Keeping journals and diaries is a great way to look inside one's self when the ideas and thoughts seem confusing and disorganized.
For those who enjoy writing in journals and diaries,
doing so can be very
therapeutic and enlightening. Not only for the shear enjoyment of crafting
words if you’re a wordsmith and building sentences correctly if you’re a
grammarian, but for the result and revelation of thoughts that come to life. By
capturing the trains of thought, whether in private as in a journal, or in a more
public forum such as a story for a newspaper, writing can be surprising and
very useful for shaping scattered thought processes.
Even though I do not understand how the brain works and how thoughts and
ideas are developed and expanded, I know what happens in my mind as I
begin to write. Just as is happening right now while I’m preparing this article,
I really don’t know what the final message will be and what the product will
look like until I reach the end. I have an idea, and it’s not well formed yet, or,
honesty, ready to be communicated, but it is coming to life and developing as
I write. Each sentence becomes its own stepping stone to the next thoughts,
and after the process has repeated itself enough times the idea begins to take
shape.
I think that because this thought developmental process sometimes occurs
when a person is writing, the practice of journaling can be very insightful since
the writer’s thoughts are formulated as they are written. The end result reveals
the secret, and the secret is what may not have even been known by the
author until that revelation. Therefore, personal journal entries can sometimes
reveal more than mere facts; ideas can be morphed from abstract to solid.When the clearer revelation is revealed, the author or the artist, if the journal is
prepared as an art journal, possibly tells what had previously been hidden.
The introspective lens sharpens the image so the underlying message can
become better understood. The image of the message becomes clear, and the
thought process will have taken its form.
Once the idea takes shape, then how is it matured? Must it grow by trial and
error, or can it be nurtured with a design in mind, an end result? Therein lays
the challenge! The personal motivation and ambition of the thinker will define
the results of the thought process. The result will be orderly growth of
thoughts with intention, or it will be chaotic, disorganized thinking. The
opportunity to determine which it will be is the benefit of introspection that
can be gained from being faithful to journals or diaries and being observant of
the results.
