye of the storm to get to the safest place to avoid the devastating influence of it. What I mean by that is we have to look closely and consciously at our past to change any deep-rooted negative views about it so that we will be less affected by them now and in the future. Ask yourself the following questions, and answer them as honestly as possible:
a. Why do you think, feel, or believe that what you did was wrong or bad?
b. Would you judge someone else as harshly for the same thing under similar circumstances (same age, limited resources, etc.)? If not, why not?
c. Do you judge yourself more harshly and unfairly than anyone else? If so, why?
d. Do you want to keep these negative beliefs or work on getting rid of them?
e Why do some memories make you sad, mad, nervous, anxious, or worried?
As you work on answering these questions, ask yourself how you were feeling, way back when. Then, ask yourself how remembering them makes you feel now. If some of your childhood memories cause strong, present-day, negative emotions, you will need to teach yourself new, positive responses to replace those old, “negative” ones. Here is one way to do it: You know how scared we all were of ghost stories when we were kids? When we grew older, those stories lost their scary effect because we observed the world around us and used the clues we gathered about the real world to get past those unfounded fears. We either came to believe that there are no such things as ghosts, or, even if there are ghosts, we came to trust that we are strong, smart, and reasonable enough to do everything in our power to protect ourselves from any harm that might come from them. Ghost stories lost their power over us as we grew older because we used our powers of rational analysis to convince ourselves that those fears were not founded in reality.
Now, how many of your childhood negative memories (however terrible they were) should still be striking fear or dread into your heart today? As a child, if you were beaten viciously and repeatedly by a parent (like I was), it’s normal to be fearful, suspicious, and ambivalent toward authority figures and persons who say they love you and want to protect you but also hurt you a lot. Those are crazy-making, confusing messages about love, power, and close relationships that could cripple you the rest of your life. Or … you can acknowledge what a terrible childhood you had but still resolve to not let it burden the rest of your life starting right now. It takes more work up front, but you can assess every situation that reminds you of fearful childhood experience and ask yourself whether that level of fear makes sense now, as a strong, smart, and reasonable person who can do everything in your power to protect yourself from any real harm. In this way, eventually your childhood will stay where it belongs, in your past, and leave you free to face the challenges of the future without all that emotional baggage.
5. Stop judging others. It’s hard not to judge people. First, we judge ourselves for our past mistakes. Then, when we try not to judge ourselves, we find ourselves judging our parents, siblings, teachers, friends, bosses, and coworkers for everything that went wrong with our lives. It’s convenient. But, it’s no good. It may feel good to blame them. But—like any quick-fix solution—when the high is gone, the problem still remains. We are stuck in a life we are not happy with. So, enough with the blaming and judging! Here’s what to do instead: Whenever you find yourself blaming or judging someone, ask yourself why you are doing it. Write about it in your diary. What do you get out of it? Why does that particular behavior bother you so much? Does it remind you of something in your past? If so, is it fair to put all that on this new person? Learn to recognize when you’re treating new people like old people. Give new people their own clean personality slate to write on and pay attention to what they write there. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose from this more sensible approach to new relationships.
Often we react strongly to others when we see them doing something that we don’t allow ourselves to do. For example, my parents suddenly needed me to be dead serious when we immigrated to the U.S. so that I could help them with, not only the English language, but with, how to do everything in this new country. Although I was only five years old, I I quickly began training myself never to be silly. That had the surprising effect (which I didn’t notice at the time) of making me hate any exhibition of silliness around me. I just couldn’t tolerate it.
Years later, my friends couldn’t understand why I didn’t just loosen up and have a good time. Frankly, I couldn’t understand it, either. Even when my parents weren’t around, I couldn’t act silly, and I secretly hated everyone around me whenever they acted silly. I kept those feelings secret because I was ashamed of having such seemingly irrational negative feelings and frustrated by not knowing why. This is just one example of how diarying and examining my childhood helped me. Now, I let myself be silly whenever I feel like it, and I love it! So, of course, I am delighted when I see others being silly, too. This is how I finally learned to live and let live.
6. Improve your writing. Ever heard the expression, “Know what I mean?” or “Know what I’m saying?” These are usually verbal tics that people—who don’t really know what they’re saying or what they mean—use to somehow put the blame on you, the person they are talking to, for failing to understand them. Or, you probably heard this one: “I know it, but I can’t explain it.” The truth is, if you can’t explain it, then you really don’t know it. Being able to explain it clearly and concisely in writing is the best way to know what you really mean and to explain it to others.
No matter what you want out of life, improving your writing skills will only help you. I know I said you can break all the spelling and grammar rules in your diary. But, if you want to improve your writing skills, there is no better place to do it because you can make a lot of mistakes and experiment with a lot of styles in your diary. When I began college, my English composition skills were beyond awful. I took Freshman Composition and started getting “C’s” or worse on all my assignments—and my professor was being generous! Luckily, he was a growth mindest type who was more interested in helping us students learn how to write than in labeling us good writers or bad writers. He let us resubmit almost all of our assignments for potential new grades. If we showed improvement, he gave us up to one grade higher on each resubmission. I think I ended up with a “B” in that course, and I was more proud of that than all “A’s” I ever got in my life put together!
At the end of that course, because he showed how much he cared about us students, I gathered up the courage to ask him for advice on how to improve my writing in the future. I told him I wanted, more than anything, to be able to write well. He gave me the best advice ever. He told me to read simple, well written novels, such as John Steinbeck’s or Ernest Hemingway’s, keep a notebook for writing down every sentence I loved in those novels, study them, and copy them until I eventually develop my own style. I did exactly as he suggested. And, 10 long years later, I realized I could clearly express myself through writing.
