How to use a Journal by Jim Rohn full audiobook

Hi everybody, this is Jim Ran. Over the years, I have repeatedly encouraged people in search of the good life to make use of a journal. Invariably, at the conclusion of a seminar, a number of people are sufficiently inspired by learning of the effect journals have had on my life to start using one of their own.

Unfortunately, inspiration and enthusiasm quickly fade in the face of all those blank pages. Instead of finding new answers to life, the journal seems to open a floodgate of new questions such as, "What am I supposed to write? Should I only write about business events? How often should I be writing? What kind of journal is best? Does spelling count?"

The purpose of these tapes then is not only to explore the incredible value of recording your life's experiences, but also to examine the endless uses and methods of keeping a journal. Hopefully, by the conclusion of this program, your questions will have been answered and you will be confidently embarking on a new adventure and achievement with the vehicle of pen and paper.

The first thing to understand about a journal is that it's your book. And because it is yours, you must be the one to select the size and style you feel most suits your needs and personal preferences. Like a favorite armchair, a journal must be comfortable enough that you will want to go to it often. You may in fact find yourself experimenting with a variety of journals over the years as your needs and tastes change.

During the past 25 years, I'd be willing to bet that I've tried almost every conceivable system of capturing ideas on paper. From loose leaf binders and file cards to dime store notebooks and hardbound volumes, I've had big journals and little journals, journals with line pages and journals with blank pages, all of which met a certain need at a certain period in my life. And believe me, you too will undoubtedly go through half a dozen different methods over the years. And that's to be expected. As you continue to grow and develop, you will soon discover that last year's systems won't likely meet this year's needs. You see, one of the keys to success is flexibility. We must always be on the search for more effective methods to facilitate and accommodate new ideas.

But let's face it, in the beginning, the only thing that matters is that you develop the journal habit. The journal we've included with this tape program may or may not be exactly what you're looking for, but just start using it. Like ordering Chinese food for the first time. The only way to find out which dishes you will or will not like is to try a few. By using this journal to get you started, you will not only develop the journal habit, but you will also discover in the process of using it what you like or do not like about it. Then when you finished, you can always look for a journal that is more tailored to suit your specific needs. And I would suggest that when you go to buy your second journal that you take the time to get just the right one. Remember, the use anything received will always be in direct proportion to how it makes you feel when you use it. The color and material of the binding, the texture of the paper, the width of the lines, or the absence of lines are important considerations. If you feel lines tend to restrict your creative flow, then go with blank pages. If you feel uncomfortable with blank pages, then choose line pages. Hey, it's your book. Make sure it reflects what you are.

My latest journal is a leatherbound volume for which I paid handsomely, but it's worth every penny I spent. The richness and the smell of the leather in themselves are enticing. It's enjoyable just to hold it in my hands. And two, it's important to me to know that unique ideas are being stored in a suitable place. Somebody once asked me why I pay as much as I do for an empty book. And my answer was simple. I intend to put something valuable in it. Let's face it, you wouldn't store precious gems in an empty cigar box. So why put a million dollar idea in a 10-cent book?

Just one bit of advice, however. Bear in mind that a journal should be capable of going wherever you go. A journal that requires more space than your briefcase permits or more room than your desktop allows for you. More often than not, it will be left at home. Gathering dust instead of thoughts and cobwebs instead of observations.

But let's get to the heart of the matter. Buying a journal is the easy part. The real challenge lies in filling it up. And that's what we want to deal with now. What should go into a journal if it is to have meaning and value in your life? Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to consider the purposes and functions of a journal. Once the matter of why we should write is clear, then the what we should write will become immediately apparent.

There are so many functions performed by a journal that I could conceivably spend the remainder of this tape and a half a dozen others discussing them. But since more important than listening to my reasons for why you should be keeping a journal is getting busy actually using your journal, I'll try to limit the list and merely highlight some of the majors.

One of the unique characteristics of a journal is that it offers you an effective way to figure it all out. To figure out life, to figure out people, to figure out business dilemmas, and most important of all, to figure out yourself. There is something magical about writing down a problem. It is almost as though in the very act of writing what is wrong, you start to discover ways of making it right. Perhaps the source of this magic lies in the objective perspective that writing affords you. Even though you are describing your problem, your challenge, your life, your uncertainty, and your indecision, the fact that you are writing about it as opposed to mentally pondering it creates a space between you and the problem. It is within this space that solutions have room to grow.

