Positive effects
“Hey, Chris, I don’t really care about writing, so why are you telling me to write?” The answer is simple.
Writing is a healthy activity that enriches our lives and our skills in this complicated life.
Writing is like setting out to interview yourself to find out who you are. This is largely a solo mission that will test your endurance like a hike in the desert. You will explore under the rocks and in the shadows of your mind, looking for life. Your treasure will be unearthed in the form of points of inspiration and ideas. You will ultimately find something that will reward your efforts.
The Start of Something
Most of the time people don’t like doing things. You probably don’t even want to be reading this right now. You probably wish your A.I. assistant was doing it for you.
Getting started and firing up those engines for something new, at first, can be overwhelming. So much so, that it detours a lot of people from ever doing it, ensuring that they feel like crap at the end of the day from lack of activity.
This is why persistence is the first quality that often shows itself, especially if you are stuck in a mundane routine or you’re unmotivated. The quality of persistence will stay with you after your session has ended. Nurture it and it will return the favor. Writing specifically may feel daunting if you aren’t sure where to begin, and for this reason, getting started will be your first win.
Once you get the ball rolling a bit you will feel that built- in excitement. With some careful thought, you’ll fill up your reservoir of ideas and terms, which will further crystallize into conflicts, resolutions, and points of meaning that you want to put in your work.
Use writing to unearth the lost plans and ideas in the back of your head that you allowed to turn dormant. Take all the inspiration that comes your way. If an idea resonates with you, jot it down in your notes and figure out a way to use it.
Deciding to write can shock your system in some even more gratifying and useful ways. You’ll soon find its about more than just the writing.
Build-Your-Own Personality
Adding a layer of activity in your life, like getting a hobby, will lead a person to a more well-rounded personality. This addition to your self gives you confidence in the same way that saving money little by little naturally raises your sense of financial confidence and stability. Increasing your set of writing skills will add a depth of character to you that you may not have felt since the last time you committed to something new.
Conversations will be more fun when you have life experiments to share with others, and your satisfaction with your efforts will animate you!
Creating Good Habits
CAUTION: MAY BE HABIT FORMING. When you make a healthy habit of setting aside 30 minutes a day to write, this will direct your brain to contemplate what to do with your time the second you get finished, like its tuning your brain to picture your day more long-term.
This will help you to organize your time in an automatic way, making you eager to plan out the things you’re going to do with your day. Even if your next planned activity is only to reward yourself by planning to bang out a session of the game you’re currently playing. With any luck, you’ll be planning more productive tasks to do after you’re done playing video games.
Writing down what is on your mind is a good habit in general. You give a home to your ideas when you write them, which makes room for you to generate more. After you do a 30 minute writing session, you may even get a feeling to write down an actual to do list, which is an outstanding way to keep stress off your mind and get more things done. Then you’ll level up to somebody with better time management! Which is a habit that feels better than any game trophy.
Document your Life with Writing
With a journal, you get the benefit of exploring your day with the use of words. You ponder what happened, and find the correct-fitting vocabulary to describe what happened to you that day. It encourages you to give an accurate account of all of the successes as well as the dramas that you went through.
Check out my other post where I talk about writing making you be more honest.
Recapping your day with a few sentences will also greatly aid in settling down your mind for the evening, especially if you are prone to over-thinking. It will reassure you that you participated in perceiving all of the moving parts in life, and help you to process them. It helps you tame the complexity of being alive, and puts you more at ease to take on the next day.
Getting out of a Rut
Writing can help you get out of those ruts that we find ourselves in. It can even help you to excel. We’ve all been there, to those points where we lose sight of why exactly we are hustling so hard. Maybe its been a while since our last big win or commission check. Maybe you’re sick of your career altogether and aren’t even sure what you would rather be doing.
In these times of question, we can harness the power of writing to bring back some perspective. We can understand better what we feel, and why we feel it, when we ponder what to write on a page. Sometimes writing about our current situation can help us identify an ideal, a better version of ourselves to strive for. It’s a good feeling to do a writing exercise where you describe the best situation your life could be in. This works wonders for DE-rutting yourself and continuing to thrive.
So why write? Because writing makes you a better person than you were before you did it. Many good writers have great reasons why they write. You have redefined or enhanced your definition of yourself as you practiced the art, as you continue to do every time you sit down and confront a blank page. That fresh start is part of the beauty of craft.
Why do you write? We would love to hear exactly what you get from it!! Please leave a comment and share.
Here’s an exercise for you to do to help you answer your question of why you should write. Ask yourself these two questions, and respond to each with at least a paragraph.
- What is one problem that exists in the world that you think would be helped by writing?
- What is one single thing about yourself, or your life situation, that you feel would be aided by writing?
Mind of Liberty 