You Don’t Want To Read This

One of the hardest things to do for most people is to sit with your thoughts. To allow yourself to explore the deepest, darkest corners of your mind and the fucking wild scenes that appear from moment to moment.

I began journalling for the first time in 2018 because, as a business owner I was led to believe that high performers journaled and it was a contributor to success. I found it difficult.

With no structure or purpose to how I was writing I would often just start with a chronological order of what I did in the day or would write down what I had eaten or the training I had done. Hardly of any benefit besides tracking my daily movement.

I would go in and out of trying to journal over a period of maybe 12 months learning a little more about how and what to write and again, a lot of the time I would cringe at what I was writing. Even more so when I began to put to paper how I was feeling. Like I was ashamed of expressing my feelings with ink on a piece of paper that no one else would see but me. What a strange fucking reality.

If you look up embarrassment in the dictionary it reads, “A feeling of self-consciousness, shame or awkwardness”

Usually it is accompanied by an audience of at least one person who you feel may pass judgement. But in this specific instance, I felt those feelings alone, by my own pen through what I was choosing to write.

In 2019 I began seeing a therapist who introduced me to Sigmund Freud, a neurologist who founded the technique of psychoanalysis for articulating theory of motivation, mental illness, and the structures of the sub-conscious.

In learning about Freud, I came across his fundamental rule of psychology which completely changed how I felt about journalling and set me on a path of self awareness and exploration.

That rule is that you must say or write whatever is on your mind exactly as it is without distortion.  My interpretation of this rule is that upon distortion of your inner thoughts you are expressing yourself with a goal of being perceived by the person or persons reading or listening in a way you deem to be acceptable. This resonated with me and made me realise that if I was to gain anything from journalling I had to be completely honest and raw in my entries.

By this stage I had also discovered and developed some method and structure to how I wrote so I at least had some promps follow. Things such as daily gratitude, acceptance, purpose, a daily mantra and so forth.

Following this process I began to free write, or as Freud calls it, free association.

It is through free writing that I have really come to learn more anymore about myself and discover that as a human being it is near impossible to be truly in control of your mind.

Some of the shit that I have written in journals over the past 6 years is fucking wild. Intrusive thoughts. Stories of love and lust. Deep feelings of anger, resentment, self loathing and more.

Things that many years ago, I didn’t want to read.

But something I have come to realise about the mind is that the real control is through accepting it all. Owning every single thing that enters your conscious mind but knowing that whilst in your mind it is only fiction. When you begin to accept and write those thoughts down they become factual, tangible thoughts because you can see the ink on the piece of paper in front of you. You can hold it and feel it in your hands. Once it becomes real, more often than not you recognise that allowing these thoughts influence how you feel about yourself is disempowering.

This book is a collection of my journal entries exploring self discovery, pain, vulnerability, acceptance and change.

The power I have discovered through writing to myself I hope to pass on to whoever reads these pages. These pages are filled with personal stories and emotions such as humour, sadness, anger, joy and happiness, and something I am proud to share.

Through reading, I hope you can realise that you aren’t alone in how you think. A lot of us have the same thoughts and feelings because a lot of what we feel is universal. Emotions don’t differ from place to place or person to person. The intensity may, but the emotion doesn’t.

Once upon a time I didn’t want to read this.

Today, it is a necessity that I read this.