You see, writing about events and circumstances that occur helps you to clarify exactly what is happening. When we describe life to ourselves only in our minds, our imaginations tend to feed false or distorted information about how things are, positive or negative. When we describe a situation in writing, however, we become more factual, more accurate, and certainly more realistic. Then, as we reread what we have written, we create a new picture in our minds to replace the distorted picture we have been working with. And once we finally see things as they are rather than as we think they are, we can then see our way clear to make them better.

At the conclusion of this program, you might in fact want to use this process to get your journal started. Write about a current dilemma you are facing. Perhaps it is a personal problem, a business matter, a family issue, or a financial problem. Whatever it is, take the time to capture it on paper the way it really is. But remember, writing out the problem is only the first step to creative problem solving and effective decisionmaking. The next step is to carefully analyze what you have written. Here are some of the key things to look for.

First, exaggerations or distortions of the truth. Are you really telling it like it is? Take another look. Perhaps your concern is making it seem worse than it is, or your enthusiasm is making it seem better than it is. Second, a tendency to blame circumstances or someone else for your problem instead of seeing yourself as the cause. You see, most of our difficulties are the result of either failing to do what we could have done or in doing in haste what we should never have done. Third, a tendency to expect circumstances or still worse other people to change in order for your problem to be solved. Let me remind you one more time that things get better when you get better. Passive hope never has and never will improve human circumstances. And finally, look closely for weak points in the obstacle where you might attack to bring that obstacle to its knees. Remember, David slew Goliath with but one small stone. It usually doesn't take much more than a few minor adjustments in either our attitude or our action plan to solve a major problem.

Essentially, you must learn to view your problems like a scientist who puts tiny organisms on a slide. Examine your circumstances through the lens of the microscope of truth to see their real nature, their real perimeters, and their real composition. And two, as you examine your problem, do as any scientist would do. Record your observations. You see, as you continue to refine your statement of the problem of the way it really is, you will begin to move closer to the solution. And speaking of solutions, be sure to record the ultimate conclusion to your dilemma. If it worked well, then it is worth remembering. And if it didn't work well as you had hoped it would, then it is even more essential to record the outcome, lest you should find yourself repeating mistakes instead of learning from them.

Mistakes and judgment are nothing to be ashamed of. Surely most of our personal growth comes as a result of our errors. But what is truly unforgivable is to make the same mistake twice. Every mistake has its own price tag. But the most costly error anyone can make is an error unlearned and often repeated. If something didn't work, it may be too late to undo the mistake. But it's never too late to make adjustments and revisions in your thinking. You see, better decisionmaking comes from the better thinking habits. And better thinking habits comes from practical experience. Learning both what to do and what not to do. Becoming a more effective thinker on paper is a sure way of becoming a more effective person in practice.

As step one for getting used to using your journal, then I would suggest writing down problems that you encounter and recording all the steps you can take or did take to solve them as well as their eventual outcomes. Now, I realize this is only a suggestion, but please let me offer you a bit of advice about suggestions. You see, many people will hear this suggestion, agree that it sounds like a good idea to try and even go so far as to mentally agree to do it sometime. And therein lies the problem, that nebulous word sometime. We all know what happens to the promises we make to do something tomorrow or next week or as soon as we have a chance. Somehow we never quite get around to doing it. My advice is that if you think a suggestion has merit and that it's worth trying that you promise yourself you will do it. Make a firm commitment now at the conclusion of this program. You will have chosen one of my suggestions and that you will not do another thing until you have opened your journal and written at least one page. Otherwise, to be perfectly honest, you might as well stop the tape now and give it and the journal to a friend. For surely if you lack the discipline to start a journal, it is highly unlikely that you will ever have the discipline to continue to use one either.

This leads us into a second function of your journal, which is the capturing of good ideas. How many times as we go through the day do we come across a good idea, a unique quote, an interesting piece of information, or even a significant personal discovery. And each time we do, we mentally say to ourselves, "I must remember that." Now, I'm willing to admit here that the human mind is a remarkable thing. But I also know from experience that the human memory leaves a lot to be desired. I think Emerson captured it best when he made this statement. "I suppose that every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which has significance to him but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page." How true. What we do not somehow capture today is lost forever. There are a lot of things in life that we can trust, but my experience has taught me that the human memory is most definitely not one of them.

