Last week on our hike you discovered how important self-improvement which leads to self-mastery is to an overall successful life. If you do not improve yourself, you are doing a disservice to you and those you impact.

In your continuing search for knowledge and understanding, there is another major discipline that will help you to capture the information around you so that your future will be better than your past. That discipline is keeping a personal journal. A journal is a gathering place for all of our observations and discoveries about life. It is your own handwritten or application driven transcript, narrated in your own words which capture the experiences, ideas, desires, and conclusions about the people and events that have touched your life.

A journal provides you with two remarkable benefits. First, it allows you to capture all aspects of the present moment for future review. The events that take place in your life, experiences that you live and learn from, should not just “happen.” They should be captured so that your lessons can be an investment into your future. The past, when properly documented, is one of the best guides for making good decisions today that will lead to a better tomorrow.