It would seem that it is difficult to lead Personal diary? Sit down and write all your thoughts in a notebook. But I want this “collection” to have some kind of zest of its own. For your diary to inspire you, it’s enough to know small tricks filling it out.

How to keep a personal diary - the beginning

To begin, select a notepad or notebook for your notes. Give preference to paper media with a hard cover. After all, the diary will travel with you for a long time and can get pretty shabby. Think about it, why are you keeping a diary? Start from this when choosing the design of a notepad or notebook. Some people keep electronic diaries. Exist special programs for keeping records on a computer. You can use regular text editors.

How to keep a personal diary - tools

Be sure to choose beautiful pens different colors. Choose stickers, markers, bookmarks and other little things to highlight your thoughts, quotes, interesting phrases. You can choose a cover for your diary and make it yourself. Start improving your small world such little things.

How to keep a personal diary - ideas

No one forbids you to spy on ideas for keeping diaries on the Internet and copy them for yourself.

To make your diary interesting, use:

• magazine clippings, candy wrappers;
• commemorative photographs;
• drawings on unusual materials (napkins, living leaves);
• dried flowers and herbs;
• textile;
• old postcards and calendars.

How to keep a personal diary - systematize it

The diary can be divided into parts using special markers. For example: “Love”, “Travel and Adventure”, “Thoughts out loud”, “Quotes from books”, etc. Write relevant information in each section. This will make it easier for you to find the material you need in the future.

How to keep a personal diary - sketchbook

Nowadays it has become very popular to keep a sketchbook. Here much attention is paid to drawings. A sketchbook is perfect for creative “souls” who are involved in the world of handicrafts and design and like to constantly sketch out their ideas, signing them with a few phrases. Thus, a sketchbook can be turned into a collection of recipes with original drawings, or into a collection of comics. With a sketchbook you can do doodling. To understand the meaning of this word, remember your long telephone conversations. You pick up a pen and start scribbling meaninglessly on a piece of paper. This is doodling. “Turn off” your brain and just draw.

Journaling is an exciting journey. Thanks to it, you can speak out, generate new ideas, become a writer or even an artist. Psychologists recommend keeping diaries regularly. Do not deny yourself the pleasure and start keeping a diary!

Right now, in different parts of the world, a huge number of people are writing something in their personal diaries. Someone may be crying and writing with a trembling hand about an unfulfilled dream, while someone is smiling and with a slight blush on their cheeks talking about a successful first date. Someone tries to remember every second of the past day, every task completed, while someone, tired and sleepy, puts their last strength into a couple of lines about the sweet girl who brought a letter to the office today. But why do they all do this? Why keep a personal diary? What's the point of this?

Secondly, a personal diary - best psychologist. Even if we cannot write everything, we will definitely think about it. Even from the most difficult situations you can find a way out, and the diary helps a lot with this. Having thought about everything that is happening, talking about everything in the diary, in the end we are able to make some kind of decision. We don’t always have the opportunity to speak out, and this is very important. If you keep everything only to yourself, in the end, you can bring yourself to nervous breakdown and develop several types of psychological disorders at once. Do we need it? We should never forget that “everything we are is the result of our thoughts.”

And finally, fourthly, a personal diary – our tears. It is not for nothing that I singled out this reason for the existence of personal diaries separately from the psychological diary. How much suffering, how many emotions we sometimes experience while writing a personal diary. All our tears remain on the pages of a notebook or small notebook, they remain in absolutely all words, in every letter, in every comma or period. These are tears of joy, sadness, fear, resentment, happiness, anger and many other feelings. There is no need to be afraid of anything, because if a person is honest with himself, he can be honest and open with other people. And this is my last answer to the question of why keep a personal diary.

Thus, I came to the conclusion that a personal diary can be different, its content and type depend only on its owner. I said a lot, so, for sure, someone perceived it as reality, someone as naive stupidity, someone even considered it empty nonsense. And all conclusions will be partly correct. After all, we are different, everyone has their own thoughts and their own worldview. This means that keeping a personal diary will not be interesting or important for everyone.