There are so many sources of insight and inspiration all around us. Good ideas flow in abundance from sermons and lectures, from books and magazines, television documentaries, business meetings and conversations. But obviously for you to capture the ideas, it is essential as I mentioned earlier that your journal always be at your side. I remember one time attending a church service in Carmel, California. The sermon that Sunday morning was excellent. So I opened my journal and started taking notes. But out of the 400 people in attendance that day, guess how many of the others were taking notes? Not one. So there I was taking notes in my journal from this sermon. And pretty soon the people around me were starting to give me strange looks. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see them nudging one another and whispering. I felt like some kind of spy. I could almost hear them saying, "He's going to get out of here with some of this stuff." And sure enough, I did. I got the stuff. So, what I'm suggesting is that you get in there and get out with some of the stuff. Let other people sit there thinking they can remember it all. Let other people treat opportunity casually, but not you. I would ask you to treat it seriously. Let other people wonder at the end of their lives where it all went wrong, but not you. Let other people play while you work. Fool around while you study. Soak up the sun while you soak up ideas. 10 years from now, they'll still be trying to figure out how to pay the bills or wondering why their marriage isn't working out or why they don't seem to be getting ahead professionally, but not you. Life always rewards the serious students for their labors.

So, since we all know that it's nearly impossible for most of us to remember the exact phrasing of an inspiring line or the specific details of a business conference over an extended period of time, we've got to get serious about capturing it. Now, generally, if we wait until the end of the day to describe events and happenings and conversations in our journals, the specific details have already escaped us. At best, we are left with scattered fragments, and it's hard to build an exciting future from mere bits and pieces of the past and present. So, I would encourage you to get it all down as it comes your way. Financial ideas, personal development ideas, time management ideas, family ideas, business ideas, everything you have the good fortune to come across. If an idea is worth listening to, worth reading, worth remembering, then it is also worth capturing in your journal.

And there are many reasons for making the effort to capture good ideas. Not the least of which is the fact that the simple act of writing something on paper helps to etch the idea more firmly in our conscious minds. To hear it or see it or read it is one thing. To take the time and make the mental effort to capture it with paper and pen is so much more. Second, every idea has its time and place. As Victor Hugo once wrote, "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." Perhaps the ideas you capture today will not have any specific meaning or purpose in your life at this moment. But ultimately at some future point in time when you march into battle, the armory of ideas you have carefully and conscientiously assembled over the years will serve you well.

Here's another interesting phenomenon about ideas. As we collect a variety of thoughts on any given theme or subject, there is a tendency for these individual ideas to come together and form themselves into a whole new idea, much as the single flakes of snow when gathered together can be formed into snowballs and snowballs into snowmen. Or perhaps a more graphic example would be that of the igloo, which is after all a dwelling built entirely of tiny snowflakes, which have been compressed by their weight and frozen together over a period of time, such that whole blocks of them may be cut out to build a structure. The successful human being is one who has learned to diversify his interests and gather knowledge from a variety of sources. Gather enough good ideas in one area of life and you will form a solid block. Gather enough solid blocks together and you can construct a whole new life.

But be aware of one thing. The mental storage bank of good ideas is very much like the bottom drawer of our desks or the extra drawer in the kitchen that holds a collection of valuable items gathered over the years, none of which can ever be found when we go to look for them again because of the chaotic manner in which they were stored. We pour information into our mental computers much like we dump old letters and store coupons into the extra drawer. Helter skelter and hence irretrievable. One of the first things we attend to when setting up a new business is the development of a filing system for records so that we can easily locate information whenever needed. When we move into a new home, we carefully pack all of our possessions in clearly labeled boxes so that we can find something again in a hurry if needed. But when it comes to facts, to ideas, to observations, we have no system, as though they are incidental rather than essential to our better future. Your journal then provides you with a means of logically assembling and storing the pieces of information that come your way.

Now, there are many ways to assemble the data in your journal for easy reference. For example, you might find it helpful to keep an index at the back of each volume so that you merely list the highlights of your entries so that your index might read like this: "Financial ideas pages 55, 396, and 104" or "Ideas for increasing company efficiency pages 46, 82, and 111." At one time I used to keep three journals. One for personal observations, one for business notations, and a third for creative ideas for a book I was writing. Of course, it didn't take me long to discard that system. Carrying three journals around the world is no easy task. Then I tried using three colors of ink in the same journal so that at a glance I could focus on any one of the three areas. While it was certainly easier carrying three pens than three journals, it was still somewhat of a cumbersome system. When the ideas are flowing fast and furious, you don't always have the time to search for a red, a green, or a blue pen.

