if you've ever

if you've ever tried to keep a journal and then given up because your brain thinks so much faster than your hand can write, that is exactly the point. That's what most people get wrong that makes them feel like journaling is just not right for them. At this point in my life, I've filled over 2,000 pages by hand. And a huge thing it's taught me is that most of us leave almost no time in our day for just thinking. We listen to podcasts when we walk, we scroll during our breaks, we rush from the next, try to identify the last time to sit and do nothing but think. Most people couldn't tell you when that was. And that's a bigger problem than it sounds like. Because we've become worse thinkers, worse problem solvers, worse at sitting with our own feelings and at knowing ourselves. Journaling by hand is one of the most immediate ways that you can fix that. Having to physically slow down is what forces you to actually process everything going on inside your head instead of just flying past it. When I first started, one of the things I noticed almost immediately was that I was becoming a much clearer thinker, putting patterns and solving problems in my life became so much easier because they had space to naturally unfold on the page when you sit down and write. Have nothing to or especially then, that's when the things you didn't know were sitting in your subconscious start to finally come up. If you're a creative person, this is also where your best ideas will come to you. Since I started doing morning pages, writing three pages by hand every single morning, stream of consciousness without it having to make any sense. I noticed how creative ideas would actually arrive on the page while I was writing. It's really hard to force creative ideas by just brainstorming them, but it's so much easier for them to land when you make a habit of letting your subconscious have a bit of space every day. Good ideas can't be forced, but we can create the conditions that allow them and then they emerge. So if you've been looking for a sign to start or to stick with it, just remember that the slowness of it is not a limitation, it is the reason to do it.