Intellectual Wellness: Write Down Your Thoughts
When I was a young teenager, I began journaling. My mom encouraged me to do it as a method of prayer and contemplation during my quiet times. Once I began, my mind was opened to the wonderful world of exploring my thoughts and deeper contemplations on paper. I have filled dozens of journals and digital notebooks since.
As I mentioned, I treat my journaling as a prayer opportunity because the core of my wellness rests in my value system, which is a place of faith for me. Anchoring my intellectual wellness to my value system is how my deepest thoughts and mental contemplations are worked out through a lens of truth and love. From there, my thoughts can healthily move toward my intentions, attention, connections, and actions. It all begins with exploring those thoughts and connecting them to my values, and writing them down assists in that exercise in a way I am not sure anything else can.
It is also truly wonderful to have years of my life written down. Thoughts come and go so quickly. If we can catch them, bring them together to form sentences and paragraphs, and write them down, we have captured something intangible and made it tangible.
I receive a “word of the day” every morning in my inbox, and this morning’s word was “hinterland” which means an area lying beyond what is visible or known. This is how I feel about writing down my thoughts. It is an exploration, an opportunity to visit somewhere new, an exercise to make sense, to refine, to work out what may seem jumbled when fluttering by my consciousness.
I encourage you to visit the hinterland of your intellectual wellness by writing down your thoughts. Perhaps you’ll find yourself talking to “someone” else as I do with the Creator and Lover of my soul and Caretaker of my deepest thoughts.
Write down your thoughts and be well!
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