How to Travel Through Time

Two years ago, during my summer holidays I travelled to India alone and visited my grandmother's house in a rural town. I spent a few days there with her. She'd wake up early to visit the fields, and I'd coop up reading in the air- conditioned room until the scorching sun became just about tolerable for me to join her. One afternoon, I got a little curious and started exploring the house. I was hoping to stumble upon cute family albums, instead I found something much more valuable to me.

I found a slim brown book which was four times longer than it was wide. It had browned pages, and the old book smell which adds to it's charm. I was flipping through its pages, thinking it was one of the two hundred 'phone diaries' that my grandmother owns, holding written down phone numbers of ghosts past and present. But instead, I saw diary entries starting from the day I was born. It was a 2001 diary written by my mum.

My heart started beating really fast, and I suddenly became thirsty but I wanted to read everything as soon as I could. Bear in mind, I could just call my mum and ask her to narrate the story of my birth but the book was to me by all possible means, a time travelling device. I get to accurately see the events from more than twenty years ago unfold in front of me, and I got to see it through my mum's eyes.

As promised, here's how you could look into the past, alter the future and navigate the present-

The Present

The Kidlin's law is a simple problem-solving tactic which states that if you could write the problem down, then it is half solved. Writing is cathartic. Writing about it provides the needed detachment of your thoughts from your feelings. If you're feeling anxious, low or insecure, these feelings contribute to the formation of your thoughts that'll further serve as evidence of you feeling that way. Writing breaks this vicious cycle, and helps see more clearly.

My flatmate helped me device a strategy. If I was upset about anything, she would tell me, "Make me understand why you are upset." After sympathising with me, she follows it up with "And?" repeatedly, until I had nothing more to say or until we figure a solution out. Writing does this for you, maybe sometimes in a more effective manner because you can be very honest and you can refer to it at any point in time.

Writing also helps you practice being grateful. There was a study conducted in 2003 by Emmons and McCullough on university students. They were asked to spend five minutes everyday writing about what they were grateful for. This group became more prone to prosocial behaviour like supporting others in times of need. They were also doing much better both mentally and physically when compared to people who didn't journal. Around 95% of our thoughts today are what we had yesterday. That means one can train themselves to feel happier or more content to a certain extent by consciously trying to appreciate moments.

The Past

If you're content or happy, writing records the moment. Everyone says a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if you could have a picture and a thousand words? What is ordinary to you today, will be a special occasion, or a miracle in the future.

It is terrifying to think that all the people you've met, the laughs you've had, the tears you've shed, the conversations that you've endured today will just become a memory, or worse, forgotten lost in the pile of 'yesterdays' that'll keep growing until all of it amounts to nothing. Journals are time capsules. Someone would be very grateful for these words of yours, someone would pick your soul up between these pages, like I did for my mum. This 'someone' could even be you when you are eighty six.

My dad always asks me after reading every single thing that I write, "Niv, how do you come up with these things to write about?" When I am stuck, I read a journal entry of mine from a random date to remind myself of things that have moved me. Inspiration lives in you, from the past, present and in the dreams that you have for your future. No matter which line of work you're in, recording your ideas is an investment that'll compound benefits exponentially.

The Future

Journaling helps you to become better in anything and everything and it is a hidden gem that can be traded for achieving your dreams. Your goal could be anything, it could be to lose weight, or to achieve academically, or to be happy. Reflecting on your progress would allow you to identify bugs in the system that can be fixed, and to identify methods to perform the task efficiently. This might happen organically if you're consistent with the efforts to achieve the goals, but reflecting accelerates the process.

For example, "I worked from home today and ate all the cookies in the snack drawer." If losing weight is your goal, once you've written this down, the problem would appear more obviously. You could fix it by moving the snack drawer to the other side of the room and making it harder to reach. "I was very productive when I studied with my friends at the library today." If academic achievement is your goal, you've identified an efficient way of completing the task, so you can replicate it.

I have noticed that the days when I journal and plan my day out in the morning, I automatically become more aware of how I spend my time that day. This reduces the time I spend on instagram, or watching shows on Netflix because journaling makes me more accountable to the time that I 'waste'.

Conclusion

I have a challenge for those of you who are still reading- journal every day for two weeks. It can be a breakdown of every single thing that happened, 0r it can be you outlining one incident of the day, or it can be just one line. If you complete this task, let me know on the 15th of March (Click here to email me). If at least five people email, I'll publish an authentic excerpt from my journal.

My mum had written about my first smile, my first dress, her joy and fears, how she learnt to hold me safely and how my dad didn't go into work to spend more time with me. My mum is very thoughtful and has bought me a lot of gifts over the years, but nothing beats this gift that she didn't even intend to give me. Roald Dahl said, "Those who don't believe in magic, will never find it." I hope you find that magic today.

Starting next week, I'll be posting just once a week. I just got my placement time table for the next month, and it is packed. Thank you for reading what I write =)