The Numerous Benefits of Writing Openly About Your Life
Your story matters
It’s been a year since I started my blog.
That means one year of writing 3 times a week openly about my life – what I’ve learned and what I believe. It’s all out there for the world to see and judge.
While this was a little nerve-wracking at first, I now believe it’s one of the best habits I’ve developed.
Let me tell you why writing openly about your life might be one of the greatest life hacks.
The habit that forces you to learn about yourself
The moment you decide to write consistently about your life, you realize that you will have to be able to continuously come up with new content.
That’s not easy.
Forcing yourself to come up with more content, forces you to become more self-aware(at least, if you want to be honest with the world, and yourself).
It’s hard to write thousands of words a week about what you believe unless you truly understand what you believe.
What this means is that the habit of writing openly is strengthened when you add other healthy habits with it.
Regular meditation
Sharing ideas
Working out
Journaling
Reading
These are habits that I started to take more seriously once I started writing consistently. That’s because these habits, help me learn more about myself, and that helps me come up with more ideas to share.
While these habits are a great way to improve your writing, learning about yourself in general also brings you more happiness, peace and comfort.
Win-Win.
You’ll connect with like-minded people
Whether you write openly about your life on X, Medium or your website, you will eventually connect with like-minded people.
Whenever I post a blog, I share it to X, LinkedIn, Medium, my website, Facebook, Instagram and sometimes YouTube.
Through all of these outlets, I have been able to connect with people whom I may have never had the chance to otherwise.
I’ve had several people reach out to me because they either relate to something I shared, learned from it or had a reason to challenge it. For whatever reason they messaged me, and I still had the chance to connect with them.
Connecting with people on an intellectual level is awesome.
When connecting with someone intellectually, you have the opportunity to have your thoughts challenged and in turn, learn more about whatever you shared.
That may seem like a minor benefit at first, but the more you learn about yourself, the harder it is to find people who share similar thoughts.
Without having people to share your thoughts with, you have to deal with them on your own. This doesn’t allow you to grow your mind as much as you would if you were writing in the open.
You need others to challenge you.
Finding like-minded people is the gift that keeps on giving.
You create your identity
One of my favourite parts about writing openly, is that I get to tell my own story. The more people read what I write, the more they associate me with what I am talking about.
Essentially, I’m creating an identity of my choice.
A different way of looking at it is that I am creating a personal brand.
The same is true for someone who is an Instagram influencer or YouTube creator. They dive deep into a niche and become the “gardening guy”, the “finance girl”, and so on.
As you create your identity, people will ask you more about what you talk about. You will become an expert or influencer in that field and that encourages you to dive even deeper.
Once you become an expert in any field, you can start to get paid for your expertise.
I am by no means there yet, but as I create my identity, I am taking into consideration what I enjoy talking about.
Because who knows, in 5 years as my life accelerates and as I see more success, maybe I will become an expert in any said field and have the opportunity to make a living advising others.
You see this with authors like James Clear, Mark Manson, Tim Ferriss, etc, who’ve released massive books and then get paid for their expertise after.
That’s the power of writing in the open and creating your own identity.
Your curiosity flourishes
Writing encourages you to be curious in a beautiful way. You will fail to come up with new ideas on what to write about if you are not curious.
Your curiosity will lead you down random rabbit holes. As you dive deep, you come up with ideas and ways to format them into articles.
The funny thing about curiosity is that it compounds. The more you learn about a certain topic, the more you want to continue learning.
This is how the most successful people find success. It starts with curiosity.
Writing openly encourages your curiosity.
Conclusion
There are numerous benefits to writing openly about your life.
On the small scale, you get to know yourself better and others do too. And on a large scale, you’re not only creating your identity of everyone but are also building a powerful habit.
This doesn’t have to be a permanent thing either.
I want to challenge you just to write openly a few times and see what happens. I bet you’ll fall in love with it the same way I have.
Thanks for reading