The philosophy of journaling is a philosophy about putting your thoughts out into the world, which will then give your thoughts some form of reality.
But, we’ll get into that later. First, let’s get our bearings straight.
What is Philosophy? A more literal definition is it means the love of wisdom. While this is a nice description it isn’t quite the way it is used today, I prefer the definition that Wikipedia gives which states “is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions.”.
Throughout the rest of this post, we will continue with that definition in mind. Moving forward we will be discussing the logic or use of journaling in a multitude of areas.
Some of these areas that we will be touching on are as follows:
- What is journaling?
- How does one start journaling?
- Are there any possible benefits of journaling?
The introduction is now out of the way, let’s not waste any more time and get into the information.
What is Journaling?
Journaling is the act of putting your thoughts and ideas into the world. This definition is different from the literal dictionary definition of what it means to journal, but I think it better describes how it’s used in daily life. YouTubers for instance seem to act on the definition that I used, if you look up Journaling on YouTube you’ll see many videos about journaling that act on a variation of the definition I used above.
Almost all if not all the videos use journaling in this way, While most of them use a physical paper journal as a tool for journaling. The journal itself isn’t the act of journaling, when someone journals they do a variety of things. It could be the same way that someone uses a diary, almost all forms that someone uses a diary could be considered journaling.
When someone starts a journal they can record their thoughts or ideas, it could even be used as an agenda to help them remember to do something later such as writing down when they scheduled their doctor’s appointment.
Journaling is also often a strategy that writers, fiction and non-fiction, will use to help them recall ideas later for what they’re writing. Such as a plot point for one of their characters or if they’re doing research they might take notes of what it is they’re reading to later put that into what they’re writing. As you can tell that yes, note-taking could also be considered a form of journaling.
Can journaling only be done by writing with a pencil or pen on a piece of paper? Nope, there’s a lot of variety in the ways someone could choose to journal. Here’s a couple of good examples:
- Using your phone’s note-taking app
- Writing on a Google Docs sheet (or any writing software for that matter)
- Using an audio recording device
- Taking a video with your camera
Something to note with the examples above is to notice that not all of them even involved writing in the traditional sense. Journaling doesn’t necessitate handwriting at all, this article could even be considered a form of journaling as it’s putting my thoughts into reality in the form of the words that you’re reading that I have typed from my keyboard.
A sketchbook that is full of an aspiring artist’s drawing can also be considered journaling. All those beautiful or ugly pieces of art are the forms in which his thoughts and ideas entered into the world. If the artist chose to draw what scares him most and he takes his time to draw a clown onto a piece of paper in his sketchbook then that is his idea of what is scary being represented by the piece of art which is in turn a sketch of a clown.
This concept can be further extended to videos and audio files. Technically if someone wanted to journal by making different songs they recorded or made that would also be acceptable under the definition of journaling, which someone who is musically gifted out there really should do as that would be a very artistic and hipster way to make a album.
“wow,” you maybe say to yourself, “almost anything could be considered journaling”. While this might be true, surely there is a way to distinguish between something that is and something that isn’t considered journaling?
In our next section, we will explore this question further.
What is Journaling Not?
Journaling isn’t anything and everything that deals with reality.
With so many ways that someone can start journaling, some might start thinking that I’ve defined journaling in such a vague way that journaling could be anything. To be able to respond to this criticism I’ll first ask myself and answer the following question, what isn’t journaling?
I’ll begin answering this question by first dissecting the example that I used with an individual using a simple camera (such as the camera that the average smartphone has). And what the difference is between someone participating in the art of photography and the act (or art) of journaling.
Let’s say that you’re a photographer and you have a photography business in which people can buy your photos online on some form of website like Zenfolio. Someday you go hiking in the woods with your camera and snap a few pictures of the trees or perhaps a beautiful deer. When looking through the pictures you start thinking to yourself as to which one is of good enough quality to market and make some money off of.
Now in an alternate scenario, Let’s say that once again you’re a photographer who is also going hiking. You again see a deer and take a quick picture before it runs off. In this example, you also took up the hobby of scrapbooking but with a twist, every week you add a photo that’s meant to summarize that week for you and you label each photo with the date of when it was taken.
Both of the examples mentioned above revolve around a camera and taking a picture of the same exact thing. To make the point I want to make even more precise we’ll say that the photos are identical to one another ( same deer, lighting, background, etc.). The first example, however, is not about the photographer using the photos to display or communicate thoughts or ideas, but rather the photos are just objects that the photographer is using to make money.
