1. Change
Change is the reason so many people choose to write. It is what drives me – and perhaps many of you. After all, Margaret Mead was right when she said: “Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.” And writing about both the good and bad experiences has been the foundation of change. Not convinced? Let me tell you exactly how writing can instigate change – both on a personal and global level.
2. Measure Success
I once read an article on goal setting. The author instructed readers to write down all their goals and aspirations. Then, go back and determine how they will accomplish each task. Why write your goals down? You are much more likely to accomplish your goals if you put the effort into writing them. You focus your mind on what you really want to accomplish and how you are going to do it. An ambiguous goal – like eat healthier – is difficult to measure, but if you wrote that out, you’d probably think of several ways to narrow your goal down and elaborate on what you really want to achieve, such as sitting down to dinner every night, eating three servings of fruits and vegetables each day, or only hitting the fast food joint once a week. Similarly, writing about your travel experience offers a way to measure your successes and evaluate if you are achieving everything you set out to do.
3. Instigate Change
Each and every day, we all – no matter where we are in the world – witness injustices, faulty rules and regulations, prejudices, and more. Many of us feel there is little, if anything we can do about these things. However, there has always been one tried and true way to instigate change: raise awareness. Writing about offensive things is the first step to drawing attention to them; once you have drawn attention to the situation, you can go about instigating change. Mahatma Gandhi said: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” People generally sit in their culturally-ignorant bubble (no judgment there, just a fact) and are totally unaware of many issues others face on a daily basis. Since few people have the means or desire to witness these things firsthand, it is the responsibility of global writers to bring these injustices to the attention of fellow countrymen. By writing about major world issues, the author is changing own life along with changing the world. If we just passively observe life – without engaging – we don’t really experience it. Write about it and it becomes a personal issue that changes how you think, live, and interact with others. According to Wikipedia, desensitization is defined as the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure to it. I want to remember there is an alternate way to live. Viktor E. Frankl had it right when he said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.” Hopefully, I can rely on my writing to remember how life can/should be.
4. Learn Something New
I would argue it is nearly impossible to write anything without learning something. If you are a professional writer – say, a freelance blog content writer – you have to research different topics regularly. News reporters and magazine columnists need to do the same thing. All these writers need to gather facts, statistics, data, etc. Even novel writers need to research the topic of their book. That is obvious learning, but there are less obvious learning opportunities too. Take this blog post for example: I’ve had the idea for this post rolling around in my head for quite a while. Before putting my thoughts down on paper, I checked the archives of the site because I wanted to make sure no one else had written anything like it before. While meandering through the past posts, I couldn’t help but click on several that caught my eye. Two hours later, I had determined there wasn’t anything like my article on this blog – but there was a ton of interesting and educational information. At the very least, writing teaches you something about yourself. Just a simple diary entry exposes your deepest thoughts and intentions. If you didn’t take the time to write it, you might not have ever unearthed those parts of yourself. There you have it. The top four reasons why writing can change you and the world you live in. What do you think? Do you agree? Do you write to instigate change? Have you been changed by what someone else wrote? Let us know!
