Are you waiting for the “perfect time” to get started?
When pondering when to start a journal, or starting a new project or habit, I think we tend to think in terms of milestone moments, or an obvious break in the calendar. I’ll start Monday. I’ll start on the first of next Month. I’ll start January 1. I’ll start on my birthday. I’ll start on my wedding day.
It’s easy to build in a delay, a time buffer into our idea of starting something new.
Building in a delay is not a great way to get started. It is, however, a great way to start procrastinating.
Why do you wait?
Are you questioning how much you really want to do it?
Is it the idea of starting fresh on a new week, month, or year? Fresh starts are not limited to certain time frames. You can have a fresh start right now. Right this minute, you can take a deep breath, draw a line through the air, and say I’m starting fresh right now.
Sure, you’re still in the same place, the same situation. You still have dishes and laundry to do, you still have the same deadlines, problems, and habits, but something is different. When you change your approach, everything else changes.
Don’t give in to perfectionism
Sometimes we wait because we want to make it perfect. I have to have the perfect journal. I have to start on the first because then I can set it up to cover the month perfectly. That’s a recipe for avoiding your journal any time you feel less than perfect.
Your journal is not a place for perfection. It’s a safe place, where you can be you any time of day or night. Any day of the week, month, or year.
If you delay starting your journal till a certain date, it increases the pressure on what you decide to put in the journal. There’s an increased sense of having to write about things you deem important – the big events in your life. But life happens in the in-between moments. It’s those moments that make up the bulk of our time that determine who we are and how we live – the hours and days, as well as the weeks, months, and years.
When to start a journal is when you’re ready
You decide when you are ready to start a journal. Don’t let the calendar tell you how to run your life. It’s your journal.
Whenever you want to start your journal is the perfect time to get started. As I write this post, it’s 7:40 pm on a Thursday and a perfectly acceptable time to start writing. So is tomorrow. Or the next day.
If you want to write, then write. Pick up a pen or pencil and a notebook, or even open a new document on your computer. Then write. It only matters that you write. Everything else is just ornamental.
I see the art journals and stunningly gorgeous bullet journal spreads pictured in Instagram and whizzing through my Facebook feed, and I feel pangs of envy about the art skills on display.
I am a long-time keeper of ugly journals. I love artsy journals. I ooh and ah over beautiful bullet journals, but my journals just don’t measure up. I try to make them pretty, but the harder I try the more tacky they get.
Sometimes I get self-conscious about how my ugly journals fail when compared to the artistic journals of some of my friends.
It’s that comparison bit that really trips me up. Every time.
My journal does not exist for the purpose of impressing other people. I forget that detail way too often.
My journal exists for a lot of reasons
It helps me stay organized
It helps me set goals and work towards them
It helps me plan my days, weeks, months, and years
It helps me figure out how I feel about an issue
It helps me figure out my next steps
It helps me understand what happened
It helps me figure out how to move on
It connects me to the deepest parts of myself that are otherwise difficult to access
It’s those deeper issues that really draw me to the practice of journaling, and it’s those deeper issues that keep me coming back again and again.
There’s nothing wrong with making it pretty
Sure, I like to doodle in my journal. I play around with prettying it up. I love to add stickers because I can add interest without relying on my limited drawing skills. I use a straightedge to draw lines. I use markers. I color code. Sometimes I trace images or try to free-hand images I see in coloring books. There are a lot of things I do to make my journal more fun and appealing to me.
I practice drawing, and I’ve created and evolved a number of layouts that I use to help organize my journal. I love those aspects of journaling and playing around with art. I love looking back over old journals and seeing how my creative skills have improved just with practice in my journal. This is so much fun for me, and it makes me happy.
But sometimes it goes too far
Your journal should not be a source of stress in your life. There have been times when I chose not to open my journal because the thought that I needed to create something beautiful was too stressful.
There have been times when I went to pick up my journal and then put it back down again because I didn’t have time to draw out an entire layout.
There have been times when I didn’t go to my journal because I didn’t have the right pen handy.
Whoa! Wait a minute!
My journal is not a place for perfection
My journal is my sandbox. It’s the place where I figure things out. Where I try things out. Where I practice. Where I learn and improve. It’s the place where I play.
My journal is my safe place.
If you have to be perfect in your safe place, it’s no longer a safe place.
A journal is what you make it
Ultimately, you write the rules for your own journal. If you want your journal to be a showcase, that’s awesome. But if you find yourself getting stressed out about your journal, or holding back, maybe it’s time to give yourself a break, and take a chance on letting it be ugly.
My gratitude journal started out as a quick list every night. I just got in the habit of listing 5 things for which I was thankful each night before bed; often it was the same, or a similar list, each time. Husband, daughter, a roof over our heads, and the last two varied, but it was a less than fascinating list.
Then I started putting some effort into mixing things up. I didn’t just say I was thankful for my husband, I got specific and mentioned a quality or something he did or said. Same with my daughter – and many other frequent flyers on my gratitude list. Soon, my nightly entries morphed from a quick five-word-list to an accounting of my day that was framed around an expression of gratitude.
I’ve kept a journal for most of my life, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but once I added the gratitude element, the journal took on a different, more energetic and pro-active tone – it’s my autobiography written through the lens of gratitude.
I found myself looking for things throughout the day, taking note of things – ooh, that’s going on my list tonight!
Still, there are days when I have to look really, really hard
There have been times when the world just falls apart around me, and yet still I can always find at least five things.
I resisted this idea for a while – it’s essentially dishonest, I thought, to disregard everything that’s going wrong. But that’s where I was wrong. It is not a matter of disregard.
A few months ago, my husband had a medical crisis while he was in Istanbul. It was a stressful and terrifying experience, but the relief I felt once we got him from the airport to safely admitted to the hospital was palpable. To acknowledge that relief underscores, rather than dismisses, the significance of that crisis.
This process doesn’t disregard the darkness, it looks for the light. My gratitude practice exercises the sames skills I use to find solutions to problems. I imagine there are worse mental pathways to make habitual.
And it is becoming a habitual practice.
Not to long ago, I took to my journal ready to whine and complain about everything that was going wrong, but out of habit, I had written the word “Gratitude” at the top of the page.
I couldn’t fill a page with whining when it had the word gratitude at the top. So I decided to go ahead and do my gratitude list first, and whine later on another page.
I never got around to whining. That’s when I knew my gratitude practice was really working.
…
As we head into the month of Thanksgiving, and tonight especially, there is so much for which to be thankful, and it does seem to be the topic of the hour. Today, among so many other things that bless my life, I am thankful for my gratitude practice.
I know that the idea of a gratitude practice is starting to gain some popularity. Anyone else out there make a practice of it? Any thoughts?
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