That small detail completely changed the meaning behind what the person could be doing. Even if they were using the same exact photo, one was using it to make money and the other was using it to communicate something like how peaceful their week was. Using the photo as purely a way to make money and not have any other idea behind it will disqualify it from being considered journaling
So to summarize, journaling isn’t just anything. But anything could be called a way of putting your thoughts and ideas into reality. Anything that doesn’t satisfy this condition couldn’t be called journaling. Just because something uses a similar object like a photograph or a notebook doesn’t mean that it is therefore the same as the act of journaling.
Now that we know what is and isn’t journaling maybe you’re asking yourself, why would anyone want to start journaling? We will now move on to the next part of this article
Why Should You Start Journaling?
It would be best if you started journaling due to its numerous benefits for your mental health, to learning how the language you speak works which will in consequence aid your ability to speak and communicate with others.
If you choose to keep a more traditional journal -using an actual notebook to physically write your thoughts and ideas into- then you’ll get the majority of the benefits from journaling that many people applauded. Some of these include mindfulness, anxiety relief, stress relief, and organizing your thoughts.
It can even improve your hand-eye coordination, this is because it’s one of the main skills that require using hand-eye coordination. The more often you write and possibly draw the better your hand-eye coordination will be because you’re working out that part of your brain that is used for your hand-eye coordination.
Something that I derive from writing in a journal is how much it has helped improve my focus. When I write I can’t possibly do anything else like watch a movie or have a conversation over the phone with a friend, at the most I could only listen to music. Even then I wouldn’t call that listening as I would say I have music blaring either from my phone or computer speakers just to help cancel out all the other noises such as hearing the cars drive by the window that is next to me when I write.
When I’m writing it forces me to focus on what it is that I am doing, there’s no multitasking with other things that are outside of writing in my journal. It also helped teach me to think through things and how things work. For example, If I write in my journal about something I saw on TV that I disagree with, perhaps from a movie or something that I saw on the news.
I then have to take the time to write out what specifically it was that I disagreed with. This may seem obvious to some but many people don’t realize what it is that they disagree with.
Like when a friend says something negative about what you’re wearing and for some reason it makes you mad. Was it your friend’s tone when they said it? Was it because they said it in front of someone that you respect and want them to have a good opinion of you?
If you were to write about it in your journal you could use that as a time to dissect why exactly that bothered you and once you come to that realization you can go up to your friend and explain why it bothered you when they made that comment and you’ll do so in a very well thought-out and calm manner.
Another way that the journal could also help you in the above-mentioned example is that writing about things that made you feel emotional can help take some of the emotion out of it. I have two theories about why that is.
One, instead of being stuck in your emotional state, you are using those emotions to do something that isn’t necessarily emotional like writing which will help separate yourself from your emotions. It’s not that emotions are something you need to be completely separated from but they can get in the way of some things in your daily life.
Two, it brings order to our emotions. Often our emotions come from us not understanding something which will make something appear to us as chaotic and irrational. Thankfully there’s an easy remedy to this, journaling. When you write down your thoughts it will help you come to understand something or at the very least help you to understand that you don’t understand something which will then help you understand it, make sense?
Hopefully, if I did my job right I have at least got you considering keeping a journal. I can say with full confidence that if you are considering it then that likely means that you should start writing in a journal. All you need to do is grab some paper and something to write with and you can begin keeping a journal.
It’s now time for us to wrap up this article and go to the conclusion.
Conclusion
The Philosophy of journaling is a wide-encompassing philosophy with much depth to it. This is because of the definition of journaling that we used which is the act of putting your thoughts and ideas into the world. Acting on this definition we were able to see how many different things could be considered journaling. A few examples that we gave were a scrapbook and an artist’s sketchbook, but a standard notebook and pencil will still work perfectly fine for your journey.
We then answered the question of why you should start journaling. Answering this led us to the conclusion that it’s because you’re going to receive a lot of benefits, while not all of the benefits are material they can benefit you mentally and spiritually.
I hope this article was able to explain a different aspect of journaling that you don’t usually get to see on social media. Possibly I even inspired you a bit to start journaling yourself, like most philosophies you can come to understand it by living it.
Thank you for taking the time to read this!