Now, more than 20 years since I was blessed with that most excellent advice, writing still doesn’t come easily or naturally. I continue to work on my skills every day. But, thank goodness, I no longer have that gut-wrenching feeling I used to get every time I really wanted to explain something important but just couldn’t find the right words. After a desperate stab or two at it, I used to stare at my poor listeners with a pained look and say, “You know what I mean?”
Best of all, the advice that Freshman English Composition professor gave me, I found, applies to all areas of life—not just English composition. Whenever I wanted to improve any skills, I used the same method of finding simple, excellent examples of whatever it was I wanted to learn, copying it, and studying it until I developed my own skills and style. It works every time! And, why wouldn’t it?
7. Improve your thinking. Until a thought is expressed in words (at least in your head), it almost doesn’t exist. Certainly not in any form you can use. It may be called, at best, a vague feeling. When you are seeking happiness, or any important goal in life, you need concrete thoughts, ideas, and plans to get you there from here. And, for that, you need expression of those thoughts, ideas, and plans in the form of words. And, to remember those words, you need to write them down in a convenient place. What better place for such important words than in your diary? No wonder everyone who wants to achieve great things in life kept one!
The list of celebrities whom we know kept diaries is endless: Kurt Kobain, Courtney Love, Britney Spears, Anna Nicole Smith, Madonna, Jennifer Aniston, Kylie Minogue, Moby, Brian Eno, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Andy Warhol, Lynn Redgrave, Michael Palin, Alec Guiness, Prince Charles, Anne Frank, Lewis Carroll, Beatrice Potter, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Franz Kafka, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Camus, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Jack London, Tennessee Williams, John Steinbeck, Anais Nin, Eugene Delacroix, Leonardo da Vinci, Ludwig van Beethoven, Vaclav Nijinsky, Samuel Pepys, Queen Victoria, Ernesto Che Guevara, Tsarina Alexandra of Russia, Lewis and Clark, Madame Curie, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Goebbels, and Theodore Kazcynski (the Unabomber)—just to name a few. Who knows how many kept diaries without letting us know it?
How do diaries improve your thinking? They help you get organized. You can jot down everything you want to remember. Notes to yourself about everything from chores you need to get done to big dreams you set out to accomplish by a target date. Your diary is your confidante, your therapist, and your best friend. It gently reminds you of the goals you have set for yourself. It lets you make as many mistakes as necessary to get there from here. And, it is always ready to listen to you when you have a bad day. As you continue to write in your diary, you will see patterns emerge in your thoughts and feelings. Notice them, analyze them, and write about them, as well. If you want examples of what other people put in their diaries, some real and some fictitious ones can be found in these books: The Diary of Anne Frank; Go Ask Alice; Flowers for Algernon; Dracula; The Basketball Diaries; Back on the Road – A Journey through Latin America; Bridget Jones’s Diary; and, The Assassin’s Cloak – An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists.
8. Improve your communication. You will find that when you stop judging yourself and others, you become more approachable and generally more pleasant to be around, which is exactly what you want. For a discussion about the importance of these social skills, as well as detailed instructions on how to develop them, see “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Also, when you improve your writing and thinking skills, those skills naturally translate into better overall communication.
9. Improve your memory. This point is mentioned above, but it’s worth repeating for its own sake. People who can remember names, dates, places, numbers, and other details—even useless trivia—are considered more intelligent, competent, thoughtful, considerate, and confident than people who can’t. Whether this is fair or true is beside the point. If you could choose between remembering important facts about your life and the world around you or not remembering them, which would you choose? My point is that you have the choice. By recording the facts you want to remember in your diary and reviewing them regularly, you will remember them quite easily after a while. Experts have shown that memory can be increased and strengthened like a muscle, through regular and repeated use.
10. Confidence in your past, present, and future. When you remember all the past events that you find significant enough to record in your diary, you naturally feel more confident about where you’ve been, where you are, and where you are going. You’re life becomes like your own favorite movie, book, or song that you know all the words to and can recite by heart. Wouldn’t it be great to know yourself, your dreams, and how you’re going to get there from here that well? And, none of it is written in stone just because you wrote it in your diary. Your diary is just the place to start the process. But, in it, you will also continue the process. And, in it, you will record all the progress you make, as well as the many obstacles you must overcome along the way, always learning from your experiences—the toughest ones being the best teachers. Your diary is, in essense, your secret map that will lead you to your buried treasure. Also, see, “Think and Grow Rich.”
CONCLUSION
So, have I convinced you to start your own diary yet? If nothing else, it’ll bring a smile to your face when you’re finally old enough to laugh at all of today’s troubles. You could even read parts of it to your grandkids to give them a glimpse of what the world was really like “back in the day.” It’s the literary equivalent of a scrapbook, photo album, or video history of the major events of, not only your life, but of, everyone else’s around you, that you write about in your diary.
I kept diaries, in one form or another, since junior high school. They helped me get through some pretty tough times. Whenever things got really rough, I found myself walking into a bookstore looking for a new blank book to buy. Although I eventually threw out every single one of them because I worried too much that someone would read them, I still remember what I wrote ’cause I reviewed them so often. They were like old friends to me, and they served me well through the worst of it.
Now, I keep an online diary. I usually type entries when I want to reflect on my life, need help making important decisions, or want to celebrate important milestones. I doubt I could have gotten to where I am today without having gone through all the crazy entries about my past. Anyway, I hope this article helps all of you who want to be as happy as I am—happy enough to say most of the 25 Statements for Happiness and truly mean it. Be awesome! Be your your own hero!
