If you do not journal and keep a diary now is a great time to start.

Keeping a written record of your thoughts is the only way to accurately see how much you have grown from the lessons life has presented you.  It shows you how you solve problems, how you react to successes.  If you are on a path to self development and personal growth keeping a journal sometimes called a diary is significant.

Journaling about your business is especially valuable.  Anyone who has a business face challenges daily.  Recording your thoughts and feelings about these problems and how you solve them can be valuable in the future.  Unfortunately our memory is selective and when you are honest with your self when you journal it can be extremely helpful in your business growth.  Your journal is your mirror of your past successes and lessons.

There are a few things that should be observed when journaling or writing in your diary.

1. No need to write several paragraphs.  A few sentences will do just fine.
2. You must make a habit to journal daily.
3. You absolutely must be bone frank and honest when you journal.  Can you imagine lying to yourself?  Don’t do it.
4. You need a pen/pencil and spiral notebook.
5. Everything in your life counts.  Write about it.  Don’t be selective.
6. You can journal about any topic.

When journaling you could see how your personal life and business life interact and affect each other.  Journaling about your business really helps your business grow.  It keeps you accountable, you recognize patterns with your behavior and can make a decision to change them, you see mistakes you make and seek answers for them.  You can tell your journal anything.

Journaling is therapeutic.  It is a great way to release your feelings and give yourself a morale boost especially when you have been thru a troubling time and look back and see now that all is well.  It gives you courage to go forward.

James Boswell says, “Samuel Johnson advised me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised…. I told him that I had done so ever since I left Scotland…. I put down all sorts of little incidents in it. “Sir,” said he, “there is nothing too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain great knowledge of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.”

When you are gone from this earth.  Your family will appreciate your journals so much.  It is your precious gift to your family.  It will be like you are still here.  Our memory is selective.  Write it down and have it forever to refer back to.  Have it for that book you want to write one day.

You will be amazed at how some previous scary event, in retrospect, looks so insignificant today.  You learn how to be brave and step out on a limb.

There are so many good benefits that come from journaling and keeping a diary you will never know until you try it.

Honor yourself!