Until I started journaling, I didn’t realize that I had put such a low ceiling on what I thought my life could be. The daily writing gave me a broom to poke and lift up the roof I had built over my mind. Journaling gets you in touch with what I like to call your “Oprah Mind.” A mind that is expansive, abundant, and full of possibility. Your Oprah Mind will win an Oscar, write a book, write ten books. It will make the ballsy move of ending a hugely successful TV show to start a TV network if it damn well pleases. This mind is as boundless as the night’s sky. Do you think Oprah spends all day consumed by her worries? Hell no. She has an empire to run and new ventures to imagine and put into action. She dreams and thinks BIG, and that’s what I want for both you and me.
I don’t often look back at what I’ve written, actually, but when I do, it’s become easier to see my patterns. If I complain, in writing, for six months that I want to get up earlier in the morning but am failing to do so, then I know it’s time to find a solution. What about banning all screens after 9:30 P.M. and placing my phone on the opposite side of my bedroom so I’m not tempted to stay up late scrolling through Instagram? If I read that I have felt lonely in the company of my boyfriend for the past year, then I am oh-so-sorry but it’s probably time for that relationship to end. I can’t trick myself into thinking it’s working. It’s harder to believe my convenient lies when I see the truth written down, over and over again.
A journal is not a place to record the daily events of your life. It’s not a place to describe the sushi you had for dinner last night (although, if it’s really good sushi, go ahead and do that). It’s a place where you can get in touch with your core, with what you believe. Some of us have very limiting beliefs but are totally unaware that we’ve set such a low bar for ourselves. Journaling is the gift that gives us a chance to uncover what is true. Because a belief and the truth are two very different things. You might believe you are not capable of having your biggest, glitteriest dreams become reality. But I know that’s not the truth. The truth is that you can heal your past traumas, you can build the life you want for yourself, but you’re going to have to do the work.
The work here begins by writing down and exploring what bothers you, what you dream about, and what you will now make true. Out of your head and onto the page, you have a chance to tackle your worries, to give voice to your dreams, to see if there are patterns holding you back. You might have been born into a set of circumstances that were less than ideal. You might be currently living in circumstances that are a hell of a lot less than ideal. But only you can decide if those things define you. Is it time to change your story? Have you always let negative people suck you dry of your energy as you tried, in vain, to bolster them? Are you tired of that yet? Have you always felt embarrassed that you didn’t come from a “good family”? Maybe it’s time to question if telling yourself that story is doing anything for you. What about instead, “Yeah, I might not have come from a perfect home, but, really, who even does, and I’m grateful for almost everything I’ve learned on this path. I have the chance to build my own family.” If there’s something about yourself that you want to change, then the first step is to identify it and then write how your story might play out differently. Get to writing, because I love you very much, but I’m sorry to say that we don’t magically grow into new people.
One of my favorite quotes in the entire world is from Nora Ephron. In her commencement address to the Wellesley College Class of 1996 (which I highly recommend you watch on YouTube immediately), she urged the graduates to “above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” There is no better place to live those words than in a journal. You have the ability to literally write your own story, to slay your worries, to unbridle your dreams. You can be the version of yourself who wears a dress made of all the night’s stars like it ain’t no thing, who floats above the petty little annoyances of life and looks back down on Earth with clear, peaceful perspective. You can’t control the narrative of the outside world, but you can control the story you are telling yourself in your journal. I suggest you make it a good one.
A List of Ways to NOT Avoid Journaling in the Morning
If you are avoiding writing because you have a new person sleeping over at your place, get out of bed, grab your notebook, and go into the kitchen. Make some coffee and write while doing it. Three pages of single-spaced writing takes about twenty minutes. When you return, two coffees in hand, they will be none the wiser and impressed that you were so thoughtful! GO, YOU!
If you are avoiding journaling because you are sleeping over at a new person’s place, that is stupid. Sorry, but it is. Tell them you have Pilates, spinning, or brunch with your sister, and get to your notebook! Or bring it with you and tell the person the truth: You are a goddamn adult with a goddamn ritual. If the person is weirded out by this: NEXT.
If you are avoiding journaling because you DON’T HAVE TIME, none of us has time. Beyoncé has no time. She has three children but still manages to be Beyoncé. You can find the time. Set your alarm to wake up ten minutes earlier tomorrow. Try to do that for the rest of the week. Then next week set it for twenty minutes earlier. Start small. You can do it. I know you can! I forced myself, ten minutes at a time, to carve out an hour of alone time in the morning. It took me months (maybe more like a year if I’m being totally honest) to make it stick, but now I have an hour to journal, light a candle, hang out, and daydream every morning. It’s fantastic and gives me something to look forward to when my alarm goes off.
If you are avoiding journaling because it’s “dumb” or “self-centered” or because only “broken narcissists” keep journals, let me tell you this: Mark Twain kept a journal. Frida Kahlo kept a diary full of illustrations and her thoughts. Charlotte Brontë kept a diary, and Leonardo da Vinci kept around fifty notebooks. Ida B. Wells crusaded for civil rights in America and still found time to keep a diary. Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Susan Sontag—they all kept journals. Do you think you’re above Mark Twain, Frida Kahlo, Charlotte Brontë, and Leonardo da Vinci, Ida B. Wells, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Susan Sontag? No? Then get to writing.
If you are avoiding journaling because you think you will fail and it seems hard and you would rather not start something you might mess up, know this: It’s okay to fail. I write my pages most mornings, but I skipped them yesterday because of item two above (sleeping over at someone’s house). I forgot to bring my journal with me, and when the boy offered to take me to breakfast (yay!), I caved and went with him. And ya know what? That’s fine. I did feel a little uneasy for the rest of the day, but I understood why. When I opened my nightstand this morning and saw my new journal, light blue and with navy ribbons, I felt a deep rush of happiness. My notebook waits for me.