What Went Right

I've been keeping handwritten karate journals for years. Cool drills, notes on kata (forms), insights from my sensei (instructors), my own insights, and to-do lists are recorded in the pages of a few spiral notebooks.  I even keep a mini-notebook and a pen in my gear bag just in case. I have filled out at least two of those. All paper, all hand-written, and yes, precious to me.

At first blush it doesn't seem like these handwritten journals are all that meaningful.  The filled spiral notebooks sit on a bookshelf. I'll transcribe drills or bunkai (interpretation of forms) to a spreadsheet, but that's maybe ten percent of what I write about.  The other 90% of what I write sits in the notebooks never to be read again.  Most of the time I only glance through the last few entries if I've forgotten what I want to work on.

So what use is the practice of journaling if I barely look at what I've written? For me the act of writing something down means it'll stick longer. I believe there's scientific studies to back that up, but I'm not going to bother citing them. This practice works for me and that's enough. If it works for you too - great! If you want to try it for yourself - that is absolutely fantastic! Go for it!

Here's a powerful practice I've recently added into my journaling: I write down what went right.  This can be as specific or general as I like. I can extend this to my attitude, or to another person's positive response. Because the act of writing by hand helps me to retain what I've learned, why not retain the idea that I have things that I can be proud of, there are people who made me smile, and yes, I have improved in specific ways?

Here's some examples of things I've journaled:

"I am making steady progress on correcting (specific bad habit)."

"I made a video I can refer to if I get stuck next practice."

"Today I was super excited about coming in to practice."

"Mary asked a question that made me think and as I taught her we both learned something."

"Sensei told me he appreciates me being available to teach while he's out of town next week."

At a tournament recently I absolutely wasn't at my best. Because I built the habit of journaling "what went right," I was able to see past the discouragement.  Yes, there were specific negative things, and I'll own my stuff and decide what to do about all that.  But for me the weight of an "off day" is lightened when I record the positive. The positive gives me incentive to put in the work I need to do in order to push past that one bad day.