It’s amazing that such a simple thing as a personal diary can simultaneously be a creative laboratory, a caring psychotherapist, a source of memories, a tool for self-development, and most importantly, a reliable shelter behind which you can be absolutely honest with others and with yourself. Even more surprising is that all these qualities are often not realized even by those who once tried to keep regular notes in their notebooks, notepads and diaries.

Keeping a diary is not fruitless soul-searching. This is not an activity intended exclusively for young girls and teenagers who need to sort out their feelings and sentimental experiences. And this is not just a prosecutorial, businesslike recording of the events that happened to you over the past day.

It is also wrong to think that journaling is only for prominent people who “have something to say.” It's true that among famous writers, scientists or artists, it is difficult to find anyone who does not keep records intended only for themselves. But even if you do not claim to be a genius, this is not a reason to abandon this useful practice. In addition, there is always the possibility that you are still a genius, and many years after your death, your heirs will receive substantial fees for the publication of your diary.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Nausea

For the most banal incident to turn into an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient to tell it.<...>Every person is always a storyteller, he lives surrounded by stories, his own and others, and sees everything that happens to him through their prism. So he tries to fit his life into the story about her.

Diaries are written to be written, read and re-read. Here are some answers to the reasonable question “what is this for?”:

• to pour out on paper and realize those feelings that cannot be trusted to others;
• to figure out what you want from life;
• to understand how well your plans correspond to reality and whether you are moving towards their implementation correctly;
• to better understand other people and learn to take their point of view into account;
• to practice expressing your thoughts and learn to reason;
• to recognize and change harmful thinking habits and behavioral patterns;
• to develop intuitive thinking and creativity.

What to write about

Who am I?

A piece of paper that “will endure anything” is almost the only place in this world where you can be yourself. This may be said too categorically: in the end, each personality is multifaceted and needs different contexts for its realization. But the honesty and openness achievable in a diary are very rarely available to us in other areas of life.

In your diary you can reflect on your past and make plans for the future. This is a well-known exercise: try to imagine what kind of life you would like to lead in 5/10/15 years? Then relate what you are doing now to your long-term intentions. If the pictures don't add up, maybe it's time to change something. In this practice, it is the recording procedure that is useful.

If you think about the future, the gaps between dreams and reality smooth out. In the recording they appear clearly.

If you don't know what you want to do in this world, a journal will help you get closer to understanding your strengths and deep intentions. Record in your diary what brings you joy and causes genuine interest. A person immersed in business may suddenly realize that under the business mask there has always been the soul of a poet. The diary will provide him with the opportunity to develop this particular side of his personality, without forgetting about the others.

If you have been keeping a diary for several years, rereading it will reveal your personality in dynamics. How have your priorities and values ​​changed? What was important to you then and what remains now? This is how keeping a diary helps you see your life as a holistic, albeit incomplete, picture. The diary brings unity and length to a series of broken moments, in it “each moment carries the burden of everything that preceded and the germ of everything that follows” (Lydia Ginzburg).

Lev Tolstoy

Resurrection

I didn’t write a diary for two years and thought that I would never return to this childhood. And this was not childishness, but a conversation with oneself, with that true, divine self that lives in every person. All the time this I was sleeping, and I had no one to talk to.

With the “true self”, perhaps Lev Nikolaevich went a little too far. The diary does not remove all social masks, because this is impossible. But it helps you understand which one fits you better. Perhaps this understanding will lead to a change of masks, a change of personality. As Susan Sontag wrote in her diary, “By disguising my behavior, I am not protecting my personality - I am overcoming it”. The right way to change something - to understand how it works. The diary does not just record what is happening around; it changes its owner. Usually for the better.

If you suffer from low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence and see only the negative in everything, journaling can help you overcome these bad thinking habits and look at the world more realistically. This is exactly how a diary is used, for example, in cognitive behavioral psychotherapy. This is not only useful, but also absolutely free (unlike visits to an analyst and antidepressants).

There has been recent scientific evidence of the benefits of journaling. Psychologists from Duke University (USA) discovered that writing down exciting events and one’s own experiences not only improves memory and well-being, but also reduces the frequency of visits to doctors.

