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Processing my mind

How journaling helped me integrate process vs result

The quest for results

When you start reading books about self-development, business, or human psychology, you do it because you want to improve. You want to change part of your life and make it better.

Quite often, it starts by wanting to earn more money. So you read about saving, investments, stocks, business. In your research, you quickly get in the idea that in today’s world, you have to become an entrepreneur to make money, to be free, and that everybody can do it. And I absolutely agree with that… Now.

But all you want at first is the results. You just want to be rich. You just want to be happy. You just want to be free. You just want to work less.

And not getting the results right away is usually why you stop. I know because that’s what happened with me.

But then, you stumble upon this little idea:

Focus on the process, not on the result

You watch some videos about this, see it in a few books. You say “Oh, it makes sense !” a first time then completely forget about it. You see it again and think “How could I forget about this?”

But then you get on with your life, out of the books, out of the quotes and podcasts and videos, and you just forget about it, once again. For a few days, maybe some weeks, or even month.

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Enlightenment

If you’re lucky enough, you’ll be exposed to the idea often enough that it will start to stick with you. Maybe not the first 10 times, or the 10 after that, but maybe the 21st will plant the seed. And this seed will keep growing. Every time you hear about it, it will grow a little more.

Then the time will come where you’ll see the first result leaves, the first changes in your life. You’ll notice yourself saying “Be consistent, that’s the most important” or “Let’s do it a little bit every day, even if it’s only for a few second”.

That’s when you start valuing process. And as you keep on focusing on the process, you’ll start thinking more about what to do every day instead of just where you are going.

Don’t get me wrong, knowing where you go is very important. But if you know your direction and don’t walk, you won’t really get far.

I came to realize that I valued the process more than the result when I started free-form journaling. It was quite a ride though. I started this journaling because I though it would help me understand myself better. I wanted to put my thoughts on paper. And I did that.

I also discovered that it does way more than this. It helps me organize my thoughts, think about new questions and the problems that arise with them, it helps consolidate what I may already understand, even partially, makes links between different parts of my life. It helps me understand that quite often, I do not do my most important task during the day, but also that all those other ones could lead me, one way or an other, to some kind of success, and that they always help me learn more.

And sometimes, I just write very dumb things on paper, just because it is in my mind at this time. Just a brain dump. At such times, it feels like I should not even be writing.

But it is the process of writing, day after day, that let me have all these insights. It does when the writing goes right, but also when it goes wrong, because even if I don’t get a big insight, at least I looked on the surface of my mind if something interesting stuck out.

Now, it feels like a therapy, a think tank, an incubator. It just takes the small seeds of my mind, pull them out, and plants them back so they can grow larger and stronger.

Not just about what I gain

I’ve just started noticing what journaling can bring, and I could just continue to get those benefits only. But it seems I would miss out on so much. It can get so much fun to get what’s inside of your head on the paper, to see it evolve and watch it grow almost effortlessly.

But even more than this, it frees up space. It allows new ideas to get inside of you, and helps them grow. It helps you tidy up your mind and see connexions you would have never seen before. Even without having to read back what you wrote !

It is not always like that. Just getting a few words down will sometimes feel like the hardest you’ve done all day. And some others, you’ll just end up clearing your mind so much that you’ll wonder how you went without writing all those years before… How were you even capable of finding a single, simple solution ?!?

The big insights might take a while to get there. Just a tiny bit here, an other part there, each day. When the day to link them all together comes, you’ll feel you just won at life!

Right now in my practice, I feel I’m in a tough spot. I don’t always know what to write, it is hard to get things down. But I’ll keep going because I know that if I’ve got something in my mind, the time to understand and integrate it will be only a fraction of what it would have been had I not written about it.

What about you?

So tell me about your practices. Do you have something, even that seems unsignificant, that helped you get insights on yourself or the world around you? Let us know in the comments here !