Journal of YOU: Uncovering the Beauty That Is Your Truth

By William Rutten

Who are you really? What is your life purpose? Who were your heroes growing up? What are your politics? Do Black lives matter to you? What would you say in a letter to your future self? Who is God to you? What songs belong on the soundtrack of your life? What is your biggest dream? What are your favorite memories of your parents? What will you regret? The answers to these questions and many others like them will definitely help you to know yourself better, but they just might also be the key to your Happiness. In Journal of YOU: Uncovering the Beauty That Is Your Truth, you will be led on a journey of discovery through your heart and mind. Through the author’s deeply personal letters to the reader, the philosophical and emotional intricacies of each topic will be explored and challenged. Each letter closes with a series of powerful, probing questions designed to “stir the pot” inside the reader in hopes of inspiring a journal entry. In turns an uplifting self-help manual, touching memoir, scathing political essay, humorous travel diary, and inspirational challenge, Journal of YOU is constantly thought-provoking and engaging on all levels. It is a book whose challenge you must rise to on every page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Rutten
• Release date: Dec 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9780999608173

William Rutten

I am William Rutten, a catalyst for Growth, Self-Knowledge, and Authenticity. How is that for an introduction!?! That is what I came up with a few years ago when I did an exercise to uncover my Life Purpose. “I am a catalyst for Growth, Self-Awareness, and Authenticity.” And that is why I write! Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I write because I LOVE TO WRITE.....and because it is the best way I know to reach you right where you are. I love to write about the entire range of the human experience. I am absolutely fascinated by the infinite ways that we dream, fear, love and embrace this beautiful journey that is LIFE. I started as a journal writer. That was more than 20 years ago, and I have not been able to stop myself since. I believe I have filled about 55 journals so far, with no sign of stopping. Journaling is what makes me so clear about who I am, where I am going, and what matters most to me. Perhaps the most powerful gift those daily entries have given me, however, is Gratitude. They make crystal clear to me just how wildly blessed I have been and continue to be. I believe Gratitude is the mother of Happiness. My best anecdotal evidence for this is that, from the time I started writing in my journals every day, I have been on a 20-year run of unbounded Happiness. Of course, I would love to say that journaling is the direct cause of Happiness (and I hope that it is!). But the best I can claim is that my journaling habit brought with it an unbounded Gratitude. And I truly have been the happiest person I know for all of those 20 years. In any case, I think I will keep journaling until my ink runs dry! Journal of YOU: Uncovering the Beauty That Is Your Truth is my first book. There are plans for so many more. I hope you will join me on the journey!

Book preview

Introduction: Why I Journal (and want you to)

"The unexamined life is not worth living." --Socrates

Dear friend,

I wrote my first journal entry on March 12, 1994. I was 21 years old. Earlier in the day, an acquaintance had given me the book as a gift. I had never even considered the idea before, as I had never known anyone who wrote in a journal (at least they had never told me about it). But when I returned home late that night, I opened it up, dug out a pen, and, not finding any instructions, proceeded to fill the small page with random thoughts. Nothing particularly interesting, no life-altering revelations, just brief thoughts. When I finished, the earth didn’t shake beneath me. I was not hit with a bolt of lightning. Nothing.

Still, a week later, I opened it again and filled the other side of the page. Again, no thunderbolts and no dramatic revelations. It was little stuff, but it was also things I wasn’t talking to anyone else about. It was different.

It would take me more than three months before I filled up more than the single side of a page in one entry, and more than three years to fill that first, slim volume. It was often weeks or months between entries. You might say it was a rather inauspicious beginning to my journaling career!

But something was changing in me as I wrote. Gradually, the entries exposed more and more. Even more exciting, though, was that they extracted more from my soul each time I sat down with my journal and pen. I was unknowingly mining for insights about what made me tick and how I fit in with the rest of this fascinating world. Though I wasn’t intentionally asking questions—I just thought I was writing about my days--the answers coming back at me were both shaking my foundation and building me a new one simultaneously.

I was learning who I was.

