Like many, I make New Year’s resolutions each year, and — like many — I rarely ever keep them. Only eight percent of Americans stuck to their resolutions in 2014, and, sadly, I was part of the 92 percent who postponed their goals for another year. In spite of this failure, I still find the process of making resolutions constructive. I have a written record for each year of what I found lacking in my life. Be it a want for more sleep or time with friends, the records of my shortcomings have — over the years — shown shifts in my values. Reading and reflecting on past resolutions gives me a distinct perspective on my annual mental state that helps me improve, even if I’m not actually successful in fulfilling my resolutions. If more Dartmouth students engaged in this sort of self-reflection, I think this school would be much happier.
Even more effective than tracking past New Year’s resolutions is keeping a journal. The benefits of “expressive writing” include better memory, improved health and even reduced mood disorder. A recent New York Times article, titled “Writing Your Way to Happiness,” detailed the scientific studies that led to these conclusions. To quote the article, writing down your personal thoughts to alleviate stress and anxiety at the end of the day is no longer “self-help nonsense.” The benefits of journaling are grounded in research.
As someone who has kept a journal on and off for the past five years, this research doesn’t surprise me. The memory boost one gets from recording daily life is perhaps the most obvious result. Parceling through the events of a day can save some real gems of memories from being lost into the vague heaps of weeks on end. This is why I first began to journal. After reading enough of Shakespeare’s sonnets, many of which suggest that memories can only withstand “the wreckful siege of batt’ring days” when preserved, fossil-like, in “black ink,” I was prompted to write for fear of forgetting all of high school.
While I can’t say in concrete terms how much recording the day-to-day of my high school career improved my memory, it undoubtedly changed the way I think about everyday life. I like to believe that intentionally thinking about the small events in my life has led me to experience more “moments of being” — the moments Virginia Woolf envisioned as when an individual recognizes his or her everyday action as a part of the larger, connected world. The mundane becomes imbued with intense meaning, which can certainly make walking across the Green in subzero temperatures a little more exciting. Seeing my life in writing — even if it is just a quick jot about how cold my hands got one evening — seems to make it less meaningless. It’s there, it’s preserved and it’s eventually going to fill my notebook.
Another benefit of keeping my own journal — one based less on the authors I read in high school — has been lower stress levels. Recording my worries allows me to more easily identify and track their causes. Once I know the cause of my worry, I can go about fixing it. The Times article likened this process, one I’ve experienced firsthand, to editing one’s perception of his or her life. Humans err, and sometimes they misplace the blame. When an individual records his or her “personal narrative,” though, it becomes easier to correctly identify obstacles and the sources of one’s anxieties. With our fast-paced academic terms, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by all the stressors we experience. If we were more thoughtful about identifying and addressing them, I believe we would find life at Dartmouth much more manageable.
Indeed, few would dispute that students here are a stress-prone bunch. In large part, I think this stems from the fact that we’re not a self-reflection-prone bunch. Turning inward and examining one’s deepest thoughts — motives and fears, hopes and frustrations — is an act of vulnerability. It’s also an act of self-realization and ultimately self-care — you can’t fix yourself if you don’t know what’s wrong. It may seem difficult at first to fit writing your thoughts in a journal into your day, especially when it’s already midnight and you have to wake up at six. While it may at first seem arduous or time-consuming to record your thoughts each day, it pays off in the long run. Write daily. Make it your 21 Day Challenge. It’s one resolution you’ll want to keep.
