Why you should write

How much would you be willing to pay for a lifetime counselor - Someone who could listen to you every day or meet you every few days, and could give you all the answers of life? Maybe you want to talk simple stuff or maybe you want to sort out the most complex situation of a lifetime that you are faced with, and have no clue what to do.

What would you give to have the best guide of the world available for you all the time?

Read it again. Think.

What would you give to have the best guide of the world available for you all the time?

You don’t know the answer to that. Neither do I. But the truth is that if it was possible, we would do it happily because then we would have all our answers straightaway. Life would be simple, direct and productive because no time would be lost in the search for the right answers. So, what would it take to get a guide or counselor like that? Well, nothing really. Because you are the guide we are talking about.

For a minute, without any reason, without any logic, believe me when I say that the best guide you will ever have, the best counselor you will ever know, is no one else but you (I wasn’t humoring you when I said, you are awesome!). How? Let’s find out…

Getting to the answer of any question involves certain logical steps: Getting together all the data you have, the considerations you want to attach, processing data into information, and then assigning the weights for each consideration, following the elimination process and then to continue doing this repeatedly till the time you are down to the last option: the final answer. To do this mentally is possible but mostly a challenge because it requires you to hold all of these thoughts in your mind and do all the processing simultaneously. Also, in case of a disruption in your thoughts you may just lose your chain of thoughts and when you get back to it the next time, you may have to start from scratch.

To put it in one line: to get to a final answer, you should be able to think clearly, consistently and in a certain logical way. Then the answers to all your questions will start coming to you very quickly.

Unfortunately, if we were all able to think clearly, consistently and logically all the time, then we would never get confused, never dilly dally on decisions, never ever be uncertain in our lives. But that does happen, right? Possibly, often. So, what is the answer then?

Write.

Write it down. Take a piece of paper, a pen and just write down whatever comes to your mind in answer to the question you have. And keep writing. If your thoughts are disrupted (someone called on the phone, you had to go somewhere, …) stop where you are. Attend to the other things and when you have a moment to yourself, pull out that piece of paper and read what you wrote earlier. If you are done reading, and have some spare time, start writing again.

To make it more effective, write down your question at the top of the page and then write your thoughts below it.

Keep writing till whatever time you want. And don’t try to synthesize your thoughts. Write them as they come. But only write the thoughts relating to the question you are trying to answer. Write for a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, … till whenever you feel like, till whenever time permits, … just stop when you have to and get back to it when you can and keep writing about the same question until you get the final answer.

I can assure you that no matter how tough the question, how confusing the situation, you will find your answer. Without consulting anyone (you may talk to get information, but you wouldn’t need advice), without doing anything else, you will get the answer to your question. How? Here’s the deal: When we write what we do is we run through the exact process mentioned above to answer the question, but without the pressure of holding the thoughts or starting afresh every time.

And every time when you get back to writing, when you read what you wrote earlier, you start thinking from that point onwards, not from the beginning. As you keep doing this, the information organizes itself in your mind and then gradually comes down to the last option: the final answer.

And this is a final answer you will trust because all the thought process that went into it, the reasons you eliminated the other options, … it’s all there, today, tomorrow, day after, … if you ever doubt your final answer you can go back and check how and why you came to it. This, unfortunately, is a skill that our mind cannot master (initially).

You would probably ask, why can’t we do this mentally? I mean we all do ‘think’ about the issues we have, challenges we face, … then why this need to sit down and write. I agree with you. You can ‘think’. And many people are able to do it very effectively. But holding the thoughts together, starting from where we left off and not repeating ourselves is something that is difficult to master.

Also, writing is something that demands you as a physical resource. Your eyes, hands, mind, everything is tied in when you write. Hence, fantasy is a luxury that you can’t afford. If you are thinking about something then it doesn’t need any energy to imagine things. In your imagination you create an imaginary world where everyone else is also an imaginary character and you play out a story. So, effectively you started thinking about the question and thought about it for sometime but still walked away without an answer to your question because you got distracted by something that could not provide you the answer, or if it did, you are probably not sure about it. Have you thought of all possible options? Have all considerations been included?…

Writing does not let this happen. You would never write “I need to call X” in between a sentence but you would probably ‘think’ that when thinking of something.

As children we were encouraged to write down things but as adults, unfortunately, our peers place a premium on not writing things down. Making lists and writing journals is looked on as being ‘soft’ or being ‘sissy’. Get out of that mindset. Liberate yourself. Give your mind the space it needs and the tools it needs to help it get you answers quickly to all the questions that are troubling you.

Do the ‘soft’ things, break away from the accepted mould, identify your questions, find your answers and be awesome! (ok, you already are, but I just thought of reminding you about it!:)

PS: Write your thoughts and questions in the comments and we will come back to this idea in another post, soon :)