10 Reasons to Keep a Diary
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Why diary? The question should be “why not diary?” since all the successful people in history kept one. Or, they wrote long, factually detailed letters to their friends and family that were all saved, and those letters were essentially diaries shared with only a few, trusted individuals.
They kept diaries because the very act of writing down your thoughts, feelings, hopes, and fears helps you make sense of them and helps you remember them. And, if you don’t remember them, you can always go back and read about them to refresh your memory. In short, diaries make sense of you and the world around you. At least, it’s a very good place to start.
One reader, after reading “25 Statements for Happiness,” asked me how he could get there from here. I sent him a free copy of my eBook Cuckoo in Your Nest!, recommended he read “Think and Grow Rich” and “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” that he get a copy of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
10 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP A DIARY
1. Really be yourself. A diary is a safe place where you can write whatever you want—typos, misspellings, bad grammar, and all! No one will judge you. There will be no test. Everything you record is for your eyes only. You don’t even have to reread your entries if you don’t want to. The point is to have a place to vent, rant, celebrate, question, act silly, be mean, be proud, be jealous, be vain, be vindictive, be holier-than-thou, be unpolitically correct, or do absolutely anything you want, without constantly worrying about what people will think or do if they only knew. Until you have at least one place in your life to be real and one person to be real with, you will never know who you really are. Start with a diary, and be yourself.
2. Really know yourself. When you are finally free to do, say, think, and feel whatever you want to at least one person (even if it’s only to yourself in your diary), then you can finally start to really know yourself. Ask yourself the following questions, and answer them as honestly and as fully as possible:
a. What is your earliest memory of happiness?
b. What did you love doing most as a child?
c. Why did you enjoy that activity so much?
d. Why did you stop doing it?
e. Will it make you happy to do it now? If not, why not?
Try to do this for every year of your life that you can remember. In this way, you will slowly get to know yourself better and better. Don’t judge. Just record your memories and your current feelings and thoughts about them. Let them come, and let them go. Write down as much as you can about everything you remember, think, and feel. Enjoy the process of getting to know yourself, perhaps for the first time in your life. Don’t be frightened by anything you learn. Accept all of your many complex sides as worthy and valuable contributions to the totality of you.
3. Get the facts straight. Most of us can’t remember what we had for lunch yesterday, let alone the important events of our past. Why is it important to try to accurately remember our past? Because most experts agree that understanding it—the good, the bad, and the ugly—helps us succeed now and in the future.
4. Stop judging yourself. If we are unhappy with our lives, chances are we blame ourselves for at least some of our unhappiness. We look back at certain decisions we made with regret and, sometimes, even, shame. This is not good. If we blame ourselves, we carry this negativity with us, always, in our subconscious; and, it affects everything we do. In a sense, we are sabotaging our own happiness by constantly, albeit, subconsciously, telling ourselves we don’t deserve to be happy.
Ironically, we have to go into the eye of the storm to get to the safest place to avoid the devastating influence of it. What I mean by that is we have to look closely and consciously at our past to change any deep-rooted negative views about it so that we will be less affected by them now and in the future. Ask yourself the following questions, and answer them as honestly as possible:
a. Why do you think, feel, or believe that what you did was wrong or bad?
b. Would you judge someone else as harshly for the same thing under similar circumstances (same age, limited resources, etc.)? If not, why not?
c. Do you judge yourself more harshly and unfairly than anyone else? If so, why?
d. Do you want to keep these negative beliefs or work on getting rid of them?
e Why do some memories make you sad, mad, nervous, anxious, or worried?