My second journal, probably two or three times bigger than the first one, was filled in less than four months. It was during that time that my habit became a daily one. The third volume was filled in six weeks. I was hooked! On and on I have gone since then, and as I write this today, 20 years after that third volume, I am in the middle of my 55th. Needless to say, I think I’m a lifer!

But why? What took me from that uncertain little entry all those years ago to a daily habit, to something as essential to my schedule as sleeping or eating? And beyond that, what brought me from there to here, to feeling compelled to spend years of my life simply to get this book into your hands, just so that you could begin your own amazing adventure with a journal?

A few years ago, I decided to take a History course. The topic was my mind. I figured that enough time had passed since I began this journey as a journal writer that I had probably forgotten much of the way my mind worked back then. I also thought that maybe that young guy had some valuable lessons for me. So, I decided that I would start from the beginning and read every volume, essentially covering the evolution of my mind for the entire second half of my life.

As I got into the second volume, it occurred to me that it would be an interesting challenge to somehow make a book of my mind’s evolution, choosing entries that were representative of the different chapters of my life.  I would be the book’s author and then its sole reader.  I kept reading the entries, and gradually I started to believe that perhaps my kids or grandkids might be interested to read my tale one day, that maybe there was some value in the lessons I learned and the way I processed my world every day.  I am, after all, an unusually happy man, so maybe my innermost thoughts could actually teach them something, or so I was thinking.  So, I dug out a notebook and started jotting down notes about each entry, putting stars by the ones I considered interesting.  I began to call it The Journal Project, or TJP for short.  

The more I read, the more fascinated I became!  Yes, it feels odd and conceited to say that I was enthralled by my own mind, but I truly was.  I was learning so much by reading the entries.  One of the things that struck me was how much I needed the journals, how much they held my hand and guided me along the way.  It wasn’t long before I even wondered if it could help just about anyone to read my tale, not because of my interesting life or my goofy thoughts, but more because it could show them how journaling could help them.  I started to fixate on this idea of getting others to journal in order to know themselves better and hopefully, as a result, love themselves better and be more grateful for everything in their world and more connected, both to themselves and to others.  The more I read my entries, the more sold on the idea I became.  It is now my mission.  

Well, that book of actual journal entries—the story of the life of my mind—remains a work in progress. I still plan to write it one day, but I have a few other fish to fry first. So, why am I telling you about it? Because it was through my work on The Journal Project that I truly came to understand the importance of journaling in my life, and why I believe journaling could be an amazing gift to you as well.

I think that the most authentic way I can tell you why I journal is to quote directly from one of my own entries as I was processing the idea in real time. This was taken from Christmas Eve of 2012, when I was just a few months into The Journal Project (TJP) and was reading about the 1998 version of my mind–which happened to be unreasonably blissful and full of world-saving ideas–in my journals and was considering this burgeoning idea of using my example to inspire others to know themselves better through journaling.  Here it is:

"….I cannot imagine my mind without these journals.  I feel like they have allowed me to pursue all kinds of ideas, concepts, and emotions until how I think and feel–indeed, how I tick–has become so clear to me.  They have truly been the vehicle I have ridden on the path to self-knowledge.  They have kept me connected both to myself and to the Divine Source.  I simply don’t know if or how that would have happened without them.  I doubt it.  Certainly not to the degree that I am connected now.  These books have been a huge dumping ground and mixing bowl for my thoughts.  But that is just part of it.  They have also been a serving tray, as through all of the dumping and mixing, they have sent back to my mind neatly-dressed ideas and beliefs about me and about the world.  My mind is like this huge warehouse of random stuff that desperately needed an operations staff to get it all sorted, cleaned, and filed into a coherent system so that I can go through this world every day in complete happiness and gratitude.  These journals have provided just that service.  It is difficult to think of what level of happiness or clarity I would be living with (struggling with?) without them.  They came at an amazing time in my life and made it totally blow up in magic and joy.  Of course, looking back, I wish I had started writing them sooner–it would surely have changed my course–but I am also so glad that they came when they did.  How could I have processed that complete spiritual revolution without them?  No way!  I would have been a mental case.  So now they are simply part of who I am.  Part of my soul.  Part of my happiness.  Part of my gratitude.  I cannot imagine my world without them.  There!  When I lay it out like that in plain terms, it becomes so obvious to me why TJP–or, eventually My Journal, My Journey–is totally a service project.  I want everyone to feel as happy and grateful as I do; that I have always been clear about.  But now it has become so clear to me–an A-HA! moment, as Mastin Kipp would say–that perhaps the best way I can help deliver the main goal–guiding people down the path to fulfillment and Joy–is to provide them a good vehicle in which to travel the path.  That vehicle is the journal!  It is not lost on me that the way I just arrived at this clarity on the topic–this newly-arrived A-HA! moment–is exactly the way I am professing about: by dumping thoughts out onto this paper and allowing them to be purified and organized in such a way that I can then see so clearly just what is the Truth stored in them.  It is to journal.  The verb to journal.  How cool is that!  Synchronicity.  I am feeling the flow.  It is so grand, this moment.  My heart sings, so I know my soul is being listened to.  Loud and clear, baby!  I am so happy.  Life is beautiful."