Timothy Wilson, one of the authors of the study, writes about it this way: “Writing interventions like this can really help people start thinking positively and believing in themselves.” own strength"; “Writing makes people understand everything that bothers them and find new meaning in it.”

People prone to self-flagellation usually ignore praise, but react extremely sharply to any critical remarks. If you keep track of times when you were praised, either explicitly or implicitly, you may be surprised to learn that others don't treat you as badly as you thought. When you are depressed after another failure, re-read the notes about joyful events and situations when you showed your best side.

After this, it will become much easier to believe that the world is not so bad and hopeless, and all difficulties are surmountable.

As one of the Buddhist thinkers said, the “I” given in reflection is not the true “I”, it is constructed by the mind. But it is a mistake to think that this “I” can be found somewhere else. Think that real man does not reflect, but commits actions that are at least naive and unfair: you need to do both.

How do I treat other people?

The constant heroes of the diary are not only ourselves, but also our loved ones. Some people keep a diary solely to vent their resentment, anger, feelings of loneliness, abandonment and misunderstanding that haunt them in their relationships with others. And here you can figure out how this relationship works: why do you repeat the same mistakes? What do you expect from your loved ones and how justified are these expectations?

You can write notes in the format of an “unsent letter”, expressing to the end what you cannot say in real communication. You can try to take the position of another person and write a monologue on his behalf: how does he see the current situation? maybe you are missing something and from his point of view everything looks completely different? Such exercises help develop empathy and the ability to see the world as a multidimensional space of choice and assessment, in which everyone is right in their own way.

A diary will not replace live communication and real relationships. As Theodor Adorno wrote, “we do not become free people because we ourselves, as the terrible saying goes, we will implement each alone, but due to the fact that we go beyond our own limits, we enter into relationships with other people and, in a sense, abandon ourselves in them.” For self-development, it is not enough to create a safe platform for yourself where you can “water and grow yourself like flowers” ​​- this requires other people and real actions. But a journal will help you understand what you want from them, what is really important to you.

If you can give yourself an honest answer to these questions, then building relationships with other people will become much easier.

An example of using a diary to solve personal dilemmas can be found in the biography of Charles Darwin. When it comes to marriage, he writes down the negatives with the meticulousness of a naturalist (“ infinite set troubles and expenses... disputes due to the lack of company - morning visits - a daily waste of time") and the advantages of this enterprise ("it is impossible to lead a life alone, without participation, without children... Don't be discouraged, trust in chance - look closely around - there are many happy slaves"). And in the end he makes a decision: he definitely needs to get married.

Diary as an intellectual and creative laboratory

A diary can become a place where vague thoughts and experiences are melted into precise formulations and artistic images. You don't have to be a professional writer or artist to think and imagine. Creative skills- these are not class privileges. They are accessible to anyone, but not everyone uses the entrance. A personal diary is exactly the place where you can think and fantasize as much as you like and not be afraid that someone will judge you for your naivety and graphomania.

Write down in your journal thoughts and ideas from books you read that resonated with you. Make reference lists. Create verbal portraits of people and thinkers close to you. Make sketches. Make up. Paste in photographs and magazine clippings. Make collages. Write down your dreams (the list goes on and on).

Pablo Picasso

Spanish artist, sculptor and designer, founder of Cubism

Painting is just another way of journaling.

The diary assumes complete freedom of expression: here you can do whatever you want. But over time, you will realize that certain forms of expression come easier to you than others.

The personal diary as a form of writing appears to have first appeared in Japan. The diaries of Japanese court ladies and poets, recorded in the 10th-11th centuries, have reached us, where prose easily flows into poetry. Some fragments from these diaries may also touch the modern reader:

“If only my thoughts were the same as others... I could find more joy, I would feel less old and I would observe this transitory life with peace.<...>When dawn broke, I looked outside and saw ducks swimming serenely in the lake.

Ducks in the lake -
Can I look at them?
Indifferent?
Crossing the stormy waters
Sad world and me.

The birds looked so serene, but they, too, must often suffer, I thought” (Murasaki-shikibu. Diary. XXIII. 13th day of the 10th moon).