As you work on answering these questions, ask yourself how you were feeling, way back when. Then, ask yourself how remembering them makes you feel now. If some of your childhood memories cause strong, present-day, negative emotions, you will need to teach yourself new, positive responses to replace those old, “negative” ones. Here is one way to do it: You know how scared we all were of ghost stories when we were kids? When we grew older, those stories lost their scary effect because we observed the world around us and used the clues we gathered about the real world to get past those unfounded fears. We either came to believe that there are no such things as ghosts, or, even if there are ghosts, we came to trust that we are strong, smart, and reasonable enough to do everything in our power to protect ourselves from any harm that might come from them. Ghost stories lost their power over us as we grew older because we used our powers of rational analysis to convince ourselves that those fears were not founded in reality.
Now, how many of your childhood negative memories (however terrible they were) should still be striking fear or dread into your heart today? As a child, if you were beaten viciously and repeatedly by a parent (like I was), it’s normal to be fearful, suspicious, and ambivalent toward authority figures and persons who say they love you and want to protect you but also hurt you a lot. Those are crazy-making, confusing messages about love, power, and close relationships that could cripple you the rest of your life. Or … you can acknowledge what a terrible childhood you had but still resolve to not let it burden the rest of your life starting right now. It takes more work up front, but you can assess every situation that reminds you of fearful childhood experience and ask yourself whether that level of fear makes sense now, as a strong, smart, and reasonable person who can do everything in your power to protect yourself from any real harm. In this way, eventually your childhood will stay where it belongs, in your past, and leave you free to face the challenges of the future without all that emotional baggage.
5. Stop judging others. It’s hard not to judge people. First, we judge ourselves for our past mistakes. Then, when we try not to judge ourselves, we find ourselves judging our parents, siblings, teachers, friends, bosses, and coworkers for everything that went wrong with our lives. It’s convenient. But, it’s no good. It may feel good to blame them. But—like any quick-fix solution—when the high is gone, the problem still remains. We are stuck in a life we are not happy with. So, enough with the blaming and judging! Here’s what to do instead: Whenever you find yourself blaming or judging someone, ask yourself why you are doing it. Write about it in your diary. What do you get out of it? Why does that particular behavior bother you so much? Does it remind you of something in your past? If so, is it fair to put all that on this new person? Learn to recognize when you’re treating new people like old people. Give new people their own clean personality slate to write on and pay attention to what they write there. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose from this more sensible approach to new relationships.
Often we react strongly to others when we see them doing something that we don’t allow ourselves to do. For example, my parents suddenly needed me to be dead serious when we immigrated to the U.S. so that I could help them with not only the English language, but with how to do everything in this new country. Although I was only five years old, I quickly began training myself never to be silly. That had the surprising effect (which I didn’t notice at the time) of making me hate any exhibition of silliness around me. I just couldn’t tolerate it.
Years later, my friends couldn’t understand why I never just cut loose to have a good time. Frankly, I couldn’t understand it, either. Even when my parents weren’t around, I couldn’t act silly. And, I secretly hated everyone whenever they acted silly. I kept those feelings secret because I was ashamed of having such seemingly irrational negative feelings and frustrated not knowing why. This is just one example of how diarying and examining my childhood helped me. Now, I let myself be silly whenever I feel like it, and I love it! So, of course, I am delighted whenever I see others being silly, too. This is how I finally learned to live and let live.
6. Improve your writing. Ever heard the expression, “Know what I mean?” or “Know what I’m saying?” These are usually verbal tics that people—who don’t really know what they’re saying or what they mean—use to somehow put the blame on you, the person they are talking to, for failing to understand them. Or, you probably heard this one: “I know it, but I can’t explain it.” The truth is, if you can’t explain it, then you really don’t know it. Being able to explain it clearly and concisely in writing is the best way to know what you really mean and to explain it to others.
No matter what you want out of life, improving your writing skills will only help you. I know I said you can break all the spelling and grammar rules in your diary. But, if you want to improve your writing skills, there is no better place to do it because you can make a lot of mistakes and experiment with a lot of styles in your diary. When I began college, my English composition skills were beyond awful. I took Freshman Composition and started getting “C’s” or worse on all my assignments—and my professor was being generous! Luckily, he was a growth mindest type who was more interested in helping us students learn how to write than in labeling us good writers or bad writers. He let us resubmit almost all of our assignments for potential new grades. If we showed improvement, he gave us up to one grade higher on each resubmission. I think I ended up with a “B” in that course, and I was more proud of that than all the “A’s” I ever got in my life put together!
