Keeping a journal implies hope.

People don’t keep journals for themselves. They keep them for other people, like a secret they don’t want to tell but they want everyone to know.

Why does all of this matter, though? It matters because without being conscious and intentional, you can easily “forget” or lose sight of your former GAINS. You can forget what you previously struggled with and overcame. You can take for granted how far you’ve come, ignore your progress, and miss out on the confidence of remembering where you were. This is why it is incredibly powerful and important to keep journals, records, or “annual reviews.” Like Jill, you can look back and be reminded of the easily forgotten past. You can be reminded that the “normal life” you’re now living may be the dreams — or even beyond the dreams — of your former self.

If your journal consists of the best moments of your life and reading, then rereading it will be like walking a high mountain trail that goes from peak to peak without the intervening descent into the trough of routine. Just reading such a journal of high points will tighten your strings and raise your pitch.

To have some account of my thoughts, manners, acquaintance and actions, when the hour arrives in which time is more nimble than memory, is the reason which induces me to keep a journal: a journal in which I must confess my every thought, must open my whole heart!

On Keeping a Journal.

Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one’s private, secret thoughts — like a confidante who is deaf, dumb, and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself.

The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather — in many cases — offers an alternative to it.

A journal, a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy.

A journal is a record of experiences and growth, not a preserve of things well done and said.

As my common sense pressed her fingertips together, 'Keep a journal and put all of your feelings inside it,' and I made an effort, I really did, but my feelings are so many that even a hundred journals later I am not empty-

This is what the best journals look like. They aren’t for the reader. They are for the writer. To slow the mind down. To wage peace with oneself.

Happy people remember more good events than actually happened, and they forget more of the bad events. Depressed people, in contrast, are accurate about both.

My journaling method ranges from being a very specific, structured process — listing what I’m grateful for, acknowledging my accomplishments, clarifying what areas I want to improve on, and planning which specific actions I’m committed to taking to improve — to being pretty traditional, just a dated entry with a synopsis of my day. I find both to be very valuable, and it’s nice to mix it up.

your existence a little more practical, lighthearted, fun, and useful? Have you ever observed or written down your thoughts?

I took notes on the people around me, in my town, in my family, in my memory. I took notes on my own state of mind, my grandiosity, the low self-esteem. I wrote down the funny stuff I overheard. I learned to be like a ship's rat, veined ears trembling, and I learned to scribble it all down.