As writer Tristina Rainer points out in her book The New Diary, the diary form corresponds to all four basic mechanisms of human perception, which include emotion, sensation, intuition and intellect. Try to develop each of these qualities, avoid monotony. And then, quite possibly, the diary will become fertile ground for you to develop ideas that will go beyond its boundaries and find embodiment in real creative projects.

Five rules for keeping a diary

1. Write honestly.

As honest as possible. Even in entries that no one except you will see, you will be embarrassed or ashamed to write about some things. It’s worth taking a closer look at where this awkwardness arises, where you yourself are hiding the truth from yourself. No one deceives a person as often and successfully as he himself. But it is much easier to recognize the sources and causes of self-deception in a diary than in mental reasoning.

2. Contain your inner censor and critic.

We not only hide the truth from ourselves, but also strive to present our sincere experiences in an unattractive way. This role is played by the internal censor - the embodiment of the Freudian “super-ego”, that is, internalized social attitudes and ideas about “how it should be.” He is accompanied by an inner critic, for whom subtle artistic taste and depth of reasoning are more important than sincerity. To get rid of these annoying creatures, try writing in stream-of-consciousness mode. Write down everything that comes to your mind: images, experiences, vague sensations and memories.

Reflection is useful, but it is far from the only way understand what is happening to you and your life.

3. Write for yourself.

We are accustomed to the fact that any message is intended for some addressee. But a personal diary should not be aimed at the public (this, by the way, is one of the many differences between a diary and a blog). If you write for an audience, no matter how narrow, your inner censor and critic will mercilessly edit your message. Better try to write for yourself. Perhaps a good recipient would be your future self reading the diary in a few years.

4. Pay attention to detail.

So that you can then recall past events in your memory, try to record the details and shades of what is happening. If you simply write “it was bad,” it will tell you much less than “I’m lying here on the sofa, thrown out of the world with one kick, lying in wait for a dream that doesn’t want to come, and if it comes, it will only touch me, my joints hurt from fatigue, my thin body is exhausted by a trembling of excitement, the meaning of which it does not dare to clearly understand, pounding in my temples” (quote from the diary of Franz Kafka).

5. Use paper and ink.

This is a recommendation here not because of inertia and retrogradeness. When you take notes by hand, your handwriting can say as much about your feelings as the words themselves. In addition, you can carry a paper notebook with you everywhere, unlike a laptop (and taking notes on a smartphone is not very convenient). Sometimes just feeling the rough surface of the paper notebook in which you write in your hands is enough to feel a sense of confidence and security. It is better, by the way, to use notebooks with clean sheets, not lined diaries. The main thing is to choose writing accessories so that keeping a diary gives you pleasure.

Some people believe that journal entries should be written daily. It seems to me that this is not at all necessary.

It is better to write when there is a desire or need to understand something, so that keeping a diary does not turn into another boring “must”. But at first, before a habit has formed, you will have to force yourself to open a notebook and write at least something. But if the first words are found, the rest will be found.

Do not forget that each diary is a reflection of the personality of its owner (even if incomplete and distorted). Therefore, these recommendations are somewhat general in nature. But even they should not be taken too literally. What works for the conventional Leo Tolstoy may be completely useless for you. The individual style of keeping a diary develops over the years and changes over time. But to understand how a diary can benefit you, you first need to start one.

Have you listened to long-winded analysis of events long ago? days gone by? Well you know when older generation tries to sort out the events, explaining who thought what, what they did, what came of it. Weren't you surprised that over time, the assessment of facts and emotions sometimes changes beyond recognition? This is especially evident if you yourself took part in the events being analyzed. The fact is that this is human nature. Opinions change under influence new information, thoughts are erased, going into oblivion. In order not to miss out on invaluable experience, to preserve data about events in their original form, the idea of ​​keeping a diary appeared and took root. This is when people write down their fresh impressions, thoughts, ideas. This is a useful matter, sometimes extremely important. But not everyone knows how to keep a personal diary. And the rules are simple. Let's get to know them.