The method I finally settled on was setting aside certain sections of my journal for specific uses. For example, at the back of my journals, I have a separate section for recording my goals, for listing interesting quotes, and for thoughts on new speech material. Perhaps you may want to set aside part of your journal for specific ongoing projects or interests that you feel might warrant a section of their own. Choose one of these methods or devise a new one, but make sure you set up some kind of system. Remember, failure more often than not is attributable to lack of information about how to succeed. Each of us has the capacity to seek out the information we require to achieve our goals. Unfortunately, we do not all have the discipline required to gather the data systematically so that the raw material is easily accessible and ready to be put into practical use the moment opportunity presents itself. How sad it would be if opportunity came knocking on your door, but you had to keep him waiting while you rummaged through drawers and files for the key. Undoubtedly, by the time most people have finally located the key, opportunity has long since become impatient and gone on to knock on the door of someone else.

Next, by taking the time to capture and assemble information in our journals, we now have the added benefit of being able to review these ideas whenever we wish. You don't have to run back to the library to reread the book you borrowed last year or call a friend on the phone and try to reconstruct the conversation you had last month. If you've captured the essence of the conversation or the highlights of the book in your journal, it will always be there for you to refer to. And here is the key point. For your journals to have their greatest value, they must be frequently reviewed. You see, writing in journals is merely a way of capturing information. But it is by rereading our journals that we begin the process of translating information into practical knowledge about ourselves, our environment, our relationships, our businesses, our financial affairs, our dreams, and our own better future. I would strongly urge you to set aside a day each week or at the very least each month to review your recent entries and then once a year take all of your journals off the shelf and read them from cover to cover. What you read will probably make an incredible story of personal growth.

You see, more than anything else, a journal is a place to document the development of your own life. It is a textbook of self-discovery and self-awareness. In fact, sometimes what you don't write can be as revealing as what you have written. A friend of mine recently shared with me the discovery that in rereading her journals, she realized that everything she had written centered around other people's lives, their accomplishments, their failures, their dreams, their needs. "I finally realized," she said, "that I had spent most of my adult life as a mirror reflecting everybody else's existence rather than as a human being living a life of my own."

In the pages of a journal, our innermost feelings and dreams are revealed, as are our strengths, our weaknesses, our positive attributes, and our negative habits and characteristics. If not in the words themselves, then at least between the lines of what we have written are the shadows of self-doubt, pride, envy, jealousy, and anger. Just as actions speak louder than words, so too will journals often say more than what we have written.

A journal then should also capture your observations and reactions. For somewhere between what we see and what we do will be revealed what we are. Capture on paper the events, the circumstances, and happenings of your life. Describe the near miss you had while driving to work on the freeway. Outline your observations of people's behavior at the office party. Paint the picture of your day at the beach, the pounding surf, the soaring gulls, the distant sails. And then when you have written about what your eyes have perceived and your ears have heard, go one step further and describe your feelings, your emotional responses to life. Describe your feelings when you learn that John got the promotion that you felt was rightfully yours, or when you learned that Sally is getting married next month to your ex-husband. Describe it all. Don't miss any of the events of your life. Capture the joy of your victories as well as the agony of your defeats. And remember, it doesn't have to be a monumental occurrence to be worth capturing. Truly, most human lives consist of and evolve around minor happenings. So, even a minor event and your response to it can have a major impact on how your life turns out.

You see, part of the human experience, perhaps the most important part, lies in learning to translate these events which occur outside of us into words and emotions within our inner worlds. The better we become at describing what goes on around us, the better we will be able to understand some of the conflicts and turmoils which take place within us. Cause and effect always go hand in hand. Trying to understand or deal with the effects without a clear picture of the cause is a rather hopeless situation to be in. Remember that all human emotions are effects which can be traced back to particular events or causes. A better understanding of events will always give us a clearer picture of the effects we may be experiencing.

