The Fruit of Leadership Journaling
Nov 01, 2023
Blog by Alan Fadling
A couple of weeks ago, I shared about my long-standing practice of leadership journaling. Here, I want to share more about that practice and some of the good fruit it has borne in my life and work.
Cultivating Continual Growth
I also keep a journal as a leader to capture insights I gain from scripture, from reading, and from life. I capture experiences and stories, and I learn from them through reflection and writing. I often process my thoughts better through writing than through conversation with another person. I know not everyone is wired that way, but I am.
I have hundreds, maybe thousands, of journal entries in which I record passages from what I’m reading, followed by my reflections, questions, and further insights. It’s easy these days to read books in a rather shallow way. I’m glad for the habit of recording passages that encourage, teach, or even puzzle me so I can think and write more deeply in response to them.
In this same spirit, I’ve often used my journal as a place to work through a challenging issue I’m facing, whether personal, relational, or professional. I can easily get overwhelmed when faced with an especially challenging situation. Thinking out loud in my journal often helps me to grasp the core of the matter and find my way forward with freedom, clarity, and a bit more courage.
A Habit of Prayer and Gratitude
On many pages of my journal, you’ll find either a passage of thanksgiving or of prayer. I’ve shared elsewhere that I tend to be a person who feels like my cup is half empty. The practice of reflecting on the past 24 hours or so, looking for evidence of God’s generosity to me or around me, and then offering thanks in response has, in many ways, transformed my pessimism into hopefulness and more buoyancy. Learning to notice grace in my recent experience has taught me to better notice grace in the present moment. I am far more confident that God is being gracious, even when current circumstances are hard, troubling, or confusing.
Again, many of the good fruits that journaling has borne in my life have become long-term realities. It’s true that I sometimes feel better in the moment when I write out my thanksgiving or a prayer or work through a challenge, but the real fruit of journaling has been growth and development over time.
One specific way that I write in my journal is a practice I call “praying my work, then working my prayer.” I write a bit about that in my next book, A Non-Anxious Life: Experiencing the Peace of God’s Presence, which is due out in February 2024. I’m looking forward to its release.
What I’m Seeking First
I’ve already mentioned that I seek to be as honest as I possibly can in my journal and that I seek to write in the presence of God. So, even though I don’t write in my journal with a view to producing publishable material, I often do begin working on a sermon, a talk, a blog post, a podcast script, or even a portion of a book draft in my journal.
This may sound contradictory, but let me share what I mean. It’s a matter of what I’m seeking first. I’ve learned that when I sit down and seek first to write a blog post or a sermon manuscript, I sometimes experience distance or a detachment from God in my work. I’m doing something good for God more than doing something good with God.
That’s why, when I first begin my work on a creative project, I often do so as a personal prayer and reflection. If I have a passage, I reflect on it and listen for what God’s Spirit is speaking to me. I don’t assume that what God is saying to me is exactly what others need to hear, but the more I learn to listen well for my own life, the more skilled I become at listening well as I seek to speak to others on God’s behalf.
I can experiment with ideas and see how they sound in the privacy of my journal and in the presence of God before they find their way into a manuscript, an article, or a podcast script.
So I often begin a creative writing project as a journal entry and try to keep my reading or listening audience on the perimeter at first. Once I’ve done some personal work with my subject, I will then copy that passage out of my journal into a separate document and begin working with it toward its final form. In my work, I want to seek first God’s presence, God’s ways, and God’s guidance for my own life and then reflect on how this might speak to a group of readers or listeners. It’s been a fruitful way to do better work.
For Reflection:
- What sounds inviting or intriguing about my experience of leadership journaling? Is there something in this that you want to experiment with? When might you do that?