Selecting “physical media”

Now it is customary to write down your thoughts “for public use,” that is, on the Internet. Not everyone will like this, and technically it is not always convenient. If your thoughts concern only fleeting events, then you can post them on a social network. But why expose something secret to everyone? If you are interested in how to keep a personal diary, then start with goal setting. Answer yourself the question: what is it for, what do you expect from it, do you want? An ordinary notebook will help you preserve emotional experiences, priceless impressions, and exciting sensations. Most often they take a total of ninety-six sheets. And even with a hard cover. The diary is often kept until old age. So, the carrier is needed so that it can survive moving, floods and other shocks, and not crumble into pieces after a few years. People who are inclined to draw buy albums with thick covers. It's just awkward to write in them. A notebook is much more practical. Psychologists have noticed that people live exactly the way they keep a personal diary. Someone chaotically makes notes only from time to time, his path is tortuous and thorny. Others try to regularly put their thoughts on paper; they are prone to thoughtful decisions and a stable strategy.

How to start keeping a personal diary

From the first entry, the author’s personality begins to emerge. Some, not knowing how to keep a personal diary, talk about themselves. There are even official biographies. There's nothing wrong with that. This is individual creativity. The most interesting thing, it seems, would be to state the reason why this notebook appeared in your life. Maybe many years later, when you re-read the entry, you will be surprised by your thoughts or experiences. Creative personalities They can include their favorite poem or stanza in the “epigraph”. Sometimes they just draw what’s in their hearts. It is recommended to date this significant event. You will then be interested in what period such an interesting idea matured. Although some people start and stop taking notes. It's OK. If you want to know how to properly keep a personal diary, then understand that this is not an obligation, but a “command of the heart.” There are no strict canons. There is something that you personally like.

What should I write in it?

Here you can give some tips. Regularity of recordings is a personal matter.

It is recommended to create content that is interesting and meaningful. Most likely, a person who is interested in how to keep a personal diary has not yet internally matured to write it. The soul does not yet “ask for a pen.” People who are ready for self-expression take a notebook and begin to write, not being particularly interested in other people's advice. But thinking process good ability to develop. The desire and ability to express oneself and analyze events can be acquired through practice. So first, write down vivid impressions, thoughts. Some people try to recount exciting events in detail. This is useful in order to understand them correctly. Especially when it comes to feelings, subtle moments, extraordinary cases. The style will come later, in the process of work. It is quite possible to change it. You are not going to write a test, but to implement the dictates of your soul.

Start with goal setting. For example, your decision to keep a diary is based on the desire to record thoughts so that you can later understand them. This means that you should state not only what comes to mind, but also the circumstances under which this happens, which influenced you at that moment. It is important to describe how you see people with whom these thoughts came to you, naturally, if they are connected with them. It doesn’t hurt to share on its pages your general impressions of books you’ve read, movies you’ve watched, or shows you’ve watched. Almost everything that comes into our field of vision during the day can become the topic of a new “post”. Once you practice, you will be surprised at how rich life is with events and impressions. Beginning writers are recommended to present what has touched or excited them, focusing on the reason for such a reaction. This will help you better understand yourself and the people around you.

A little about needlework

Some people are interested in how to beautifully keep a personal diary. Philosophy and psychology can be boring for people with creative inclinations. They leave the analysis to those with their heads in the clouds. And they are looking for an interesting thing for themselves. Here are the cards in their hands.

A diary can be made into a real work of art. Naturally, it is recommended to decorate it in a style that especially touches you. For example, embroidery lovers create covers for notebooks. Enchanting creative process and an amazing result. One can argue, but most of the entries in such a diary will be devoted to beauty. Nowadays many girls are engaged in beadwork. Why not create a cover using miniature beads. Each page can be decorated with a “monogram” of them. It will be beautiful and original. This is just one topic. And there are many of them. Based on your preferences. Maybe you don’t want to write, but rather make collages in your diary. So who's stopping? The main thing is not to forget what they meant!

Secret or not?

There is such an extremely subtle question. There are few people so open that they are ready to throw out any feeling on others. And they are unlikely to keep a diary. Others wish to keep the records confidential. Therefore, the question of where to keep a personal diary sometimes arises. One piece of advice: if you want to have a secret, don’t share it with anyone. What two people know is known to the whole world, so popular wisdom says.

