How to Journal for Self-Improvement

so one of the things that I love about journaling is that it is a great method of self-improvement this is my journal and I like to use this thing as a way of reflecting about the kind of person that I am and as I've done some of that reflection I like to then think about how can I become better and that's what I want to talk about today how can you journal for self-improvement I think we have to talk about something very important here that's figure out exactly what we mean by self Improvement importantly when

I talk about self-improvement I don't mean anything like productivity I am not talking about using your journal to get more done or to become a more efficient person in fact I bet that a lot of people would look at some of my journaling advice and say that that's not efficient at all I think we could quibble about what efficiency means here and whether or not some of the stuff I say counts as efficient but honestly I think that's kind of beside the point what I'm interested in is becoming a better person now I'm a philosopher

by training and when I talk about becoming a better person I mean something kind of specific I'm thinking along the lines of ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle or the stoics or the later Romans like Marcus Aurelius and so when I talk about becoming a better person I'm talking about building virtues now classically there were four virtues which were considered the most important and those were Prudence Justice courage and Temperance so for the rest of the video I'll take it for granted that when I'm talking about self Improvement I'm really thinking of it in this ancient

Greek sense about developing virtues and I think it's just easier to put it in terms of becoming a better person I know that that phrase sometimes scares people away cuz they think we're going to get into the habit of comparing ourselves to others and thinking am I better than the person next to me or are they better than me and I just think that we can avoid all of that instead we're only comparing ourselves to our former selves and thinking about what we want our future selves to look like now one challenge you might face

if you're trying to journal more is trying to find the time maybe you always forget your notebook at home or maybe you're someone who likes to use your phone instead if that's the case then you should try today's sponsor day one I've actually been using day one to supplement my journaling since about 2018 and the app has just gotten better and better over time sometimes I like to draw or to add photos in journals and day one makes this super simple adding photos is just a few simple Taps on the screen and then you have

more than a written record of the day and then when you're going back through your Journal it's super easy to search and review I've been married for almost 5 years and I have journal entries in day one from before my wife and I were even engaged just photos of us going on early dates and actually even a photo of the day that we got engaged so not only can I look back and see what I was thinking I can even see the look on her face while I read that journal and on top of that

day one let you add drawings and recordings so any way that you want to journal day one is going to let you do that and I'm happy to say that when you sign up using my link down in the description you will get a 2-month free trial to Day One Premium that you can't get anywhere else so go check out day one at day1 app.com Henderson and use my my code Henderson for that two-month free trial of day one if you're journaling to improve yourself or to build your character or in those more philosophical terms

to cultivate those virtues then it really comes down to three things where have I come from where am I now and where do I want to go first you need to have an understanding of where you are right now so let's put it in terms of some of those virtues like courage we ask ourselves are we brave enough when we need to be have we stood up for things that we really believe in have we let social pressures dictate who we are in public too much those are essential questions to ask about how courageous you

actually are or Temperance might be one that really matters for us so Temperance is basically the virtue of self-control it's the ability to restrain yourself when you know that something that you want to do isn't good for you for some of us Temperance might be a matter of how we handle like food or alcohol knowing that we need to moderate a little bit because in the long run it will be better for us and for others and this is definitely me it's about regulating how you use technology I've mentioned before that despite being a YouTuber

and despite being someone who actually loves YouTube a lot like I could watch YouTube for hours if I let myself I've taken YouTube off of my phone because what I've realized is if it's too easy and accessible then I'll just watch it for hours and hours every single day so as I'm journaling what I like to do is think about both my successes the things that I do well but also my failures you don't want to focus too much on your successes because if you only focus on your successes then you won't realize there's anything

about yourself that you might want to improve but if you focus too much on your failures well it's really easy to wallow in despair or to feel hopeless and you end up just giving up so being honest with yourself about those habits that you've built or things in general that you're just able to do well and being honest about the places where you fall short is essential and really I think that's kind of an important larger broader point that this only works if you're being honest with yourself if you're actually looking at your life in

a matter OFA way and willing to write about it and to think about it if you're not willing to do that then all the journaling in the world really couldn't help you the basic format of a journal entry for me is pretty simple I like to start by just writing about my day this is usually focusing on some particular event I don't try to have a full record of my entire day I don't write about going to the post office or about what I ate unless it was particularly important then I like to do a

little bit of self assessment I write about something that went well that day or how I handled the situation and I write about a failure at first this can feel a little bit odd but if you do it long enough you'll find that almost without exception you can always find something that you're proud of some kind of success related to that important event in your day and you can always find a failure and after I thought about my success and a failure I like to take a step back and think about the larger Narrative of

my life and what that success and failure tell me about my place in it so as you think about things that might need Improvement you need to ask yourself how did you come to be this way you also want to ask that question about the things that you like about yourself when you start looking backwards and you ask how did I become the person that I am I like to think of this in terms of constructing a narrative about yourself this is an idea that I've gotten from many different philosophers over the years big names

would be like Alistair McIntyre or Paul rur or Martin heiger or Mario sheckman the idea that some of these philosophers share is that we are essentially storytelling beings some philosophers will go so far as to say that we actually sort of create ourselves by telling stories others are more modest and will say that we just make sense of the world through narrative and I think that second point is definitely right a narrative takes disconnected events and tries to draw connections and once you have those connections you have explanations about why you are the way that

you are now when You' thought a little bit about this narrative what you're really doing is something that the philosopher honest calls making sense of your life as a whole basically when you start to make sense of your life as a whole you can start asking the question am I happy with the way that my life is going and that helps you move to that third stage which is asking about where you want to go if the person that you are now is a product of your previous circumstances then the person you will be in

the future is also going to be a product of previous circumstances but you have some amount of control over those circumstances understanding where you come from and thus who you are gives you power over who you become by journaling in this fashion consistently what you're actually doing is engaging in prolonged self-reflection you are essentially getting to know yourself you are telling the story of yourself to yourself and I think crucially once you've begun to think about it like a story you stop just being a character in the story and you become its author