At the end of that course, because he showed how much he cared about us students, I gathered up the courage to ask him for advice on how to improve my writing in the future. I told him I wanted, more than anything, to be able to write well. He gave me the best advice ever. He told me to read simple, well written novels, such as John Steinbeck’s or Ernest Hemingway’s, keep a notebook for writing down every sentence I loved in those novels, study them, and copy them until I eventually develop my own style. I did exactly as he suggested. And, 10 long years later, I realized I could clearly express myself through writing.
Now, more than 20 years since I was blessed with that most excellent advice, writing still doesn’t come easily or naturally. I continue to work on my skills every day. But, thank goodness, I no longer have that gut-wrenching feeling I used to get every time I really wanted to explain something important but just couldn’t find the right words. After a desperate stab or two at it, I used to stare at my poor listeners with a pained look and say, “You know what I mean?”
Best of all, the advice that Freshman English Composition professor gave me, I found, applies to all areas of life—not just English composition. Whenever I wanted to improve any skills, I used the same method of finding simple, excellent examples of whatever it was I wanted to learn, copying it, and studying it until I developed my own skills and style. It works every time! And, why wouldn’t it?
7. Improve your thinking. Until a thought is expressed in words (at least in your head), it almost doesn’t exist. Certainly not in any form you can use. It may be called, at best, a vague feeling. When you are seeking happiness, or any important goal in life, you need concrete thoughts, ideas, and plans to get you there from here. And, for that, you need expression of those thoughts, ideas, and plans in the form of words. And, to remember those words, you need to write them down in a convenient place. What better place for such important words than in your diary? No wonder everyone who wanted to achieve great things in life kept one!
The list of celebrities whom we know kept diaries is endless: Kurt Kobain, Courtney Love, Britney Spears, Anna Nicole Smith, Madonna, Jennifer Aniston, Kylie Minogue, Moby, Brian Eno, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Andy Warhol, Lynn Redgrave, Michael Palin, Alec Guiness, Prince Charles, Anne Frank, Lewis Carroll, Beatrice Potter, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Franz Kafka, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Camus, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Jack London, Tennessee Williams, John Steinbeck, Anais Nin, Eugene Delacroix, Leonardo da Vinci, Ludwig van Beethoven, Vaclav Nijinsky, Samuel Pepys, Queen Victoria, Ernesto Che Guevara, Tsarina Alexandra of Russia, Lewis and Clark, Madame Curie, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Goebbels, and Theodore Kazcynski (the Unabomber)—just to name a few. Who knows how many kept diaries without letting us know it?
How do diaries improve your thinking? They help you get organized. You can jot down everything you want to remember. Notes to yourself about everything from chores you need to get done to big dreams you set out to accomplish by a target date. Your diary is your confidante, your therapist, and your best friend. It gently reminds you of the goals you have set for yourself. It lets you make as many mistakes as necessary to get there from here. And, it is always ready to listen to you when you have a bad day. As you continue to write in your diary, you will see patterns emerge in your thoughts and feelings. Notice them, analyze them, and write about them, as well. If you want examples of what other people put in their diaries, some real and some fictitious ones can be found in these books: The Diary of Anne Frank
8. Improve your communication. You will find that when you stop judging yourself and others, you become more approachable and generally more pleasant to be around, which is exactly what you want. For a discussion about the importance of these social skills, as well as detailed instructions on how to develop them, see “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Also, when you improve your writing and thinking skills, those skills naturally translate into better overall communication.
