A diary can be a valuable way of organising your life, your choices and your emotions. It can bring control into your life by enabling better decisions to be made, help organise your time, thoughts and feelings and bring clarity into everyday life.
I have met several dynamic business people who relied solely on their memory to keep appointments, remind them of where they needed to be, things that they had to do. This is not always the most efficient way to keep control in a busy life. Committing these arrangements to a diary is a positive way of reducing stress and freeing up our minds for more important matters. Over-loading our minds with unnecessary thoughts that can safely be maintained elsewhere is a waste of brain effort. Keeping a diary helps to manage stress more effectively and alleviate the pressure and fear of forgetting important things.
A diary can also be used as a point of reference. Phone numbers, quotations, special dates like anniversaries and birthdays can be logged in a diary. They can then be remembered as and when required. Putting important dates like insurance or membership renewals, car M.O.T., or service due date can take the pressure off having to keep checking paperwork or rely on memory. Then these dates can be planned around in advance in the most efficient way.
Managing time is a fundamental reason for keeping a diary. Key appointments, repeat visits can all be logged straight away as they are booked. A diary is a way of ensuring the best use of your time, booking all appointments in a certain area on the same day, avoiding leaving pockets of time that cannot be put to good use. Also use your diary to schedule in some valuable ‘me’ time. Put yourself in your diary like you would an important client. And ensure that you keep that appointment with yourself, for fun, rest, relaxation.
A diary can be useful to refer back to, to see what has been achieved over a certain period of time, how far we have come, where we have been, what we have done. It can be valuable to remind ourselves of certain landmark accomplishments, or significant events and when they happened.
Some people use their diary in a more therapeutic way. They keep it regularly updated with their thoughts and feelings. In daily life there are often stresses or difficult situations and our diary can be a best friend, a confidante at these times. Writing down our conflicts and problems can be a useful way of managing the associated stress and of coming to terms with these experiences. It vents the negative emotions.
Keeping a diary can be especially important after a trauma or a difficult period in life like a divorce or a bereavement. It can be a very useful way of processing thoughts. Getting them down on paper in a cohesive way can really help come to terms with what has happened. And then updating the diary regularly helps work through the thoughts and emotions, make sense of them and ultimately come through the other side. Referring back to this type of diary can be interesting as a way of monitoring and understanding the healing process.
Susan Leigh, Counsellor and Hypnotherapist
www.lifestyletherapy.net