Journaling Process

I started exploring journaling in recent years after reading different authors' take on this and listening to productivity / mindfulness influencers. 

I am not an everyday or a ‘fixed time of the day’ ‘journaler’.

I find myself gravitating towards journaling when I am having several thoughts or strong uncomfortable feelings about something that happened and am not able to process it or access my deeper feelings or thoughts. The discomfort sometimes is so huge that it does not allow me to focus on the task at hand or bring myself fully to any conversation. I occasionally also journal as a means of self study.

In essence, I use journaling as a thinking tool and not something to document my day / life. 

(I know people use journaling to record experiences which may be unique in themselves or different from everyday life. They may do this for the sheer joy of cherishing experiences, not forgetting them and hence letting a slice of life slip away, or with the hope to publish them as memoirs, self-help / how-to books, articles to guide others etc.) 

When I start writing, my mind's 'resources' which were holding the surface level thoughts start freeing up to recall more facts, and then nuances or label the feelings as they changed with each transaction. 

The surface level thoughts could be a memory of what happened / who said what / a hint of unpleasantness in my system, without knowing what emotion it is and what is the root cause of it.

I find journaling faster and more effective when I am writing using pen and paper, instead of typing it out. The spontaneous urge to journal is not inhibited by the requirements of creating files, naming and organising them etc. There is not much room to edit and keep improving what has already been inked when writing by hand, so the spotlight stays on expressing with a natural flow rather than perfecting the language and vocabulary. 

I keep the journal / notebook handy and accessible. Personally, I no longer worry about someone reading it. It is an honest conversation with myself where my focus entirely is on how ‘I’ perceived things so I do not feel fearful of being found out or hurting anyone. Another justification to not hide it in a file on the computer. 

I have discovered that revisiting what I had journaled in the past is not necessary. What has been processed at this deep level has done its job and must dissolve away. 

I keep writing at the speed that my thoughts are pouring out till all that was clouding my mind by its repetitive churning is out there and for a moment nothing more is there to say. Sometimes as I am writing, the parts that were lost start surfacing and the entire sequence has been reconstructed to my amazement. This especially is true if the journaling is done before one retires for the day, as there is something about sleep which erases some chunks thus making it difficult to reconstruct the events satisfactorily. 

Then I read what is in front of me and ask myself either the why or what is bothering me. That gives me a direction to dig deeper. 

As all the ‘memory’ is out on paper, the mind is now empty. It can look at things objectively, apply whichever framework one may want to in that moment (philosophy, personal values, psychology / Transactional Analysis etc.) and make sense of what happened, again by writing further.

At this stage, I am able to see myself better and more clearly, and if another person is involved, sometimes where they are operating from too. Over time, patterns start becoming apparent. To prevent getting into the same kind of stuckness again, I can define boundaries for myself / others. Resetting my expectations, applying some life principles/rules and updating my narrative about that relationship dynamic happens sometimes.

Sometimes, when further clarity eludes me, talking it out with someone I trust helps. 

Or it may not work that easily. Sometimes just accepting that 'it is what it is' and moving on feels calming!

Awareness, found in that moment of journaling, itself can lead to change in the longer run, if we keep at it. There is nothing more to be done in the immediate future. 

A young friend recently asked me about my journaling process as he was keen to explore this medium. The above piece is what came out of that prompt.

Journaling within an article on journaling process:

As I worked on this piece, I saw it evolve from a quick text response over WhatsApp to an email to a blog. My need to make it ‘perfect’ (without missing any aspect from my experience, then moving to factoring all generic experience that is common place) and the compulsion to ‘try hard’ for it to be published as a Linkedin post made me keep expanding the scope of this article by introducing Transactional Analysis (TA) jargon, then explaining the jargon for the uninitiated and eventually trying to align everything to the TA lens, so that the article never seemed close to getting completed. The wish to ‘please others’ wanted to get approval from someone to publish this, and get attention and appreciation as ulterior motives that I wrote this!

So I am now allowing myself to publish it on my blog the way it is. This implies there will be an ‘output’ which will not ‘be perfect’. I can come back and improve on it later to make it into a LinkedIn post. I will shift into my Adult ego state, own my agency and validate / stroke myself, so the need for attention and validation which empowers others will be mitigated. 

