Writing without Hurry: A Mindful Meditative Approach to Journal Writing and Personal Transformation

A book about journaling mindfully and meditatively...

Writing without Hurry is a how-to, self-help book for the serious journaler and anyone interested in growth and personal transformation. Effective journal writing is a meditation and a way to understand your own psychology. It is learning to reflect on your own situation and to make sense of the things that trouble you, and it is a way to find solutions for the serious problems you face. Journaling is one of the best tools for change, but those results only come when you write seriously and with a structured method. That is what I teach in Writing without Hurry.

Most books on journal writing or keeping a personal diary encourage you to express your thoughts and emotions in a free form, no-holds-barred style, which is great for emotional expression, but not so good for solving problems in your life. This book is different. Its focus is on writing for psychological and emotional change, and it builds on psychological research about the ways the journaling experience can be used for self-understanding, internal transformation and building a concrete plan for your life. Through a series of guided exercises, you will learn to write thoughtfully and use your journal for serious introspection, for understanding complex subjects and for understanding the important questions in your life.

A step-by-step method of inquiry is presented which leads you to important insights and practical ideas for improving the quality of your life. You will learn the specific style of writing and recommended format for journal entries guaranteed to lead to growth and personal change, and you will learn ways to slow down your writing so that you learn to write thoughtfully and mindfully. Writing mindfully is important because you want to bring your full attention to what you are doing every time you sit down to write. You want your journal to help you, and writing thoughtfully is how you make sure it does. Bringing mindfulness to personal writing is the reason I wrote this book.