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My Journaling has become Performative rather than Authentic. Is that a good thing?

Dominic Medford
6 min readSep 30, 2021

The power of Journaling. It is a concept that is thrown around constantly and has become a euphemism for personal growth. I feel that I can’t read or watch any self improvement content without the power of journaling being shouted from the rooftops or reaching out through the computer screen to strangle me with it’s importance.

There have been other concepts like this in the self help, personal development space. The first that came to mind for me was meditation, followed quickly by a reading habit. I know that I might be seen as cynical for this stance but I have to point out the growing performative nature of all of these habits and how I have felt the anxiety to become performative in my journaling rather than being authentic.

If you pause from reading this article and think to yourself the number of times when scrolling social media have you come across someone spruking about their newest accomplishment of reading X number of Books in quick succession or meditating for 30 days straight. More than likely you may have at some point signalled something similar before as well.

Now I am judging myself for this as well. I have to be blamed too, I know for a fact that I have signalled my ability to read 7 books in 7 days or quoting a line from book followed…

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Dominic Medford
Dominic Medford

Written by Dominic Medford

Law and Political Sciences student in Australia who dabbles in writing about his thought processes in his spare time with the hope that it can be insightful.

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