 

When to Give a Device to Your Child

I was recently approached by a young mother who was harbouring the question of whether she should introduce her six yo to electronic gadgets such as a tablet or a laptop. 

She has raised her child with minimal screen time while maximising sensory exposure. Experiences of exploring performing art forms and sporting activities, including regular unstructured play time in the apartment garden with other children of similar age have been the other staples of the child’s weekly rhythm. 

Her question was coming from a place of anxiety induced from parental peer pressure and some degree of FOMO in her daughter’s developmental journey. Below is a gist of my counsel. 

Your six yo belongs to a generation of digital natives and hence will pick up applicational usage of technology in no time whenever she is introduced to it. The delay in introduction is not going to define her ability to learn. On the contrary, the learning curve might be steeper the later she starts. 

Extrapolating from the example of learning to write, my experience as an early educator has been that children who picked up the pencil to learn writing the alphabet by age five, six or even seven were at no disadvantage as against other children who had already been introduced to the skill early on. They were able to master the letters in less time, and sometimes pick up the nuances of cursive letter formations with greater accuracy. This, of course, was possible with the foundation of their fine motor skills having been sufficiently activated through plenty of activities in the preceding years. Similarly, any child who is cognitively stimulated and has their innate inquisitiveness intact, should not have trouble picking up how to use a device. And what to do once on the device is never a worry! :)

Do keep in mind that once you place a gadget in her hand, the time spent on it will be carved out of her present schedule. If the trade-off is acceptable to all parties concerned, and you can define/evolve clear guidelines of when, where, how much and what-for to use (the device), please go ahead and give it a try.

Also, when a child is not doing something structured, she is growing in some other way, which we may not always fathom. We do not need to be paranoid on maximising learning through everything a child does.

To my mind, there seems no real need for a child to access electronic devices for academic work till they enter middle school, unless the school has explicit requirements. However, having a conversation with the teachers in school and knowing what is their take on introduction to technology and the possible recommended contexts for usage may help be more in sync with the classroom and the current times. Many concepts are fun or easier to learn when done in an audio visual format. Then, some children learn better using more than one medium or through a mode different from the conventional classroom format. 

Fear of wandering on the internet or app-hopping, getting exposed to undesirable content on social media or getting addicted to the screen and not being able to put it away are also there. Yes, those are real fears besides several others. However, from a long term view, it is desirable for some difficult experiences to happen and allow room to learn from them while you as a parent are available to help, instead of curating a perfectly sheltered life. Then, when a child is away from the scaffolding of parents’ constant guidance and vigilance in older/teen years, they hopefully will have confidence to navigate these challenges without getting overwhelmed, and fearful of reaching out to you for support.

Children (and all of us grown-ups) thrive from a sense of belonging to our peer group (and community) through shared interests, activities, experiences and contexts. It will be prudent to stay alert to signs of alienation from peer groups exhibited by the child due to our stand on any matter. Keep channels of communication open and plenty of room to discuss and renegotiate. 

That said, be bold and choose what works for you and your family. 

If you want your child to be a tech explorer (being savvy yourself or being a tech phobe), embrace that with suitable boundaries and safety mechanisms. 

If you want to be a purist, and keep devices out for as long as possible, go ahead and run your experiment with joy! There is nothing to lose. Steve Jobs is known to have kept his children away from devices, specifically the iPad. What did they do instead? Or the more pertinent question perhaps is, what would you and your kid like to do instead? Be creative, find your own engagements and explore what makes you curious. 

Of course, there is the sweet space in between, where you want to use access to an electronic gadget as a limited dosage privilege, a fun weekly ritual together or a tool to make some aspects of life easier.

I will not get into the negative impacts of unregulated / excessive screens on young children as that scientific literature can be easily dug out from the internet as a personal side-quest. 

Whatever choice one makes in their journey as a parent, it is important to not judge the choices made by others and allow room for a perspective there, so that we and / or our child do not fester a sense of superiority or the opposite in our heads. We can all have different ways of leading our lives, however these need not be classified as better or worse, and just be left at ‘different.’ And if possible, a respect for others’ reasons to choose what they do.

I would greatly love to hear where you lie on this spectrum and how you find your balance and navigate any challenges that get thrown your way.