Journaling can be good and healthy and helpful. Journaling can also bog us down.

Some of us journal and rehash all the things that we obsess about anyway, so the journaling is just an extension of our usual mental clutter. This kind of journaling reinforces our negative neural pathways, the very ones from which we'd like to escape.

Some of us journal to establish new, healthier neural pathways, that is, we work toward clarity. Obviously, using journaling in this way is more likely to result in healing and growth.

I've done both over the years. When I look at some of my early writing–what pain! It was exactly that; I could see myself reinforcing the self-pity, the suspiciousness, the anger. It was like a friend reciting the same old litany of complaints I'd heard a hundred times before. "Stop!"

I do a lot less of that now. Now my journal is more likely to celebrate insights, explore new ideas, investigate possibilities and reach more deeply into creativity and joy and wonder.

Even journaling evolves and becomes healthier–a tool for establishing increasingly stable, less reactive, more loving responses. Satisfaction. Peace. Release.

So rewire. Here's to new neural pathways!

Text and image ©