That’s why we are here today, friend. As we come together on this journey to self-awareness, I bring two hopes for you. These are the two parallel gifts that journaling has brought to me.

First, I hope that the better you come to understand the beauty that is your Truth, the more grateful you will become for who you are and the countless blessings in your life. I have found that with that gratitude comes a deep and lasting happiness. Happiness makes it all worth it!

And second, I hope that through self-exploration and your new journaling habit, you come to complete clarity about your purpose and your biggest dreams for your short time on this Earth. I have come to see that the blessing—which, admittedly, sometimes feels like a curse—of knowing yourself so well is that you cannot ever escape your soul’s true calling. It is always there, whispering to you in that still, small voice, in tingles, in feelings of excitement, in moments when your heart sings. As a daily journal writer, it is my task to address those whispers and tingles and find out what they are all about, for they tell me what I am all about. Every day. They let me know about my purpose and what I need to do to pursue it.

Because the journal asks only that you be honest with yourself every day, it becomes pretty tough to avoid Who You Really Are and what you are called to do. As I said, that is a challenge. But it is also perhaps the greatest gift you will ever know. And it is my hope for you.

Come, let us go on a journey. And remember: Enjoy the Ride!!!

Dive deep,

William

Instructions

How To Read and Use This Book

The 56 letters in front of you are in the chronological order I wrote them over the course of three years. Portions of most of them originally appeared as blog posts on my Journal of You blog, as my mind was bursting at the seams in its desire to get my voice out into the world while working on both The Journal Project (TJP) and this book in your hands.

I present the letters to you in the order that they were written because, much like my personal journal, they reflect the evolution of both my thinking and my life circumstances (kids growing up, job changes, global events).

I tell you this now because there is more than one way to approach this book. If you want to follow the sequence of my life and my thinking—taking on the wide variety of topics as they come—start at the beginning and work through the letters in order. If, however, you have specific topics on your mind that you need to work through immediately and want a lens through which to frame your thinking or someone to rile you up, feel free to search for a letter that matches your need.

You can search in one of two ways: by title or by keywords. Start with the titles. Most of them give you a pretty clear idea about the main topic of the letter. If that isn’t much help, look at the header at the top right corner of the page, above the line. There you will find three keywords that broadly categorize the issues that the letter addresses.

Each letter begins with my experience of a particular topic. That includes my memories, opinions, and more. This part of the letter is merely to give you an example of one guy’s efforts to process this crazy human experience of ours. As you will see, I clearly do not have this big game called LIFE figured out yet! I know that, and so should you. So, it will save you a lot of annoyance if you realize going in—especially on the political and religious topics--that I am not telling you how you need to think or what you should believe, but instead am just offering the way I approach it. Basically, my thoughts are there to frame the issue and stir your pot a bit (well, maybe rattle your cage is more accurate on some!). If my take totally rubs you the wrong way—it is bound to, as we have 56 topics and I am highly opinionated--consider it more fodder for your journal entry!

The real meat of what we are trying to do here, though, is in the questions at the end of each letter. This is where your mind can linger and stew. This is where you can find lots of different angles and ways to consider the topic at hand. My hope is that, even if you become sick of me and my opinions and don’t want to read another word about my experiences, you will still skip down to that last paragraph of each letter and do the hard work on yourself. The value is in those questions and your answers to them. This is where you will reap that hard-won self-knowledge and the enduring happiness that comes with it.

