EP.8: Happy New Year! Let’s Review.

Writing in your journal can be therapeutic for your mind and soul. It can also be a way to process your thoughts in real time – so you can better understand yourself and know what you want next. However, the number one reason journaling has been so impactful in my life is not in the daily writing. It’s in the review! In this episode I’m talking all about how I look forward, by first looking back. I’m so glad you’re here! Let’s dive in.

Hi friends! Happy New Year!

It’s 2023 – I can’t believe it.

The day I’m recording this is Thursday, January 19th 2023. I had a good holiday season. I hope you did too. I took a few weeks off, to just regroup, rest, and spend time with my kids. And to get some more things in my new house in order. It was just a really restful, restorative end to the month of December and the beginning of January.

I don’t know if your holidays felt like that (I hope so). Or if they felt busy and over-scheduled – like an amped up version of what you normally experience on a day-to-day basis. The holidays can feel like there’s too much when we already have lives that feel like they’re too much.

I’ve been doing this thing where I really allow myself to just settle in once the busy of the holiday is over. I’ve done it now for at least the last four years. Once Christmas day is done, and gifts have all been opened and the dinners have all been eaten, and the concerts have all been attended. I take time in between Christmas and New Year’s. Sometimes it even bleed into the week after New Year’s depending on what’s happening in my life. Which was the case this year.

During that time, I don’t schedule much. It’s a time to just be. To not get out of our pajamas if we don’t want to. To watch movies and eat popcorn and snuggle in on the sofa and just reconnect as a family. It’s probably my favorite time of the year. And I always know the time is coming. I know it’s time I’ve set aside.

I’m telling you all of this because part of what I do during that downtime is a big overarching review of all that I’ve journaled in the previous 12 months. That’s what this episode is all about.

As I’ve listened back to a few of the podcast episodes, I talked in depth about how I started journaling and why I journal and what I get out of it on a day-to-day basis. But I haven’t really talked about the best and most prominent reason journaling is so helpful.

Yes, it’s a way to get down my thoughts and it’s a way to know what I think. It’s a way to dream about the future and it’s a way to pray. It’s a way to feel like my thoughts are no longer swimming around in my head; instead they’re down on paper and I can go about my day, leaving those thoughts behind.

Those are all really great benefits to keeping a journal. But my absolute favorite benefit is the review. I try to do it monthly. Sometimes if I’ve had a really busy or crazy week, I’ll do it at the end of a week. This happens when I want to regroup. When time has moved so fast I haven’t had a minute to catch my breath and I can’t tell you what day of the week it is because they all blur together. Re-reading what I’ve written is a way of reflecting. But it’s also a way of adjusting. Of realigning where I’m headed before I veer too far off the track.

Without fail, at the end of the year, I will sit down.

I’m not going to lie, this takes time. I’m not going to sugarcoat that part – it takes time. When you have journals full of words from the previous year, going back to read those journals is like committing to reading a novel.

To be clear, I don’t scan. I actually read what I wrote on every page for every date there is an entry. Of course, some of the things I find are just cringe-worthy and I often wish I wouldn’t have written them (hindsight is such a gift). Often those cringe-worthy words were written on days when it felt like I was in such a desperate place. Where it felt like that particular day the sky was actually falling or whatever the circumstance was felt insurmountable.

But there are also words I’ve written that are reminders. Reminders of what I told myself I wanted -whether at the beginning of the year, or midway through. I’m not talking about goals. I’m talking about those little thoughts you might write down as a quick, “by the way…” because you know no one’s going to read your words. And then you promptly forget you wrote that little “by the way” thing.

You go about your business and then you go back one day to re-read and you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, I still feel that way.” It wasn’t as little or insignificant as you may have thought in the moment.

Looking back is a way to regroup and see how far you’ve come. It’s a way to see with better perspective and more time on this earth under your belt, what gifts were given to you that you may have just passed over in the moment because they happen so quickly.

For me, I started to look back at where I was last year. I haven’t really talked about this too much here on the podcast, but I was in the middle of going through a divorce. At the beginning of last year it was final and I was really hoping to buy a house. But that wasn’t the plan God had for us right off the bat. We had to make a temporary move in transition.

When I looked back I found in my journal pages that I wrote back in January, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this time next year, I woke up in my cozy bed, in my cozy room, in the house that we own. I’ll look out the window and be ever so grateful.”

What’s really precious now, when I read those words, is how earnestly that girl a year ago, wanted that very thing. And this year, when I read that, it just touched my heart, because I did wake up in my cozy room, in my cozy house, with the big windows and the natural light pouring in in the morning, in the house I own. I’m so grateful.

Here’s the other thing I want to say about that. It’s fun to see those surprises. To know what you were yearning for longing for a year ago, or six months ago, and see clearly how God has taken that request and fulfilled it. But there will also be requests that haven’t yet been fulfilled, that haven’t yet come to fruition. And that’s okay.

I just want you to notice when you look back and read something you wrote weeks or months ago, what’s still true.

What’s still true will hit you in a different way than words you wrote that were just filler – things you said in your journal where you were just filling space, if that makes sense. There are thoughts I have, that aren’t relevant to the conversation, but they’re written in my journal nonetheless. Those aren’t necessarily important in the review.

But the little tidbits where I can see the thread woven through the year, how a certain topic or subject came up over and over – that’s when I know it’s something to pay attention to. It’s something to keep praying about. It’s something to keep writing about. Those things matter.

I talked before about the idea that your journal is a sacred container for all of your thoughts. And it is. But it’s more than that. I feel like it’s a treasure chest you can go back to and peer into. To see all of the gems and wisdom and knowledge and gratefulness that you’ve collected over the course of a year.

I’ve also mentioned in the past, I do hope at some point my girls will go through my journals when I’m
long gone, of course. Just so they can see the life that filled the days more than the tasks. That there’s heart and desire, and there’s sadness and there’s gratefulness, and there’s
learning and there’s hope.

It all belongs.

This year, as I look ahead to 2023, I’m filled with hope. I’m not yet done going through my 2022 journals. Apparently I had a lot to say. There’s more written words this last year than probably any other that I’ve had. Which is good, but it’s also tedious. My hope is that I’ll get to share a couple of other tidbits as I go along and re-read.

In a couple of weeks, it’s my birthday week. I always feel an extra benefit in the month of January because January 1st, of course, feels like a reset or restart. A new beginning. But then my birthday happens to fall at the end of the month and so I get another reset on January 31st. I feel like that’s truly my personal New Year.

Around that time I’ll be sharing what my “word” is for 2023. I’ll talk about how I discovered that word, or how it discovered me. How I was never a believer in that concept until a couple of years ago and how impactful it’s been on my life.

In general, I just want to say if you’re listening, I’m grateful you’re here and I hope to add even more benefit, more instruction, more wisdom, and more hope to your life.

I’m working on a journaling course that’s going to be really easy for you to consume. I’m working on opening my coaching practice and will be providing small group coaching as well. In general, I’m just really excited for the year to come and I hope you are too.

As always, you can send your questions and comments to me via email at hello@bestillwithbobbi.com.

Thank you for being here. Here’s to the new year!