9. Improve your memory. This point is mentioned above, but it’s worth repeating for its own sake. People who can remember names, dates, places, numbers, and other details—even useless trivia—are considered more intelligent, competent, thoughtful, considerate, and confident than people who can’t. Whether this is fair or true is beside the point. If you could choose between remembering important facts about your life and the world around you or not remembering them, which would you choose? My point is that you have the choice. By recording the facts you want to remember in your diary and reviewing them regularly, you will remember them quite easily after a while. Experts have shown that memory can be increased and strengthened like a muscle, through regular and repeated use.
10. Confidence in your past, present, and future. When you remember all the past events that you find significant enough to record in your diary, you naturally feel more confident about where you’ve been, where you are, and where you are going. Your life becomes like your own favorite movie, book, or song that you know all the words to and can recite by heart. Wouldn’t it be great to know yourself, your dreams, and how you’re going to get there from here that well? And, none of it is written in stone just because you wrote it in your diary. Your diary is just the place to start the process. But, in it, you will also continue the process. And, in it, you will record all the progress you make, as well as the many obstacles you must overcome along the way, always learning from your experiences—the toughest ones being the best teachers. Your diary is, in essence, your secret map that will lead you to your buried treasure. Also, see, “Think and Grow Rich.”
CONCLUSION
So, have I convinced you to start your own diary yet? If nothing else, it’ll bring a smile to your face when you’re finally old enough to laugh at all of today’s troubles. You could even read parts of it to your grandkids to give them a glimpse of what the world was really like “back in the day.” It’s the literary equivalent of a scrapbook, photo album, or video history of the major events of, not only your life, but of, everyone else’s around you, that you write about in your diary.
I kept diaries, in one form or another, since junior high school. They helped me get through some pretty tough times. Whenever things got really rough, I found myself walking into a bookstore looking for a new blank book to buy. Although I eventually threw out every single one of them because I worried too much that someone would read them, I still remember what I wrote ’cause I reviewed them so often. They were like old friends to me, and they served me well through the worst of it.
Now, I keep an online diary. I usually type entries when I want to reflect on my life, need help making important decisions, or want to celebrate important milestones. I doubt I could have gotten to where I am today without having gone through all the crazy entries about my past. Anyway, I hope this article helps all of you who want to be as happy as I am—happy enough to say most of the 25 Statements for Happiness and truly mean it. Be awesome! Be your your own hero!
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June 17th, 2008 at 4:43 am
Dear Shanel,
First i want to thank you so very much for the good work you are doing, i have put yoor in my favoraties, yoor articles were very helpful to me , am 40 an i have achieved nothing, but as i read your articles i felt that i can start all over again. i felt like a failure but now i can make it becos of what ur doing thanks
God bless you as you fullfill ur pontential
Naumi
June 17th, 2008 at 6:27 am
Dear Naumi,
Thank you so much for your comment! It really touched me. 40 is so young! I am 42 and I feel like a Spring chicken myself! Don’t let anyone tell you different. I plan to live to 120, so I’m only just over a 1/3 done with my life, as yet. I accomplished more things that made me happy in the past 2 1/2 years than I had in the previous 4 decades! And, the best is definitely yet to come.
You say you have achieved nothing in your life, but I can see that you have achieved something very important that most people never achieve in their entire lives: self-awareness. But, that’s not the only amazingly wonderful thing you’ve achieved. From your very brief comment, I can see that you’re also gracious, generous, compassionate, and a deep thinker. That’s 5 huge accomplishments! And, I’m sure there’s a whole lot more that your comment doesn’t reveal.
If you read my summary of “Think and Grow Rich,” you’ll see that most wildly successful people in history didn’t really start till after they turned 40. That makes total sense to me because it’s not until our 40s that we even start to know what it is we really want out of life! And, none of us can achieve anything until we really, really want it. (Please read my summary of “Think and Grow Rich,” if you haven’t already done so. This book is not just about money. “Riches” is anything you want from life, whether it’s love, charity, or wisdom. For example, the author Napoleon Hill’s own youngest son was born without any ears, and the doctors said he would never be able to hear. But, Hill used Andrew Carnegie’s 13 Steps to Riches to not only help his son eventually hear as well as anyone but to help that son believe in himself so much that he ultimately became more of a success than the son who was born with both ears!) So, dare to believe! Do the exercises suggested in the book. Let the awesome power of your own mind (which is stronger than our bodies’ will to resist it) guide you to whatever it is you desire most. It’s never too late. The moment you want it is the perfect time. Anytime sooner is too soon. Because nothing can get done without that all important burning desire!