I think this could go without saying, but I feel compelled to say it anyway: the idea is that you will write a journal entry for each letter. More than one, maybe!

Though of course I hope that you actually enjoy reading the book and that you don’t get sick of me, this book is about you. It only serves its purpose if you do the work of sincere self-reflection by processing how these topics play themselves out in your life. I know that can happen to a certain degree just by thinking about them or talking with a trusted friend, but I also know that it goes much, much deeper when you put the pen to paper and truly let your mind go without judgment. That is when the magic happens! That is when faint notions become crystal clear understanding. It is when some of our foundations become more solid, and when untested, taken-for-granted foundations get a necessary shake, perhaps to be strengthened, perhaps obliterated into dust.

The honest writing is the key to your entire experience of this book. If you choose to take me up on that and devote the time and energy—and, really, the courage--I truly believe your life will change dramatically by the time you arrive at the end of these pages.

I dare you! --William

Letter 1

The Year That Changed Everything

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." –Jalaluddin Rumi

Hello friend,

Your wedding day. The day you got fired. The birth of your first child. The moment you fell in love. The day someone special died. Your big promotion. Crossing the finish line of your first marathon. Seeing your favorite band live in concert. Signing the papers to buy your first house or your own business. Signing your divorce papers.

These are defining moments in our lives, the ones that come with such extreme emotions attached that they are forever carved in the rock of our memories. When someone mentions that day or that moment, you can conjure up the visual—and often the feeling—in an instant. They leave a marker on you, like a GPS homing signal that is easily returned to.

Such is the way with significant moments. The memory of that moment remains, even if the event ultimately has very little impact on how you see the world and, consequently, how you live your life over the long haul. While there are undoubtedly a rare few events that instantly shock your system into a whole new worldview—a near-death experience or even the birth of a child—typically major shifts in your mindset and happiness take some time. These periods may include defining moments—the months on both sides of my daughter’s birth were part of a bigger shift for me—but are seldom built on one moment alone.

I have spent the last year-and-a-half studying and taking notes

on my daily journal entries covering the last 20 years, basically all of my adult life. One of the questions I wanted an answer to was this: Was there a year that changed it all? Was there one stretch of time that saw my thinking, my attitude, my emotions—my worldview—change so drastically and permanently that my time on earth could be marked as a "Pre- and Post-" that time?

The answer was, in a word, YES!

My year that changed everything began in the late Spring of 1997. I was 24 years old and had already experienced one pretty dramatic shift in my life a few years earlier when I bucked my (and everyone else’s) expectations and quit the life of a straight-A Pre-Med student to bounce around the country studying acting (NOTE: I ranked this as #3 in my worldview-changing years, with #2 being the mind-blowing period surrounding the birth of my first child—most of you parents out there can probably relate). That change had liberated me to a great degree in terms of defining my own path, but I still held most of my same thought patterns from before. I was subject to emotional highs and lows, feelings of disconnect from the world and the people in it, and a lack of clarity about my true nature. It wasn’t a matter of a typical 20something not sure of his career path or wishing for the love of his life to come along; I was fine with those things. I was a regular guy who dealt with the usual ups and downs, hopes and fears, as most adults do throughout their lives.

But then came my year.

I think the process began when I started reading books about spirituality and other topics that got my soul stirring. I got into yoga for the first time. I started to write in my journal more frequently. All of these things helped me to greatly expand my view of myself and my connectedness to the Divine.

Then came a momentous decision to change from thinking of enlightenment and the expansion of my mind as a hobby to thinking of it as a way of life. In that moment, it struck me that I had to leave my life in California and wander around Europe, something I had never before that moment even considered. Those last two months in California found me defining myself not as a starving actor but simply a happy person. I left there and had no idea where I would live when I returned from Europe. I jumped into uncertainty, following the subtle instructions of my inner voice.

