[WORDS By: Sadiq Ali]

Now before we go and get all technical and men especially, all funny acting because I said diary, please feel free to exchange “diary” with “journal”.  Now onwards!  But the psychological, practical and overall virtues of beginning and maintaining a journal are so numerous I don’t know why I didn’t start journaling sooner.

This quick piece is all about why you need to start one today, no matter what you call it.  The ‘journal journey’ started for me almost one full year ago.  I had just started a men’s group where we meet regularly and discuss all manner of topics, and especially, how we push each other to be better daily.  The suggestion was raised during one of our early meetings and it just clicked for me and made perfect sense.  There are some thoughts you never share with anyone else, and some you have never even shared with you.  Where do you end up sharing these innermost thoughts?  Chances are you simply don’t.  As a result, the necessary clarity to move on, problem solving to act or simply healing from not so great situations just doesn’t happen.  This leads to all sorts of internal issues, and especially for men, strengthens our commitment and resolve to non-communication.  Really healthy huh?

But the awesome thing is that everyone can reap the benefits of nine year-old little girls everywhere and their diaries.  And speaking of nine year old little girls, did you ever wonder why they are so in touch with their emotions??  It’s because they both write down every emotion experienced AND talk about them with their BFFs.  Somewhere between then and now, we learned to do neither as adults, and as a result some of us are really messed up.  So if we aren’t going to communicate with our significant other, therapist or BFF, then we had better talk to ourselves.  This is where the journal comes into play.

I’ve written about many situations in my personal life, business dealings and a variety of other topics and each time walk away with a great sense of resolve and lucidity that I lacked before putting pen to paper.  There are also a bunch of other added bonuses.  For starters, you get to practice one of the diminishing dark arts: cursive handwriting!  Recent studies have shown that your penmanship is definitely getting worse with the increased influx of all things keyboard and touch screen related.  This means unless you work on it, it will continue to decline, until generations later no one even knows what cursive is!  It could happen.

The other added bonus is that you get to leave an awesome piece of your personal self behind to your loved ones when you pass on.  In my case, I will be bequeathing my set of journals to my first born child.  He will have the opportunity to read his father’s innermost thoughts before anyone else.  The thought to do this just occurred to me one day as I wish had known some of what my late father was thinking when he was my age.  But, he was called back to the essence before I got a chance to ask him those questions and more.

Take advantage of the time you have, while you have thoughts and get it out. You might even find yourself writing a love letter to your wife sometimes. This is when you know you’re thinking clearly.