After leading the goal setting session in the How To Harp Membership, I have been reflecting on reflection!

Journaling is such a fantastic tool for all musicians, let’s pick apart why that is!

Journaling helps document creative processes, track progress and encourages reflection on experiences.  Often creative ideas, feelings and emotions – the ups and the downs – these can be lost in the whole learning journey and it can leave us feeling, well, empty!

Writing down ideas, lyrics, melodies, chords and harmonies.  Just anything that comes as you are playing.  This helps to keep hold of these little snippets of creativity which can be used when the time comes!  It also lets us look back on our creative journey and see how our ideas have developed over time.

As well as recording musical ideas, journaling can also help us to track progress and goals.  Writing a goal down is a fantastic start, but actually reflecting as you work towards that goal will help you adjust targets and reflect on progress.  It helps us to stay motivated and on track.

Journaling can also be a mode of self-discovery!  Writing about our emotions and experiences can help us understand ourselves better.  We can discover how we learn and then adapt our work, we can gain insight into our own creative process and lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves and the art we create.

These are just a few of the benefits we can gain from journaling.

My newsletters and blog posts act as a kind of mini journal for me, sharing my reflections on topics which are in my mind each week.  I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them!

The way you journal is up to you, personally I like a really lovely notebook, lots of different colours opens and I often include pictures and doodles.  Others like to create digital diaries.  Some enjoy recording themselves.  

Whatever works for you – go with it!  And enjoy the process.