One day when I was a little girl, my mom and I left the house to run errands. As we were leaving, my mom said, “Oh, I forgot my list for the grocery store.” After thinking for a second, she said something like, “It’s okay. I’ll remember everything… I hope.”
Well, she didn’t remember everything — who can do that? I remember when we got home, she told me she really should have taken the extra minute to go back into the house to get her list.
What a weird life lesson for me to remember, but remember it I did. I have always written lists for everything.
And whenever I have done the same thing as my mom that day — relied on the hope of my memory — I’ve forgotten something.
{Write back and forth with you child. Get my back-and-forth journal today!}
Writing things down — journaling, specifically — has actually been shown to improve health!
For reals. It’s been shown to:
- Strengthen immune cells
- Decrease the symptoms of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis
- Minimize the effects of stress on your life
- Improve memory
- And more
If it can bring such a variety of health benefits to us, we really should try and harness its power.
Writing Things Down Brings Order to Your Thoughts
This is cool:
Writing accesses the analytical and rational part of your brain — the left brain. Now, the cool part is that because your left brain is occupied with analytical business, your right brain gets to be free to feel and create.
So when you write something down, you give your brain the gift of showing off more of what it can do.
Left brain gets to analyze. Right brain gets to feel.
Bada bing, bada boom — you now get to understand yourself, your situation, and other aspects of your life on a whole new level.
This is fantastic, because we’re slammed with obligations, to-dos, hopes, dreams, disappointments, mundane repeats, and so much more. From work to kids to community and back again, we have so many people requesting things from us. Add in the overload of media all around us, and our brains have a pretty tough time being quiet.
Unless you schedule it in, there often isn’t a lot of down time when your brain is free to just think. Writing about your emotions gives you that time to process them; to look at them and see them for what they are.
Sometimes, the act of writing even allows you to analyze what you’re feeling and make discoveries and improvements. Sometimes, you can’t analyze in the moment, but you can go back and re-read and make those discoveries.
Writing what’s on your mind helps you take the chaos and confusion out of your brain, even for a moment. The act of writing allows you to bring order to your thoughts.
Writing Your Goals Helps You Achieve Them
Writing your goals kind of forces you to see what you’re hoping for. It makes you look at what you want and evaluate it, tweak it, and fix it in a way that is going to make sense for you.
This is good because a lot of the time, we run away from what we really want. We think a goal — say, saving for retirement — is too lofty; too hard to achieve.
But when we write it down, we confront the goal. We manipulate it, and we see that it is, in fact, achievable. And then we motivate ourselves to get out there and get it done.
Like a boss.
Writing Helps Your Memory
We can’t remember everything we ever thought. But when we go back and read what we thought at a certain time, we can remember.
We remember the hope we once felt, and conjure it up again. We remember the despair we once experienced, and can empathize with ourselves and see how far we’ve come. We remember what we wanted. We remember what we planned to do.
I often go back and re-read old journal entries and notes I took during business webinars or church meetings. They help me realign my priorities because I get to remember something I wanted to do. I get to remember something I felt. Or I get reacquainted with something that was important to me but I may have forgotten or not prioritized since then.
When I go back and read my children’s entries in our back and forth journal, I’m awed and inspired by how far they’ve come. Or maybe I get to remember that there was a strategy I forgot to try. I get the chance to keep doing what I intended to do.
Writing Reminds Yourself What to Focus on
When I have 128,416 things to do, I feel like I have no idea where to even begin. For example, we threw a New Year’s Eve party, and hours before it started, I knew I needed to get the house ready. But as all the to-dos swirled in my head, all I could do was stand in my kitchen and stare in all directions, doing nothing productive.
So I pulled out a scrap piece of paper and wrote down everything that was spinning inside my head.
- Do the dishes
- Put out the plates and napkins
- Sweep the floor
- And on
Within minutes, I was a flurry of action, and I didn’t stop until everything was done. Why? I now knew what to focus on, because I got the chaos OUT OF MY HEAD and stopped thinking every little thing was top priority.
This applies to more than New Year’s Eve parties, of course. When you have two kids who can’t get along with each other, your head is swimming with frustration, possible solutions, and plenty of questions. Because of the chaos inside, it’s easy to stand in the middle of your kitchen and helplessly do nothing while your kids fight.
But once you take the time to write about the problem — just get it all out — you better understand your situation, your ability to improve it, and the best steps to take. You stop giving every little worry in your head top priority, and you can focus on what’s important.
There’s No Wrong Way to Do It
Don’t be a perfectionist. Just write.
- Don’t worry about grammar and spelling. It isn’t important.
- Don’t try to be flowery if you’re not.
- Don’t try to be witty if that doesn’t come naturally.
- Just write.
- Be honest with yourself.
- Don’t write for someone else. Write for YOU.
- Don’t censor yourself.
- Just write.
Claim the power of writing for you and your child. My back-and-forth journal allows your child to share things with you they may not open up about otherwise. It allows you to take a minute and process how you really feel about important things in your life and in your relationship with your child.
And it gives you a record of what you and your child are feeling, so you can go back and use information to help each other.
The cover is a coloring page that you and your child can work on together, and then use the prompts on the following pages to learn about and understand each other on deeper levels. Learn about it, and grab one for yourself today.
