Identify & Cleanup Your Thoughts

The best way to examine your thoughts is to get them out on paper. That’s right…

Dear Diary,

You won’t believe the crap running around in my brain. Right now, I’m thinking this lady is crazy for telling me that I have to journal to see my thoughts clearly!

I see you skeptics out there. But stick with me for a minute. 

There is a lot of research that reinforces the power of journaling. When you sit down and just let your mind go and your pen flow, it is like cleaning out the closet that is your mind.

Have you ever gone into a closet and come across something you didn’t even remember was in there, something valuable and important. Or, something you put up there years ago, and you open the box, and you wonder why you went through the trouble of keeping it. Journaling helps you identify those areas of your brain!

Taking 5 – 10 minutes a day to do a brain dump and get your thoughts out of your head and onto paper can do the following:

• Relieve stress

• Help you get clarity on something

• Strengthen your memory

• Increases your odds of achieving a goal

• Help you track your progress on a goal

• Increase creativity

Just get someplace quiet and get it all out. When you read it back, you might be surprised at the new perspective you gain from reading the words on the paper. Journaling gives you some separation from your thoughts and space to view them differently, even somewhat objectively. Because now you are looking at words on the paper, and you are removed from some of the emotion that was attached to those thoughts.

Review what you put down on paper and if there are thoughts that make you cringe a little or a lot, ask yourself why am I thinking that? AND, more importantly, do I want to keep thinking it, or do I want to think about this differently, or am I ready to let this go altogether?

If you have a problem that you want to solve, sit down with a blank piece of paper and let your mind run wild. We are natural editors and critics when it comes to our thoughts, but if you give yourself the space and time to just let your thoughts flow freely, without judgment, there is no telling what sort of genius you will uncover.  

You can start with any scrap of paper, pen or pencil and 5 minutes. The important thing is to just let your thoughts flow. Then question without judgment why you have those thoughts and if you want to keep those thoughts.

Next, I will explain why your thoughts are so important.