Here is a very short list of folks who struggled through their lives till they succeeded like gangbusters a little later in life:
1. Ray Kroc was 52 years old and a milkshake machine salesman when he saw the McDonald brothers operating their restaurant like a well-oiled machine. That gave him the inspiration to go into business with them to franchise the restaurant. Kroc eventually bought the brothers out and went on to develop the biggest and most successful restaurant/real estate business in the world!
2. Harlan Sanders could not retire when he turned 65 because his $105 monthly social security checks were simply not enough to support his family. So, instead he used his favorite recipe and his first $105 social security check to start Kentucky Fried Chicken! Later, the governor of Kentucky gave him the title of “Kentucky Colonel,” which he shortened to “Colonel Sanders.”
3. This last example, although she was only 30 when she finished her first Harry Potter book, is still worth mentioning because of her remarkable rags to riches story. J.K. Rowling was a single parent of an infant, unemployed, living on welfare, depressed, and contemplating suicide, while she continued to struggle with that book. The manuscript was submitted to 12 publishers and rejected by all 12. Finally, when one small publisher did agree to publish the book, he still advised her to get a day job because she had little chance of making money in children’s books. Now, she is the world’s first self-made billionaire (yes, billionaire — not millionaire) writer! And, one of only two self-made billionaire women (the other is Oprah Winfrey)! Both Rowling and Winfrey know all about poverty, hardship, and rejection because they lived through it. They never gave up. They had a big dream that they had to see through to the end. Find your big dream and pursue it as if your life depended on it!
You are not starting over. You are just starting! And, it will be a beautiful journey full of difficult challenges, exciting adventures, and many, many learning experiences. Make a lot of mistakes! Mistakes are the stepping stones to our wildly successful futures. But, don’t make the same mistakes too often. Einstein said, “Only a crazy person does the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.” Examine your mistakes to cherry-pick all the good stuff from them, then look ahead, and keep moving! As I said, I can see from your comment that you are naturally contemplative. This will serve you well. Trust your instincts.
Best of luck to you! I’m very excited for you!
Warmest wishes,
Shanel
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Although I’ve been sporadic with keeping a diary, I am very thankful that others kept diaries and shared them with us.
When I read stories about the hardships endured by J.K. Rowlings, Oprah and many others, I almost feel embarrassed to not be a billionaire since I didn’t have to overcome some of the same horrors. Their stories inspire me to use the skills I have and share my insights to help myself and others succeed.
Your book recommendations are all books that have yellowed from age and use in my library, except yours which is an e-copy.
Thanks for the tremendous work you are doing to inspire others.
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Hi Flora! It’s always such a pleasure to hear from you! Thank you for your comment! Doing the most with what we have right now is the best that we can do — as I’m sure you know because you have done amazing things with your life already! Such as getting your Ph.D., starting and running a successful school, then — as if that weren’t enough — starting and running several subsequent businesses, and now your inspirational blog Color Your Life Happy plus your book project of the same name! All of these accomplishments were, I’m sure, not only extremely challenging and consequently rewarding to achieve, but also very inspiring and giving in that you chose career paths that always enriched other people’s lives. And, I’m sure there’s much more to come! I’ll be following your exciting future. : )
July 27th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Hi Shanel! I read your blog on a regular basis and I love it. It’s very helpful, insightful, inspiring, and fun. I’m a fearful person so I like reading things but don’t put things into action as much as I’d like to. I have been writing in a diary very sporadically (like everything else I do), but never had any focus to them. I’ve been trying to answer some of the questions in your diary blog and it’s been difficult because I can’t remember my childhood very well, let alone last week. But when I write down something I remember, surprisingly more memories pop into my thoughts to write down. I think this will help my memory and be able to gain insight into my life and CHANGE so I can become the person I really want to be. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to read about the great life you’re living. So few people can say they took the risk to be doing what they’re passionate about.
