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Living in society conditioned us to accept social norms as the ultimate truth, and breaking out of these societal frameworks was not easy for me. The first thing my Mentor did was to remove me from society for a long period and make me completely isolate myself from it («make» in a good sense – he didn’t force me, but I automatically regarded each of his recommendations as an unquestionable truth and a guide to action).

The first step toward breaking down my beliefs and opening new channels of perception was keeping a diary. There are different types of diaries, and for many years I practiced various forms. Like many things in my life, I did this with particular diligence, considering it one of the most important tasks: to be honest first and foremost with myself and with God.

Coming home from work at night, exhausted, I would sit down to write in my diary for 3–4 hours. Then I’d sleep for 2–3 hours and go back to work.

This was a difficult period in my life – with crocodile tears, I dragged out everything I desperately wanted to hide. Especially fragments of the day involving conflict situations, when I wanted to scream at the top of my voice: «I’M NOT GUILTY! IT’S ALL HIS FAULT!». At such moments, I would stop and examine the situation especially carefully from the perspective of: «IF TWO PEOPLE ARE INVOLVED IN A SITUATION, THEN BOTH ARE RESPONSIBLE».

I forced myself to see the situation through my opponent’s eyes. The more my inner voice screamed «IT’S ALL HIS FAULT!», the louder I told myself: «No! You’re justifying yourself too persistently. Let’s find where YOUR MISTAKE was. Let’s see the situation from this person’s perspective, put ourselves in their place».

I learned to LIVE WITHOUT JUSTIFICATIONS.

I eradicated the «little girl syndrome» within myself – the pattern where your opponent is always the «parent unfairly punishing the child», and you are that child in the situation.

I learned to SEE THE TRUTH.

Later, other forms of diary keeping helped me further: diaries of FACTS and EMOTIONS.

There are diaries of events, thoughts, emotions, and facts. If you keep these diaries separately, you begin to detach emotions and thoughts from yourself, to see that they are NOT YOU but something foreign. And most importantly – YOU CAN CONTROL THEM.

«Try saying not “I am angry” but “I have anger”», my Mentor once told me. «In the first case, it feels like anger controls you – you can’t do anything about it, it overwhelms you. In the second case, anger becomes something secondary, small. I comes first, and anger is ‘with me’ – meaning I can easily control it».

I began to keep diaries in this form, and it significantly changed my perception.

If earlier I might have written something like:

«Ira came in a weird looking dress, angry, and said everyone was getting on her nerves»,

now I wrote:

«Ira came wearing a grey cotton dress. Her eyes were blazing, her nostrils flared, and her voice was two tones higher than usual. She said: “Just now, my boss asked me again to do his work. Him and the CEO are so annoying – always dumping their responsibilities on me!”»

Do you sense the difference?

In the first version, if I told someone about this situation, they would picture Ira as looking strange, wearing odd clothes, and unreasonably angry at the whole world. But when reflecting the facts, we see that there’s nothing strange about her appearance, and she’s not angry at the whole world – only at her two bosses, and quite justifiably so.

The tendency to embellish events leads us to convey distorted pictures to others through our words. But more importantly, we eventually start to take as gospel truth what we once said, and over time, this «made up world» becomes a reality we begin to believe in.

Carefully recording the facts teaches us to see the TRUTH – to see the world as it really is. But most importantly, it removes our inner «screens», and we begin to see the ESSENCE OF THE UNIVERSE.

Keeping a Diary: Additional Benefits

Keeping a diary brought several more advantages:

I developed a photographic memory and can now reproduce verbatim who said what, their posture during a meeting, and other details.

I began to see the interconnections between events – you start to clearly observe which event followed which, and to discern patterns. This, in turn, allows you to take control of your life: you eliminate unnecessary events and introduce those that will trigger a chain of positive outcomes you desire.

For example, you may start to notice that after meeting a certain person, the projects you’ve been carefully building begin to fall apart. Just when results seem within reach – something happens. And this repeats over and over. With diary keeping, this pattern becomes completely obvious to you. Once you know the cause, you can decide how to address it. You might either end the relationship with that person or help them find their true path, so they change their life. The choice is yours – but in any case, you eliminate what was previously disrupting your endeavors.

Keeping a diary is directly linked to reviewing the past, which is an essential part of self development. Reviewing your past allows you to see past situations from a new perspective – through the eyes of an adult – which means you can recognize and correct mistakes, and consequently change your life path for the better.

This practice helped me acquire many useful qualities, and I recommend it to everyone on the path of personal development and self knowledge.