Can a journal open new possibilities in your life? Can it let you see into your obsessions and addictions? Can it listen? 

Yes! A journal is a unique way of carrying on a very personal conversation – with yourself. You don’t need to hide anything or worry about how you will be regarded. The repercussions are limited to the actions you will take, no one else. And a journal can reveal the answers that only you know, if you want them. 

Journals and the techniques that make them effective have perennially attracted teenagers, who prefer baby blue and pink lockable leatherettes diaries in which to record their crushes.

Today, in notebooks and blogs, websites, sketchbooks, and the backs of envelopes, individuals write in order to understand and deepen their lives.  They have discovered that their writing has helped them overcome and integrate painful and limiting experiences and given them the courage and resolve to undertake new challenges. They have come face to face with their own need to live more intense and productive lives.   

Journal writing can be a powerful tool for transformation and discovery.  Journal techniques enable the writer to uncover and rediscover goals, to reveal ambitions and fears, and to validate the desire to change and grow. 

There are many ways to write in a personal journal. A daily recording of your day can create a new clarity.  Describing a very intense period in your life can help you penetrate its personal meaning and the reverberations it may have in your life.

A journal can help you tune in to the messages of your body, understand a period of illness, come to grips with a traumatic experience. 

Many people keep a spiritual journal to deepen the meaning of their lives. Others use a journal to help them live out their ambitions, overcome fears or inertia and put new plans into action. A journal can help you clarify relationships, especially a difficult one where it’s not clear how to continue. Dreams often reveal an inner meaning when recorded and read again. 

Remember, there are no rules and no one is watching. But there are some approaches that help the process. Be courageous about recording the truth as you see it, even if others would disagree or be disturbed. This is  your private space. Be specific – remember the physical details of the space where you had – or are having - an experience, the time of day, the light, the ambience and your own deepest feelings. Be free – forget grammar, punctuation and any criticism: just let go and write, if possible without stopping, for as long as you need to. 

Afterwards, take the time to read over what you have written and then jot down any insights or thoughts. And keep your journal entries together. It may interest you later to see how lines of thoughts, metaphors, dreams and reactions reappear or change over time.