Let me start off with a quick story:
I recently looked back on some old writing I did in class a couple years ago. I wrote about how things were going bad with _____, how I had no idea how I was going to make the rent for the apartment I was living in, how I was doing terribly at readjusting to going back to classes after taking the previous semester off, and how I was going to somehow turn my grade around in the class I was currently in and at the time failing with about a month and a half left in the semester. At the time, I felt like I had a million problems and couldn't really figure out a way to solve any of them, never mind all of them.
Then sooner or later me and _____ were over each other, I was making rent pretty easily thanks to this job I got in the library, and I did pretty decent with my grades. The point is, it all figured itself out. I'm realizing this now because I was able to look back on that time through the writings.
End of story
We all find ourselves in these moments where we are doing too much and overthinking the problems we are having in life. You feel as if you're in way over your head. It is in these moments that I look back at the writings and realize that the issue at hand more than likely doesn't really matter as much as I think it does. The problems were only temporary and being able to look back on that makes me realize that the current problems are as well. The current problems will come and go just as the problems I wrote about previously did.
When you’re “going through something” or feel like you're at an important part of your life stop and write it down. Write down the complete issue with all background information while being 100% honest. Write it as if you know nobody else will ever read it. After you’re done, put what you wrote somewhere hidden (in a random folder on your computer or in a notebook or something) and soon you will probably forget about its existence. When you stumble across that writing months or even years later you will realize how small those problems really were because by now, all of that is either gone or has figured itself out.
This method helps me realize everything is just temporary. Both the good and the bad. We let such little things get in the way of what’s important to us everyday and it takes thinking from a place of clarity to be able to tell what matters and what doesn't.
Writing helps me in a lot of ways but as a stress reliever of sorts is a way I think it can help everybody. That is the reason I encourage everyone to write. By getting your thoughts and troubles down on paper and allowing yourself to look back on them, you'll realize that everything is temporary or just a small party of the much larger story.
