Stoic Journaling For The Modern Individual
Preconditions For This Article - Journaling is a helpful tool that can be use to unwind, give time to process the day, practice gratitude and find solutions for the problems faced.
All of what I’m going to share with you was first introduced to me from A Guide To The Good Life written by William B. Irvine. This is my favourite book. I stumbled on Stoicism by luck, I was watching something from the intriguing illusionist Derren Brown.
He spoke about finding some articles on Stoicism and wanted to research it more. He then decided to write his own book on Stoicism and I bought it. However the joy was short lived until I discovered AGTTGL. Sorry Derren. Gripping, intriguing, simple and practicable. I urge you to get a copy.
I have never read anything more compelling and honest through it’s simplicity. When I finished the book and went through the psychological techniques and the call by Sir Irvine to practice these techniques that’s why I formed my journalling process. The rest of this article will list it all out and explain why.
1. What’s Bothering Me? - The easiest to explain. Simple write down what’s been on your mind today, write as much as you want. Write the good and the bad, be vague, be detailed but just write. End of, needs nothing more to say about it.
2. How Could Things Be Worse? - Look at your life and imagine what could be far worse. The point of this is to put our worries into perspective and when we imagine how much more our lives could be, it makes our current worries seem not as bad as we might be making them out to be.
3. Fatalism - This is the act of understanding that the present and the past are gone. We can’t change them but we can learn from them. Why I love doing this at the end of the day is because I can always take a big breath in and out afterwards, knowing that for better or worse that day is DONE.! Now what can I learn from this that’s helpful for the future?
4. Lowering my expectations - When things don’t go my way (which can be quiet often), my initial thought currently is that I didn’t lower my expectations enough. When I go and do certain work that I intensely hate, lowering my expectations has helped me.
I pre-determine that my colleagues are going be the biggest *&&”£$%:@~}<?><><?>{ and so on and so forth, the day will either overwork me and leave me feeling defeated and stressed or leave me feeling overwhelmingly bored and feel like reading the length and breath of a bible, the customers will be the biggest *&&”£$%:@~}<?><><?>{ and so on and so forth, I won’t have any good conversations and there’ll be no joking.
To my surprise it usually isn’t that bad, I actually have some ok conversations and jokes, the day moves at a reasonable pace with one or two parts that were slow and the customers and colleagues are ok with the one bad apple in the bunch. But also when those days that I pre-determine happen (and they do) I’m not as thrown off my course because I already expected it to happen. Like the bad weather we’ve been told is coming , we should also tell ourselves the bad things that will come and if they do no biggie, we just get on with it and if they don’t happen, it’s a win for us.
5. Obstacles - This is my newest addition to my journaling and the most practicable. Write down the obstacles you’re facing and see if you can find solutions to overcome them. NEXT!
6. Negative Visualisation - This one is broken down into three categories my death, my loved ones and my possessions. Let me explain. Sounds morbid on the surface and it is but with a purpose.
By engaging in the passing of your own life, your loved ones or the lost of your possessions puts you into a mindset of gratitude. When I started doing this particular for my own death it brought my thoughts into sharp focus reminding me that I won’t always be here.
It seems to bring me to certain questions. Was today a good day? Do I want to keep doing this? What can I do to change things? I have found healing in realising my own impermanence and you might too.
With my loved ones it’s the same, some people seem to just pop into my head and I just want to say thank, feel grateful and pray that I’m so blessed to have these people in my life and realising their impermanence as well makes me engage with them more because I realise my time with them is limited.
Finally with my possessions I imagine that I don’t have them anymore and it’s surprising how it’s just a consistent few things that keep coming up that bring me immense joy and make my life easier. I’ve realised that I don’t need as much as I think I do in life.
7.Trichotomy of control - The Stoics believed you had two things you had control over your thoughts and your actions, everything else you have no control over, so stop worrying about them or trying to control them.
I consider it partial control because you can’t control every thought or action, but the ones you can you should exercise autonomy over and Sir Irvine goes to add the third which is some control. These are the goals you set in your life, they should only be goals of which you have control over so that you can actually attain them.
As always I really hope this helps, it sure has for me,
The Average Tinker.
