Self-Actualization: Write Your Life

One way to acknowledge and fuel what we're about in life is to record and announce it. For example, telling my writer's group that I'll have a draft done by the end of August almost guarantees my getting it done by then.

I'm accustomed to using that technique, and have always found it amazingly effective, for myself and for others announcing their goals. Here's an expanded version of that idea.

This morning I learned that this is Personal History Month, certainly as good a time as any to write things down, both for ourselves and for later readers.

"You may find it a bit presumptuous, perhaps even arrogant or egotistical," writes Larry Lehmer of When Words Matter, "to put your own life down on paper. But ask yourself this: If your great grandparents had left a written record of their lives, would you read it?"

Putting down what you've done and what you're doing and the story of your family "makes it real" by showing the direction you've taken, the paths and patterns you've created. It's a process of taking stock that helps in making decisions about where to put time and energy, how to spend the coming years.

Lehmer is an expert in personal history writing and author of The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, and he knows the value of archives.

So do I. Working on a biography of painter and mystic Elisabeth Chant, I've found that every line she or any of her friends or relatives put down about their lives is valuable. I'm grateful to those who left these records. It's a gift to me; and I'll bet it was useful to the person writing at the time.

The current issue of Lehmer's free e-newsletter "Passing it On" gives a list of getting-started tips. I like Number 4: Start outlining your life, the major dates and events, in chronological order, with space provided to add new material as it comes to you.

Self-actualization--reaching one's full potential--is of course more than keeping records. But being clear, in writing, helps the process.

And May is also Creative Beginnings Month.










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