Hello and welcome to the ninth day of the June 30 days writing challenge. If you want to know all the details about this specific challenge, have a look at the introductory post. In short, I will be posting every day a short tip, or technique, or opinion, something that you can call a "life hack". Feel free to join the challenge and post your own life hacks. I will do my best to upvote each day at full strength (about $3 at the current STEEM price) 3 posts tagged #challenge30days (leaving a link to your posts in the comments will also help).

Keep A Journal

Mind you, a journal is very different from an activity log (as we talked about in the previous post). A journal doesn't have this task oriented approach, nor the pressure of keeping it daily. In a journal you can write whenever you want (it would be nice if you could write daily, for starters, but there's no pressure) and you can write however you want.

I'm not talking about that kind of hyper inflated ego style journal, the one that starts with "dear diary" and talks about unicorns and whatnot. I'm talking about conscious unloading the extra burden we have on your mind. I'm talking about therapeutical journaling.

More often than no, this type of journaling is triggered by an emotional event. And reacting like this in front of an emotional event - meaning unloading all the shit in private - is way more healthier than exploding in plain interaction and creating even more havoc. Unfortunately, I'm talking from experience here. I know both ways: shouting your way out of a conflict - which is always, always a bad idea - and just keeping your mouth shout and describing the events, hours later, in a private journal. The second one is incredibly healthy.

There's this hardwiring in our minds which makes us believe that we really need to act now, otherwise we'll miss out. We don't really need that. And, above all, we don't really need to win every battle, with everybody. Sometimes, giving the victory to the other guy and moving on may be a more powerful outcome, in the long run.

I started to keep a journal in my early thirties, as a way to unload my work related stress, which started to creep in my personal life. And I kept it for years, as a therapeutical exercise, until I found other, more effective ways of unloading that stress (but more on that on future posts).

Im very grateful for this activity as it helped me a lot in regaining my balance and keeping a clear perspective on life. It works in many ways, but for this post I'll only sketch three benefits.

First of all, there is this feeling of breathing out when you are able to express you feelings uncensored, in your own words. You just let your mind lead and write down whatever it wants you to write. And, word by word, the mud that you didn't even know you carried in your thoughts is starting to move, clearing your sight.

Second, there's the accountability part. If you write something, it's yours already. And it will be there for many months or years. I sometimes read whatever I wrote 5 or 10 years ago and I have these deep feelings of compassion for the person I was at that time. It really helps me lower my judgmental filter and accept that all human beings are suffering, each in their own way.

And third, by writing something, you're really letting it go. You're consuming it, in a way. You make it part of the past. It's in the journal now, it's not within you mind anymore.

I could go on for hours and thousands of words preaching the benefits of journaling, but I will stop now, because we still a have a lot to go from this 30 days challenge.

I'm really curious to read about your life hack today. Leave a comment with a link to your post, if possible.

Previous Posts In The Challenge

• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Eight: Keep An Activity Log
• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Seven: Implement A New Habit With A 30 Days Challenge
• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Six: Put It In Front Of The Door
• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Five: The Pomodoro Technique
• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Four: Keep A Clear Mind By Unloading Ideas Immediately
• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Three: Intermittent Fasting
• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Two: The "2 Minutes" Time Management Rule
• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day One: Avoid Fighting With A Simple Visualization Technique
• Announcing The June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

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