Also on the subject of events and feelings, you will find as you begin to open up and really tell it like it is that your journal becomes an excellent empathetic friend. One who will listen to all you have to say about your joys, your pain, your fears, or your concerns. And I would strongly urge you to get these emotions out of your head and onto the page. For powerful negative emotions are diminished by writing and powerful positive emotions become explosive. You see, writing about your fear reduces its strength and capturing your excitement magnifies its power. And feel free to say it all. These are your private collections, your personal recollections. They are not going to be read aloud at the next staff meeting, used in court against you, or published in the New York Times. Write freely. Don't let anything inhibit your flow of your thoughts. Write in half sentences. Break all the rules of grammar and punctuation if you choose. Draw pictures. Make diagrams. Anything goes. Neatness doesn't count and neither does spelling. This is one place where you should feel free to say it all and say it as you wish. By the way, if you feel uncomfortable abandoning the rules of your 8th grade English teacher, then this too should tell you something about yourself. Hey, you are even free to do the worst thing of all. Use somebody else's words. Glue in newspaper articles, cartoons, quotes, whatever you wish. No one is going to give you an F for plagiarism in your journal.

There is only one suggestion I would offer concerning the format of your journal, and that is to record the date, time, and location of each entry. Not only will this provide you with a means of measuring your progress, your growth trends, the different phases of your life, and your changing attitudes, but where and when you write can in themselves provide interesting revelations. A man wrote to me several months ago to share such a discovery he made from his journals. It seems that in reviewing his writings of the past year, he had noticed a definite negative pattern emerging. Every entry on a Wednesday afternoon or evening outlined thoughts of self-doubt, discouragement, and uncertainty about the direction he was headed in. It did not take long for him to track down the source of those defeating thoughts. Wednesday was the day when he had lunch with two colleagues from his former place of employment. To test the validity of his theory, he flipped back to the Wednesdays when, due to illness, vacations, or business matters, the luncheons had not taken place, and sure enough, there were no negative entries on those particular days. Having reached the conclusion that these luncheons were costing him far more than the price of the meal, it did not take him long to take the necessary steps to solve the dilemma.

Others have discovered such interesting tendencies as writing about personal concerns while at the office and business matters at home or feeling particularly inspired and eager before leaving for the office in the morning and completely exhausted and innovated by 10:00 a.m. Remember, everything affects everything else. Your environment, your associations, your family, your friends, even your occupation has an effect on you. So too do the books you read, the television programs you watch, and the conversation you engage in. But influencers are often very subtle, making it difficult to detect the effect they are having until the damage is done. Like tiny little holes in a tire which can go undetected for hundreds of miles, the little pin pricks of subtle negative influences will eventually leave you just as deflated after a while.

Your journal then becomes like a photograph album capturing moments in your life. The only difference is that a photograph album kept for many years reveals physical changes in yourself and your environment while journals over a period of time reflect mental changes within yourself and about your environment.

But perhaps the most important function your journal performs lies in the area of communications. First and foremost, your journal gives you a chance to talk to yourself and to hear what you are saying about your life, your future, your relationships, and your goals. As you begin to develop the habit of writing down your problems, recording your observations, emotions, and reactions to life's events, you will undoubtedly find yourself both posing and responding to a whole new set of questions about your past, present, and future. "Why did I say that? Why does he always make me feel that way? If I follow this course, where will I be 5 years from now?" As you begin to both ask and answer yourself on paper, you will be amazed at the incredible leaps in personal understanding and self-awareness you will experience. And remember, any positive change which occurs within you will ultimately manifest itself in a positive result outside of you in your social or professional world, your attitude, your bank account, your habits, and even your appearance.

We stand forever exposed to life and to the endless variations that make up the human drama. Our task as human beings is twofold. First, we must effectively translate what is going on around us into terms we can comprehend. And second, we must effectively express what is going on within us into terms the rest of the world can understand. Despite the major technological advances enabling us to communicate globally and perhaps even extraterrestrially, I would suggest that while our means of communication has greatly improved, we are still living in the dark ages when it comes to saying what we mean and understanding the meaning of what is being said. As William James wisely observed, "The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's." As much as we live together, work together, try together, grow together, discover together, explore together, and even pray together, man is truly an island unto himself, cut off from other human islands by the deep channels of non-communication.

Writing in your journal is one of the best ways I know of to develop more effective communication skills. As you become better at describing life to yourself, you will find that you become better at describing yourself to life. Put into more practical terms, as you become better at saying what you really want and how you really feel to yourself, you will be able to better express yourself and your feelings to others and in return better able to understand what others are really feeling and really saying to you.

