Tag: self-knowledge

5 Myths Of Journaling From Experience

I think for a person who is depressed and hopeless, a way to get hope is to self-reflect using journaling.

 Journaling is important.

I think most people are intimidated by the word “journaling”. 

I think there’s no reason to be afraid of this word. 

I will share some of the myths I had about journaling and the reasoning I used to overcame them.

Myth no.1
You have to journal daily

This is absolutely not true. You can journal once a week, once a month or whenever you want.

 The point of journaling is to express your thoughts and read them back to get context. 

It’s best if you journal regularly but it’s not a requirement.

I journal a few times a week and not regularly. 

Myth no. 2
You have to journal for years to see results

This is not true. You can journal one day and still get something valuable out of the process. 

The key is to be yourself and consider your journal as yours and share fully with it. 

I remember watching youtube videos where it’s said that it takes around 8 years to “get results” with journaling.

I am sure it takes less than 8 years to “get results” and I am pretty sure you can get something valuable on the same day of writing.

You see when you write in a journal, you are observing your thought patterns, the stories you tell yourself, you release your stress, you become honest with yourself, you share your true intentions, etc.

This is valuable for your mental health.

Plus, when I write a journal entry, I write my worries and ask what should I do? And I come up with answers on my own.

This acts as a way to make decisions more effectively. 

It’s like facing the evil inside. When you write in a journal, you face the evil inside you, your own limitations, your own face in the mirror, etc.

This is very useful for “getting results”.

Myth no. 3
You don’t know how to journal properly

The truth is that you don’t need to know how to journal. That’s the beauty of journaling.

You don’t need to know the right questions to ask yourself or buy a Stoicism journal with stoic questions with blank spaces for writing your answers.

You need to let yourself write anything you want in the journal. 

It’s your journal and you can write anything.

 The beauty is it can be a physical journal, it can be a digital journal, a colourful one, a scrapebook, a plain white paper or anything you want. 

The beauty is that you can write anything you want, anyhow you want it.

Myth no. 4
You have to read your past journal entries to get results

I think I heard from a video of Tony Robbins that you should be reading your journal entries or if not, you should not be writing a journal at all to get results.

I think it is false from my experience. I think results are not just about changing behaviour but also about feeling the feelings that are not expressed normally. 

And in my opinion, reading your journal in the future won’t help you feel life’s pains or pleasures at the moment. 

It is good if you can read your entries two months later, you might get insights about yourself, but it is not necessarily the only way for change to take place.

After all, feelings are an important part of your mental health and writing at the moment in the journal is a key part of feeling your life’s problems or states of happiness.

Myth no. 5
You don’t need a journal of your choice 

I would say this is partially false. You do need to love the process of journaling.

And one way to love it is to invest in a good journal or a keyboard or a pen or a quiet place to sit in. 

You need to love the process of sitting down and expressing your thoughts on paper to journal consistently.

I remember I was in a forum for personal development, and someone had written that if investing in a good journal of your choice, a nice pen, a nice laptop, or whatever that makes you love journaling, then you need to do it.

I use Rustic Town’s leather journal. And I love it. I feel like a writer.

Conclusion

So in spite of all these myths, one can and should journal. If one of these myths had been stopping you in the past and you haven’t tried journaling before, please consider journaling because it’s really powerful.

Thank you for reading this blog post. I am excited to share more ideas and stories in this personal blog about hope. 

So I will end this blog post with a quick question for you- Do you journal sometimes? What do you like about journaling?

A Special Blog Post for Making You Feel Good

So for the past weeks I have been through a strange mental journey of coming to a temporary conclusion of the belief that-“Life is hard”.

You may say, “Well of course life is hard.”

I am not questioning this strong fact. But let’s ask ourselves a simple question for the sake of curiosity and truth- “Does believing in the fact that life is hard make us do work where we can give a 100% of ourselves?”

Before answering the question, I would like to give you a brief background information.

I am in the process of healing from my mental health problems. I have severe social anxiety and a little bipolar disorder. For instance, I find it hard to go out of my home on a daily basis because I am afraid of interacting with people. And I have problems forcing myself to do anything because most of the time my mood dictates every action I take. It makes me feel crazy to do anything if I must use willpower to force motivation into my soul. Mind over body does not work for me consistently.

However, I can best do the things I have a strong emotionally powerful vision for or things that I am passionate about. The problem is my curiosity questions all the powerful visions and I am not passionate about something in the Steve Jobs style.