July 27th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Hi Gloria! Great to see you here again! Thank you so much for your comment and positive feedback! You reminded me that one of the things I love about keeping a diary is that thinking deeply about old memories (which we invariably do when we strive to write about them and analyze them) is that our existing memories can actually trigger old, forgotten memories. I’m so excited for you that you’re remembering more of your past! I’m sure you’ll gain many powerful insights from your newly recovered memories! They’re like missing pieces from the jigsaw puzzles of our past. Some of the pieces are “edges” or even “corner” pieces, and those epiphanies are worth all the effort of continuing with our diary entries.
I LOVE that you’re working to become the person you really want to be. My goodness, of all the people I’ve ever known, you are the one most deserving of it! I always wanted for you to have everything good in life. You are the sister I wish I had! You’re kind, generous, soft-hearted, and quick to smile and laugh. But, what I’ve always loved most about you are your unwavering honesty, constant willingness to learn new things, and courage to take action once you’re convinced of the right path for you. That’s why I have no doubt that you will become the person you want to be — as soon as you discover exactly who that person is!
August 10th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I think this is something I have always wanted to do. Although I often don’t write everything I’m thinking for fear someone else may read it. I’m not sure how to get around that fear, any thoughts?
Just subscribed to your feed and I find your posts and point-of-view very insightful!
August 10th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Hi Jude! Thanks for your comment, positive feedback, and RSS subscription!
One way to avoid unwanted eyes from reading anything you write is to use a free online diary. I recommend diaryland.com — mostly because it’s the only one I’ve used (basic free package) since 2001 without any problems. Do be careful to select all the right settings so no one else in that community can see your entries! Also, always protect your user name and password — and make sure no one is looking when you log on in public places — or else your worst fears may be realized!
August 30th, 2008 at 3:55 am
This is a wonderful article. Often we are so engrossed in our cowboy style living of bang bang bang that we forget to write about our thoughts and what we are going through. I think the important benefit for keeping a journal is that it provides us a platform where we can structure our thoughts. When we are writing in a diary we are thinking of those thoughts that we had and how we felt during a situation. This is a classic way of achieving what great thinker Socrates described as “Know thyself” state.
Thanks Shanel once again for pointing me towards this wonderful habit.
August 30th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Hi Jake! Thanks for your comment and thoughtful feedback! You’re so right that journals help slow our lives down just enough to get to know ourselves bettter. The additional benefit is when we know how to analyze ourselves and the situations that we face, we become more empathetic, sympathetic, and, even, able to “read” other people. Our eyes open to their issues, too, when they open to our own! : )
October 9th, 2008 at 1:22 am
i used to keep a diary when i was a teenager but my mom would always read it so i stopped. when i saw your blog about keeping a diary, it motivated me to write again
thanks!
October 9th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Hi Mamee! Thanks so much for your comment! I’m very glad to hear you’ll be keeping a diary again. It’s really so rewarding in so many ways. My mom couldn’t read English, though I know she tried whenever she looked at my diaries, which was often. She never gave me much privacy. But, one time, one of my sisters found it and read it. I found out because she wrote a very mean message to me in it — right over a portion where I had written some not-so-nice things about her! I hadn’t even started using any cuss words yet because I was such a goody-two-shoes, and, right there, in my beloved, little, Hallmark, flowered, with-a-dainty-golden-lock diary was her big “F— YOU!” *Sigh!* Little sisters! But, that didn’t stop me from getting a new diary — and a new hiding place for it! : )