You see, communicating with people our own age or who have similar educational backgrounds, incomes, professions, or beliefs is a relatively easy process. But what about the two people who are to all outward appearances radically different? A teenager and a 40-year-old father, a high school dropout and a college professor, a successful lawyer and an unemployed autoworker. Now, the real challenges of communication begin to manifest themselves. But they are challenges that using a journal can help us overcome. You see, regardless of the differences in our outer worlds, inside human beings are all basically alike. We've all known sorrow. Maybe not from the same event, but we've all experienced the emotion. We've all known the joy of achievement, perhaps in different circumstances, but certainly the same feeling. Regardless of our outward differences, those basic human needs and emotions will always provide a common ground or build a bridge for effective human communications.

You see, by the time we have reached adulthood, most of us have experienced almost every aspect of the human drama in one form or another. The problem is that most of the experiences have gone right on by us. We have never taken the time to capture them, to ponder them, to analyze how we felt at that time, how we responded to others while we were in those circumstances, or what our priorities and needs were during that period in our lives. Suppose, however, that you took the time to capture the events and happenings of your life on purpose with paper and pen so that you always had a wealth of experiences from which to draw. Imagine now what an incredible impact this awareness could have on your life. How it could help to bridge the gap between you and your children, your clients, your associates, your neighbors. You see, if you will but take the time to capture how it is for you at any given point in your life, then you will always be in a position to relate to how it might be for someone else at this moment in their lives. The situations might be different, but the basic needs and emotions never are. We don't have to dress alike or go to the same schools or be the same age or sex to feel the same way.

Use your journal then as a textbook for life. Use it to capture the full range of human emotions that you continuously gather from your experiences. I promise you that if you will take just a little time to capture your experiences, the end result will more than repay you for the time you invest.

Now, here's another question frequently posed about using a journal. The question is, "How often should I be writing?" The answer to that is simple. As often as you wish and as often as you need. There are two extremes to avoid. Never writing in your journal and constantly writing in your journal. In the first instance, you will be participating in life without capturing it. And in the latter case, you will be capturing life without participating in it. Life should be a delicate blend of both observation and action.

And let me stress again that the first discipline to be mastered in using a journal is to develop the habit of always having it with you. If you do not open it for weeks at a time, that's okay. Just get into the habit of carrying it without much effort on your part. Plenty of opportunities for putting it to use will present themselves. Also, the simple act of carrying your journal speaks to the world. It says, "I am a conscious observer and participant in life's events." When you present yourself to life as a serious student, life will respond by providing you with an endless opportunity to learn and grow and develop and enhance any and all aspects of your life.

Remember, no tape program, no book, no seminar, and no encouragement from me can help you to develop the discipline to use your journal. Experience has taught me that the most I can hope to do is trigger your interest in enthusiasm. Recently, I had the chance to address a group I had spoken to several months before. The last time I had been with them, I had given one of my all-time best speeches on the importance of thinking on paper with a particular emphasis on using a journal. They were an enthusiastic and responsive group, and it appeared from the many letters and cards that flowed in after my speech that my ideas had been particularly well-received. However, just after I was introduced the second time, I asked the group one question. "How many of you are now using a journal?" I am sad to report that out of a group of almost 500, only a few hands were raised. The rest of the audience exchanged sheepish glances, much as you might give your doctor when he asks you if you have cut down on smoking.

The mysterious workings of the human mind never cease to amaze me. We all know what is good for us. We all know that it will keep us healthy or happy or prosperous. But somehow we fool ourselves into believing that we'll start tomorrow. "Tomorrow I will buy that book and read it. Tomorrow I will go on that exercise program. Tomorrow I will speak to John about that problem." Some people will actually listen to this tape, agree that keeping a journal could indeed change their lives dramatically, and yet never get around to writing the first page. But don't let that be you. I assure you that by the time you have finished listening to this program, the only thing that will stand between your intent and your accomplishment will be your ability to discipline yourself to get started. And believe me, once you get started, once you make the effort to begin, once you develop the journal habit, you'll be giving your own lectures to friends and associates about its rewards.