“You have to have a lot of passion for what you do… because if you don’t, any rational person would give up.”

Steve Jobs

Now, story time.

So nowadays I am staying at home most of the time partly because of anxiety and partly because I switched to an online Bachelor of Business Administration degree(I know most of my friends have graduated but I don’t compare myself to others).

And sometimes I get two of my cousin brothers (10year old’s) visiting our home during at noon time. They basically watch anime and only ask me if a certain movie is on hotstar or Netflix. I just tell them, and they do everything else. They are experts little 10year old’s. Right??

So, one day they were watching an anime that I watched season one of years ago. The anime’s name is Tokyo Ghoul.

As I watched it with them, I got interested.

In my free time I watched all the seasons of Tokyo Ghoul, and I was particularly inspired by a character in this anime.


His name is Hide (spelled Hye-Day). He is not the hero. He is the hero Kaneki’s best friend. In fact, we don’t see much of him in the anime. But his role in the ending of the anime is significant.

He is the person who is selfless, sacrificing, a true leader.

I don’t want to spoil the anime for you. You can watch Tokyo Ghoul on Netflix.

But I just wonder, what makes a person so determined and selfless. It’s certainly not in believing that life is hard that a person does selfless acts.

One can occasionally do hard things in life, but it takes extraordinary reason to do hard things consistently and becoming successful at it and “Life is hard” is not an extraordinary reason.

So I just started experimenting with different perspectives. First, I used the belief “Life is hard” to motivate myself to study more. I studied consistently for a week for a short amount of time. It was consistent. I chose this belief from observing people in my life. It’s their belief.

But the process of forcing myself was mentally taxing and exhausting. I was not happy.

Secondly, I resumed to my normal way of being and I read fiction novels and listened to my favorite songs.

I realized from all this that an inspiring future expectation creates passion. But it is not easy to have an inspiring future expectation that is also realistic.

So I am going to my career counselor for an appointment to help me pinpoint my post-graduate plans for me.

But to answer the question- “Does believing in the fact that life is hard make us do work where we can give a 100% of ourselves?”

The answer is NO!

I know life is hard. I also know this- life is beautiful. Beauty mesmerizes us and a beautiful future inspires all of us.

And it is not possible to give 100% of yourself or myself to the work unless you or I secretly love that work.

Thank you for reading this blog post. Also, I am not a mental health or career expert. I am Anirban, I am just an average person. This was a blog post about my realizations and story. If you like this post, then share it and comment what you want to comment. See you next time!

Consciousness Work As Your Permanent Solution

In mythology, astrology, and energy healing, the term mental health issues is not used. Maybe it’s because they were unaware of mental health in ancient times. And science was not advanced back then.

But we need to see that social media and the internet was not part of life back then as well, excess sugar consumption in fast foods was not there, and climate change, pollution, industrialization wasn’t present back then.

But the point I am trying to make is consciousness is still consciousness even if in ancient times it was much simpler, and now we are in the darker ages. Consciousness work is still relevant.

My life’s journey is to move from mental health issues to a more conscious life. And I think anything that takes me there is worth writing about.

I have attended a few online meditation workshops, met a few spiritual masters including Sri M and I have a desire to become more conscious.

You see taking medication and working in a 9-to-5 job is not enough. From mental health issues to becoming a value producing citizen of the world is not enough. We need to become conscious of ourselves.

We need to live a conscious life. A life of consciousness is a life of what is true for you and the universe.

Now it is an individual journey to discover what is true for you and the universe. I cannot give it to you nor can a spiritual teacher. It is yours to find out.

What I want to tell you is the answers to your life’s problems is in consciousness work. What does it mean?

It means to seek the truth. It means to change your life to prioritize truth more than money, pleasure, etc. It means to seek God in whatever form that resonates with you. It means to not sacrifice other parts of your life but prioritize consciousness first.

Mental health is an important part and I take medication and go to therapy. But I don’t want to be limited. I want to take responsibility for life and have a vision where consciousness is a big part because consciousness is one of my main values.

Maybe you don’t have mental health issues. Maybe you have money issues, or career issues, or family issues, or self-esteem issues or some other issue. But the solution is inside you only if you look consciously.

Of course medication and therapy is important for me to survive but I am telling you honestly that those are not long term solutions. Only if I look inside and when I do, I will find the permanent solution.

Even mythology, astrology and healing are not the permanent solutions. They are closer to the truth but they are not the absolute truth.

You need to find out what it is that is the absolute truth.

Resources to get started with:

See you next time!