Maybe you Should be Meditating Instead of Journaling?
One of the common threads in the last 10 years in self-help books is that we should all be journaling. Every day.
Well, most of us are not journaling even if it would help us. Even if we know that some of the most successful people journal, most of us just never develop the habit.
What is journaling?
Journaling is different things to different people BUT my interpretation is one of two. The first one is to start your day journaling of how you want the day to unroll. The second one is to end the day in order to examine what we did and capture what happened during the day.
I can see the benefits of both approaches. And maybe doing both would give you the most benefit.
So what are meditations?
Most people would identify meditation with completely unwinding oneself through the breath. You sit in a comfortable position and focus on your breath and nothing else.
Well, there is another interpretation I want to share with you. IT comes from s a wonderful book called The Meditations: An Emperor’s Guide to Mastery.
The original book was written by Marcus Aurelius. Marcus was the last of the great emperors of Rome. He was not only an emperor but a successful general and philosopher. A true philosopher-king. At the time of his life, he was as close to a walking god on earth. With all that, he was a Stoic and constantly examined himself.
He wrote to himself reflections on what he learned. Marcus wrote a paragraph or two to capture an idea or a lesson. He meditated on the idea and tried to extract the lesson that was vital for him to learn. I can not recall any names being mentioned in the book. It was not about talking about others BUT a true self-improvement book.
Interestingly these notes were only written for Marcus and he wanted them to be destroyed upon his death. Luckily his handlers did not follow his instructions and they survived.
I bought a translation from Sam Torode a few years ago that I absolutely love and re-read at least once per year. Sam took the time to eliminate duplicates (even an emperor makes the same mistake more than once) and rewrote the lessons in a way that makes the book readable.
In my physical book, almost every page has notes that I have written on the sides and questions I wrote to myself at the top and bottom. The idea is that I can always simply open the book every day and read a question to ask myself as I start my day.
Well, back to our story…
Should you meditate instead of journaling the day's events?
Yes, you should take a look and try to extract the key lesson from daily life events. The lessons more than the stories are the key. You are extracting those in order to live a better life. You are not journaling just to capture the event. That is the difference.
That is what I believe Marcus did. He was simply capturing his lessons learned that he could later reflect upon and act differently next time.
My four cents…
Sam’s wonderful book can be found at:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073T331XJ?notRedirectToSDP=1&ref_=dbs_mng_calw_1&storeType=ebooks