It’s worth making another recording alone. Firstly, so that no one gets confused. Secondly, in order to hide information from indiscreet eyes. You know, the literature describes cases of keeping diaries using codes. Hardly to an ordinary person I'll like this. First, give birth to a thought, then encrypt it using a special key, then write it in your notebook. It is difficult, however. Therefore, it is advisable to simply not loom with your secret in front of those from whom you want to hide it. As long as they don't suspect it, they won't reveal the secret.

Relation to records

Diary as a strict controller

Sometimes records are made with the goal of “taking a tight rein on yourself.” This comes to mind for very purposeful people. Believe me, the one who gives up what he started is unlikely to control himself. What can you write there in this case? Start with what exactly you want to achieve. For example, lose weight. Write down all the rules and restrictions. Now all that remains is to state how you adhere to them, when and why you violated them.

Keeping your own diary is a fascinating and extremely useful process. Try it, you won’t regret it, as the famous joke says. Good luck!

Many people don't understand why keep a diary. Others don't understand what they can write in a diary. Still others think that keeping a diary is a teenager's game. And only a few know how useful a diary can be. So, 10 reasons to start and regularly keep a diary.

1. A diary allows you to achieve your goals.

Any goal must be written down. An unwritten goal can simply fly out of your head, and you immediately forget about what you wanted. The written down goal gains strength by being deposited in your subconscious. When you write down a goal, the brain itself begins to look for ways to achieve it, just like an autopilot. Ask people who haven't achieved their goals whether the goals were written down - in most cases the answer is no. On the contrary, most people who achieve the desired results always have written goals in front of them. Write down goals in your diary: for five years, for a year, for a month, for a week, for the next day - success will be guaranteed.

2. Journaling increases your level of awareness.

By writing down our thoughts, observations and comments every day, we get the opportunity to look at ourselves from the outside; think again about whether we are living the life we ​​want to live, whether we are doing the things we want.

3. A journal helps you preserve your brilliant ideas.

Agree that we all have brilliant ideas from time to time. But, either we are busy, or there is no pencil at hand, or we are already getting ready to go to bed. How many brilliant ideas are lost this way? Don't let this happen to you - look at geniuses such as Leonardo da Vinci - he kept a diary.

4. Journaling increases self-discipline.

When you write down a plan for the next day in a diary, you are much more likely to get everything done than if you kept everything in your head. There is no getting away from writing “jog at 7.00” in your own hand.

5. Journaling helps you express your thoughts better.

By keeping a diary, you become a writer, a journalist who describes the life of one very interesting and good man- You. This way, you improve your writing and speaking skills.

6. Journaling allows you to draw on past experiences.

By flipping through a diary, we can look at all the things that happened to us in the past. We can use this invaluable experience in the present and in the future.

7. Journaling can build self-confidence.

Look at all that you have already achieved since, say, birth! Firstly, you were already born and learned to read if you have read this far))
When I re-read my diary, I am amused by how the goals that I set for myself several years ago seem ridiculous and elementary to me today. It gives me a boost of energy and positivity every day.

You can also build your self-confidence by doing a simple exercise: every day, write down at least 5 things you have accomplished and enjoy the results.

8. A diary makes your actions much more effective.

In a journal, you can record your experiences for the day. This will allow you to gain the experience and wisdom you can only dream of. Imagine: there are 365 days in a year. Every day you are visited by several discoveries, insights, several thoughts. How many of these useful thoughts will come to your mind in a year?

For example, in your journal you can write down answers to the following questions:
What did I do well today?
What could I have done differently?

9. Journaling helps you get rid of negativity

All positive thoughts written down on paper gain strength. Negative ones, on the contrary, lose their power. If you have accumulated negative experiences during the day, there is no need to pour this heavenly nectar on your family and friends, share your thoughts in your diary.

10. Become your own coach

Answer questions that are important to you in your diary. Focus on what is truly valuable to you in life. Learn to look at any situation from the outside. And sometimes look at yourself from the outside too. Achieve the results you truly deserve. The diary will help you become your own coach!

Do you write a diary?