Why is it so important to keep a journal?



Because keeping a journal can change your life in ways you never imagined.

Here are just a few of the benefits a personal journal will provide you:

* A journal will remind you of your goals and the actions you are taking towards them every day. You are writing down your goals for this year, right?

* It allows you to factually track your progress as you head closer towards your goals.

* It provides specific information such as dietary changes, calorie reductions, fat reduction, and so on.

* It helps build your self-esteem because you are reaffirming the positive benefits you are achieving as you get closer to your goals.

* It helps to paint the picture every day of who you are becoming.

* When you see positive results as they happen, you will become energized with optimism.

Here are a couple of simple journal tips:

Keep a simple, short log , it's easy, and it actually only takes one minute of your time. Each day, make short entries into your journal, list such things as your attitude, emotions, diet, weight, responses to situations and conditions in your life.

For example, if having a healthy heart is one of your goals, you will want to keep track of your cholesterol levels, your blood pressure, your weight. (Obviously, all of this data would not be recorded daily, but some

entry would be recorded each day)

Here is another example. Suppose you had set a new goal to lose 20 lbs in the following 3 months. Record your weight in your journal each day, you will now be able to see trends in your weight loss that you would not have seen without the journal.

Try this easy little exercise.

Get out a note pad or a sheet of paper and a pencil. Look at your watch. When the second hand hits 12, start timing yourself as you jot down the following information:

Friday - Felt great all day. Weight 135 pounds. Walked briskly for 20 minutes. Had healthy almonds and nuts for snacks.

More then likely, you completed writing down the information in approximately one minute. Yet, in that one minute, you created a snapshot of important data in your life.

You now have historical information you can refer to as time goes by, to help you track your progress as you move towards your life goals.

I know how well this works. For the past eight years, I have kept a simple, yet informative log of every day of

my life.

I can tell you exactly how I felt on any day in the last eight years. I can look back and see how I reacted to various circumstances in my life. I can see exactly what helped me overcome an illness, an injury, or a difficult period in my life.

I cannot tell you how many times my journal has helped me get through tough times by telling me how I got through tough times in the past.

It generally takes me less then two minutes to record the log for any day. It is a habit that has become a part of my life, it is now second nature for me.

If you have a computer, I recommend typing just three to four lines of descriptive text into a notepad or word processing program each day, or just write the information down in a notepad or log book.