How to Use Your Past Journals to Improve Your Future
The film room of life: why you need to start journaling about your old journals.
If I was approached by a time traveller who let me go back five years and give myself one piece advice, it wouldn’t be to study harder. It wouldn’t be how to avoid heartbreak. It wouldn’t even be to start taking the gym more seriously.
No.
If I could go back five years, the one piece of advice I’d give myself is to start a journal.
Suppose I was given another chance. This time, I could go back two years with the same purpose. Even without time travelling intervention, I’d have been journaling every day for quite a while at this point.
The advice I’d give myself would be to start journaling about my old journals.
Let me explain:
My journals are my most prized possession. If I’m going anywhere for longer than a week, I take them with me — at least those from the past year or so. It’s excess baggage, literally and figuratively, but I see no better use of my space. Journals are the basis for my self-improvement.
I started writing in a journal at the start of the pandemic. Bored of quarantine, I decided to commit to a month of daily, unstructured writing. I wrote both autobiographically and introspectively. Once this first month had ended, I was hooked; I decided to extend my experiment to a whole year.
By the end of the first year of journaling, I knew there was no going back. I’d accumulated hundreds of pages in multiple volumes. It was my favourite part of my day, yet I still didn’t realise how important the writing would be.
On reflection…
Looking back now, it seems obvious that writing down my thoughts, feelings and experiences would benefit me in the future. I’m so grateful to have a record of my life during the pandemic and all that came after. Being able to reflect over the past three years is invaluable.
Here’s why.
Athletes improve their decision-making and technique by analysing footage of themselves in competition or practice. NFL quarterback Tom Brady allegedly spent around 40 hours per week studying film. He was a student of the game and it helped him become greatest.
If you’re this far into the article, I know you want to be great too. So take a lesson from the world’s best athletes and apply the film room to your life…
There’s only one problem:
We can’t film our thoughts.
Cameras that can film our inner workings haven’t been invented yet. At least I hope they haven’t — that could have some uncomfortable consequences. Lucky for us, we already have a method to capture our thought processes and emotional states.
Your past journals are the film room of your life.
How to use your past journals to improve your present and future life:
Be careful!
Before we start, I have an important disclaimer.
If you had a particularly traumatic period of your life whilst you were writing in a journal, the chances are it may be hard to revisit the things you wrote. Be mindful about your present emotional state as you go into the film room. Be especially conscious of the time that you’re diving back into.
It’s not that these periods are off-limits. In fact, a great deal of growth can be achieved by reflecting on the bitterest parts of the past.
Just be careful.
Choose a time to on which to reflect
This doesn’t have to be a hard decision.
If there’s a period where you were especially productive or happy, maybe start there. Or, as stated above, if there’s a time of struggle you want to look back on — be my guest.
Something I’ll often do is jump back an exact distance: a month, two months, six months, a year, two years. It’s a good way to reflect on the trajectory of my life. If you’re not cringing at yourself a year ago — you’re doing something wrong.
Analyse every line
Okay, it doesn’t have to be every line.
Sometimes, I will read through an entry or two from the past and jot down a few lines of reflection in my present-day journal. Every once in a while, I’ll painstakingly read and comment on every single thing I wrote.
Flex those analysis skills you haven’t used since high school English class, but this time it doesn’t matter whether or not the writer used pathetic fallacy. Instead, discuss your patterns, the way you framed problems and the methods you used to try to deal with them. Was the way you were thinking back then healthy or self-destructive?
You can even analyse word choices as that can be a reflection of your psychology.
This doesn’t have to be something you do every day.
In fact, doing this daily would mean you have very little in your present journal to reflect on later. Personally, I have no set schedule. Sometimes I fancy looking at what I was thinking in the past or want to figure out the ingredient that made a part of my life run better back then. Most days, I do standard journaling.
Even every few months, this practice can help you gain even more benefits from your habit of journaling. Give it a try.
I hope it helps!
