The Reflective Teacher

JOURNALING: THE REFLECTIVE TEACHER
Journaling is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to accelerate your personal development. By getting your thoughts out of your head and putting them down in writing, you gain insights you’d otherwise never see.
Here are 3 other powerful benefits of journaling:
• Solve tricky problems. Some problems are very difficult to solve when you’re stuck in an associative, first-person viewpoint. Only when you record the situation and then re-examine it from a third-person perspective does the solution become clear. Sometimes the solution is so obvious that you’re shocked you didn’t see it sooner.
• Gain clarity. A great time to turn to your journal is when you’re just not clear about what to do. Should you quit your job to start your own business? Should you marry your current romantic partner? Are you on the right track financially? It’s amazing how much clearer things become when you explore them in writing.
• Verify your progress. It’s wonderful to go back and re-read journal entries from years ago and see how much real progress has been made. When you’re frustrated that your life doesn’t seem to be working out as you’d like, go back and read something you wrote five years ago — it will totally change your perspective. This helps you in the present moment too by reminding you that you are in fact growing and changing, even when it feels like you’re standing still.
Journaling, as a stress management and self-exploration tool, is not the same as simply recording the happenings in one’s life, like keeping a log. To be most helpful, one must write in detail about feelings and cognitions related to stressful events, as one would discuss topics in therapy.