There's more to life than finding the perfect car, but finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life, like the SUV that handles everything from drop-off to off-road, and the car that holds groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going, start your search at autotrader.ca, Canada's It's a minimalist Monday edition of Optimal Living Daily. Why Don't Save Journals More Other Sentimental Items by Korny Carver of bmorethless.com and I'm Justin Mollick. Happy Monday and welcome back to Optimal Living Daily or the OLD podcast where I read to you from some of the best blogs I can find and get permission from, mostly covering personal development and minimalism on this show.
For now, let's get right to it and start optimizing your life. Why I Don't Save Journals or Other Sentimental Items by Korny Carver of bmorethless.com I recently wrote about burning or shredding my journals. When I'm journaling, I'm not doing it to record history, come up with book ideas, or anything else that may be worth sharing someday. It's rare that I even reread anything I journal.
Why it's important to journal your thoughts. The reason I journal is to declutter my mind. Instead of letting all those ideas and fears and worries run around in my brain, I leave them on the page. Sometimes they stay there and sometimes they don't, but usually if I keep writing them out, they dissipate.
I write about other thoughts and feelings too, but even the good ones get heavy if I hold on to them too tightly. Writing them down helps me feel light, and it makes room for more creative ideas, more clarity when making decisions, and a better understanding of how thoughts and feelings impact my physical and mental health. Why I don't save journals and other sentimental items. There are a few reasons I don't save my journals.
Number one, living amongst those words I wrote, even though they are off my mind, can feel heavy. I don't think about them all the time, but knowing a year's worth of daily writing is hanging out in a notebook close by isn't comforting for me. All those things happened. I experienced them and felt them.
Then I thought about them, wrote about them, and dissected them. And now, it's time to let them go. Number two, the things I wrote in journals are not for anyone else. I don't worry about anyone reading my journals while I'm alive and while I expect to be alive for a long time.
I understand that my mortality isn't in my control. I don't want my journals left behind when I'm gone. That's how I feel about most of my stuff. It's hard enough to lose someone you love, but to then have to go through their stuff and make decisions you don't know how to make feels impossible.
Removing some of those decisions seems like a loving thing to do, but how do you preserve the meaning of life? Here's an email exchange publishing with permission with someone who reached out about shredding my journals in the meaning of life, quote, Hi, Courtney, in one of your recent posts he wrote, one of the reasons I shred or burn my journals is to symbolically let go of my stories of stress, pain, and drama. This allows me to focus on what's happening right now instead of what I thought was happening in the past. I love the idea of shredding my journals, but I have this tight hold on all of them as I do on all of my memorabilia items that I choose to keep.
I feel like if they disappear, then I will disappear, like they are proof of my life and thoughts and goals, et cetera. That is where all the meaning is. I can't seem to let go of them because they don't mean I don't exist and I lose everything. Any suggestions or words to share to focus on the present and look to the future and not be afraid to let go of these reflections of the past?
It's really, really, really hard to let go. How do I separate the meaning of life from these things that are just reflections I've collected along the way? Thank you, Christina, end quote. I knew how Christina was feeling.
I used to feel the same way. I started saving my memories as proof of life in elementary school, like I'm saving them through school and adulthood. I moved them from apartment to apartment and home to home. Even when I started to declutter and live more simply, I didn't consider letting go of my sentimental items.
And then when there was nothing left like go of, I took another look at the sentimental stuff. I wasn't displaying it or enjoying it. I was just saving it, saving it as proof that I had lived. Quote, I Christina, I can appreciate how you feel and I'm glad you shared this with me.
It took me a while to figure this out for myself, but once I did, letting go got so much easier. The meaning of my life is not in what I save or keep, it's in how I live. The meaning is the living, so now I live instead of proving that I've lived by the stuff I saved. Love Corning, end quote.
In other words, instead of proving that you have lived, live, instead of proving that you have loved, love. You've just listened to the post titled Why Don't Save Journals or Mother Sentimental Items by cornycarverofbemorethless.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. I'm constantly thinking about how to optimize my health.
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I'd be interested to know if you, well first of all, even wrote in a journal and then second if you held on to it. I kind of see the argument that future generations could see a peak into your life or something like that. But honestly, the stuff that goes into a journal, I don't think most people would want out there forever. A blog on the other hand or podcast, that to me makes sense because like Corning mentioned, it's made for other people to enjoy and benefit from, unlike a journal.
The only exception I can think of is a title it shared recently, actually, in Wednesday's episode, a book called Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, it was supposedly written as a journal and for him only. But it turned into a super wise book of lessons from one of the most powerful people in the world at the time. But really, that's like one in a billion journals that ends up being that mind-blowing. No offense, but yours and my personal journals probably aren't going to be studied for thousands of years.
Again, if you want that, you could publish something online instead. And then the other piece of going back and looking at it, me too, very rarely have I done that with journals that I started over 20 years ago. And when I do, there's just a lot of fluff and weird stuff that I really don't want to go through all over again. I have more of a reaction to it than a more nostalgic one.
There's an occasional gem, but that for me doesn't make up for the heaviness that she talks about. You can actually feel mentally and emotionally exhausting to go through old journals. And again, for me, not worth the very rare gem that happens to pop up. It's okay to leave it in the past.
But no judgment if you're holding on to your journals. I'll be happy to hear your perspective, so feel free to share. Have a great rest of your day and start your week, and I'll be back tomorrow reading to you where you're off to my life. And wait.