5 Impressive Ways Daily Writing Habit Shapes Thinking
How would you define daily writing? For some, it is a career. Others will call it a passion. There are also people who see it as a therapeutic exercise. You can name it as you wish, but one thing is certain about this form of expression – it shapes the way you think.
Change begins with action. The control over your thoughts can start as soon as you pick up a pen. A simple action such as conserving your thoughts can make a world of difference. It can change the way your brain is wired.
To provoke the motivation for writing every day, you should start with building awareness of its powers. Here’s how daily meetings with a notebook or computer can shape your thoughts.
Get Your Thoughts in Order
A mind is a thought producing machine. They come out one after another and demand your attention. You don’t even resolve one thought before the next one overpowers it. The enchanted circle of disorganized excessive thinking can break if you resort to everyday writing.
Have you ever read a great novel and thought to yourself: Why authors’ thoughts are always so beautifully composed? Yes, great authors have that kind of talent, but they also have writing to get them in order.
Communicating your thoughts to a piece of paper or a screen slows down your thinking process. Imagine that you’ve turned on the slow-motion mode for your brain. That’s how it works.
Your pen or fingers can’t move as fast as think, thus thinking needs to slow down. Daily writing habit gives you enough time to organize your thoughts before you turn them into immortalized memories.
The mind is throwing ideas randomly and daily writing habit allows you to catch them. Getting your thoughts in order can help you think more clearly. You’ll get to address them one by one.
Choose Where to Put Your Focus
Take control over your thinking. In the process of writing, you get to choose what you will focus on.
Let’s say that you are going through a stressful situation. Don’t let the negativity overpower you. Take your power back and shift your focus. For example, you list the things you are grateful for. Give your mind something positive to think about.
The engagement that comes from moving your hand and controlling the pen or typing, brings you back to the present moment. The only thing that you can focus on in that instance is what you’re trying to record on the paper. There’s the beauty of journaling or creating content.
Writing on a daily basis has this amazing ability to control the focus. You can put the spotlight on specific thoughts or use journaling to practice mindfulness. Let the words you put down catch the attention of your wandering mind.
Direct Your Thoughts toward Your Goals
Do you want to become a goal-getter? Are you ready to improve your chances of reaching your dreams? Practising writing every day can help you achieve your goals.
Forbes reported that people who describe their goals vividly are 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to accomplish their goals than people who don’t.
How does this work, you ask?
The first reason why putting down your goals is useful, it is easy to access. You store down the information and review it at any time. The busy life can’t be an excuse for forgetfulness as you’ll have a consistent reminder of your goals right in front of you.
The second benefit of daily writing habit as a goal-getting tool comes in the form of improved memory. Recording your goals activates the cognitive recall of your thoughts. Dr Susanne Ramsey, a psychologist and contributor writer at GetGoodGrade explained that “The formation of letters makes the mind reflect yet again on your goals. The chance that you’ll remember what you want to accomplish is therefore increased.”
Clear Your Mind
To improve the logic of your thinking you need to throw out useless thoughts. A mind that is bursting with emotions and ideas can’t lead to thinking clearly.
You need a cleansing tool and you have it within your reach. Everyday writing can serve as a broom for sweeping the unnecessary ideas out of your brain.
Matthew Lieberman, a psychologist at the University of California in Los Angeles explained for the Guardian its correlation with regulating emotions:
“Writing habit seems to help the brain regulate emotion unintentionally. Whether it’s writing things down in a diary, writing bad poetry, or making up song lyrics that should never be played on the radio, it seems to help people emotionally.”
Who would have guessed that stringing words on paper can lead to an emotional cleansing? Writing can build a bridge that will help your thoughts cross over from your mind to the screen or paper.
Increase Self-Awareness
The most important relationship you have is with yourself. What you think about yourself can define your life. Lack of confidence, no determination, or explosive reactions can stop you from accomplishing your dreams or having healthy relationships.
How does writing fit into the picture of self-awareness?
Negative thoughts can be pouring in every second but since they don’t stay for long you don’t give them credit.
A form of storing your thoughts known as journaling will make you face what you think about yourself. You won’t be able to go around it.
Courtney Moses has studied the connection between self-reflection and writing in her graduate program Critical and Creative Thinking at the University of Massachusetts Boston. In her article on self-reflecting journaling, she shared some useful findings:
“Reflection brings what is in our minds out to the surface—it makes our experience tangible. It gives us the power to know ourselves and to form a concrete self-concept, to begin to envision what our growth might look like, to understand our struggles and see a way beyond them, to move toward a place of contentment, self-acceptance, and inner peace, and, over time, to fall into alignment with our vision of ideal self.”
Use everyday writing to reflect. Go straight for that confidence boost by focusing on yourself and how you can improve your self-esteem. One of the best tools for reflecting and shaping the way you think is the self-esteem journal. Regular journaling can open new revelations about your relationship with yourself.
Wrapping Up
Don’t let the thoughts run your life. Be the one who takes over the control and actively works on shaping your thinking.
An effective tool that is a daily writing habit can help you transform your world inside and out. You can change how you feel and how you perceive your surroundings.
This is your opportunity to live the life you want and nourish the thoughts that can serve you. Grab it.