In the final analysis, whether you decide to start a journal, and still more important, whether you exercise the discipline to use it, the decision and the action must come from inside you. No wise counsel from any source will ever replace the intensity that comes from a personal commitment to excellence. It is often said that reality is the best beginning and perhaps it might also be the best beginning for your journal. One of the first entries you will want to consider making is a complete account of how it is for you right at this moment in your life. What's got you turned on? What's got you turned off? How is it going at home, at work? Are you happy, frustrated, excited, perplexed, worried, doubtful, or any or all of the above? You may want to write a brief description of how it's going in each area of your life and honestly tell it like it is. Perhaps in your writings, you will uncover a particular void in your life that needs to be filled or a major obstacle that must be tackled if things are to work out for you as you want them to. Use your journal to then chart out a course of action to eliminate whatever is standing between you and your better future. Examine your progress. Outline the steps you've taken or could still take. By the time you've dealt with these issues, your journal will have already become invaluable.

If you find you are still having difficulty getting anything on paper, one of the first entries you might consider making is an explanation of why you bought the journal in the first place. If you will but pause to consider what you hope to achieve by using a journal, then what to put into its pages will be obvious. If, for example, you bought a journal to record your feelings, then write about your feelings. If you bought it to keep track of business developments, then write about your meetings, your clients, and the ideas you have about improving the products or services of your company. A journal should be used in response to a specific need. A need to express, to analyze, to ponder, to explain, to record, to consider, or to examine some or all of the elements and aspects of your life. And remember, there is no correct set of procedures for keeping your journal. Journals are as unlimited in possibilities as are the individuals who use them. Journals and life share one unique characteristic. Both provide you with a space to fill as you wish.

And for those who are not yet sure how they wish to fill life spaces, a journal offers you a chance to paint mental pictures of the limitless paths you could travel. In a novel, an author places imaginary characters in imaginary circumstances and then predicts their behavior and responses to these events. So, be the author of your own life. Create on paper a set of circumstances, then place you in the middle of them. How would you feel about doing that? What would it be like to live in that city, being there? How would you feel having those responsibilities or those freedoms? Pick a direction and travel with your imagination to new environments, to new positions, to new opportunities. Create on paper an ideal job. Describe an ideal relationship. State an ideal income. Outline an ideal code of personal behavior. Design an ideal lifestyle. Then take your dreams and transfer them into written goals with priorities and deadlines. List the specific steps you must take in order to achieve them. And then write out a detailed plan of action. Take your dreams from your mind to the page and then take them from the pages of your journal and make them happen in your life. Learn to paint these mental pictures and then like an artist create something of substance on the canvas of your life using all of your available resources. Add new color, new depths, new dimensions, new meanings to where and who you currently are by exploring where and who you still can be. Set yourself free and explore the possibilities of life with paper and pen. There's no risk involved. You cannot fail. Stretch yourself mentally. Expand your inner horizons and you will find that life will respond in kind by presenting you with new opportunities and associations, new experiences from which to grow and learn and new circumstances in which you will become more than you had previously dreamed possible.

Remember the advice of Napoleon Hill who wrote that "Whatever the human mind can conceive and believe it can also achieve." Ponder also the biblical suggestion that "As a man thinketh so he becomes." And know without the shadow of all doubt that whatever you create on the pages of your journal, you can with enough belief, commitment, discipline, and desire create in your life.

In closing, I would like to share with you the following thoughts from Will and Ariel Durant's 100-page masterpiece, The Lessons of History. "Civilization," they wrote, "is not inherited. It has to be learned and earned by each generation. A new consider education not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates nor merely the necessary preparation of the individual to earn his keep in the world but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical and aesthetic heritage as fully as possible to as many as possible for the enlargement of man's understanding, control, embellishment and enjoyment of life. If a man is fortunate, he will before he dies gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath, he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life."

Gather up all you can. The hopes, the sorrows, the lessons, the friendships, the achievements, and the disappointments. Gather it all that it may teach you, and in turn that the lessons you have learned may become perhaps part of the legacy that you leave behind for your children and indeed the world at large. Let your journals capture your personal history and in doing so they add to the history of all mankind and to our collective heritage. Truly the most valuable treasure anyone can leave behind is the knowledge they have acquired in their one lifetime. It has been suggested that what we are, a unique creation of unlimited possibilities and potential, is God's gift to us. And that what we do with all that we are, the works we do, the lives we enrich, and the contributions we make are our gifts to God. May your life be devoted to becoming all that you can become, and may your journals capture every moment of the adventure.