The day I left for Europe was the day that my journal habit became a daily one. The entries from that trip, and the months that followed it, show no more traces of unhappiness. I was wandering alone for months, with not much food and even less money, yet I had never felt so sustained in my life. There was never a bad mood or a bad day, despite all of the challenges that one encounters on such an adventure. The entries describe one blissful day after another, each one increasing in self-knowledge and connectedness to God. There were even a couple of moments of transcendence, when I felt myself actually leave my body in a state of Divine Peace.

On that trip and in the months that followed, I was truly undergoing a complete spiritual overhaul, and it was wonderfully liberating. It made me understand and feel myself to be fully Divine and fully connected with everyone else, and I came to believe that since I am—indeed, we ALL are--part of the Divine Source, the end is not in doubt. That is a pretty powerful belief! There is not much to fight about or fret about after that. It is, as I said, liberating.

With any spiritual overhaul, a psychological and emotional overhaul comes included in the package. That is where the unbounded happiness enters the picture. I went from a guy who went through the usual ups and downs that people go through, to a guy who was practically oozing Joy, Peace, and Love. I was just so grateful for all of the wonderful gifts I had been granted. And of course, that gratitude becomes exponentially greater when you come to view everything as a gift, when you encounter only angels and miracles, when you see God wherever you look.

During this period of late 1997 and early 1998, which at the time I dubbed The Season of Enrichment, I devoted my time and energy to bettering myself in the hopes of bettering the world, as I would describe it in a journal entry at that time. I was reading like a madman, tons of spiritual, nonfiction, and fiction books that inspired me. I fell in love with writing, and my journal entries were long and filled with passion and purpose. I was becoming clear on so many things, and it seemed as though my foundation was unshakable.

It is this foundation idea that makes that year the one that—far and away—changed everything for me. You see, the remarkable thing about not just the worldview I was coming to embody, but, more importantly, the deep, complete happiness and gratitude, is that they have sustained. Life circumstances have changed—career, family, and financial stressors didn’t magically disappear—but my deep-seated Happiness and Peace have carried on through it all. The foundation has shown itself unshakable.

It was a magical time in my life, that year, but its greatest trick was in making every year since then feel increasingly magical. I certainly feel like the luckiest man alive, and I know exactly when I started feeling that way. It was the year that changed everything.

How about you? What was your year that changed everything? Get out your journal and plunge into the depths of your memory. Explore your life. Can you pinpoint an era that shaped the way you view the world? Who was involved? Was it centered around one of those defining moments, like falling in love or having a child? Did it make your worldview more positive or more negative? Realize that you possibly cannot name the year. That’s right, it is quite common to maintain your general outlook and thought patterns from a very young age, so don’t feel ashamed or unenlightened if you cannot come up with a defining year. Still, ask yourself, how do I see the world? How happy am I? How connected do I feel, both to the people around me and to something greater? How often have those answers changed through the years? Who knows, the day you finally make journaling a daily just might be the first day of your Year That Changed Everything. I dare you to find out! For now, revisit your history and ask yourself: What was the year that changed everything for you?

Celebrate your life today,

William

Letter 2

My Family’s Adopted Holiday

"I sustain myself with the love of family." –Maya Angelou

Hello friend,

My normally-silent cellphone was buzzing on Monday. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and text messages were flying across the country seemingly every few minutes, loaded with photos of all sorts of green and/or shamrock-shaped food and other shenanigans. It wasn’t my friends out on the town getting silly on green beer. No, it was simply my siblings and parents, each in their respective homes, celebrating this minor holiday in a major way. They were putting photos and comments on Facebook, too, sharing recipes for home-made shamrock shakes and photos of big spreads of corned beef & cabbage and shamrock cookies. I have four siblings, and every single one—along with my parents—were doing the day for all it is worth, and then some.

As I watched the messages and photos pour in, I couldn’t help but think we are an odd bunch, making St. Patrick’s Day our unofficial family holiday. To most people, I think this holiday is nothing more than a chance to get an extra party night in the year or to wear a green shirt as a conversation piece in an otherwise normal day. Otherwise, on every 17th day of March, the world goes on the same as it did on the 16th or 25th day. Schools are in session, banks are open, and no one is gearing their vacation around it. As holidays go, it is more April Fool’s Day or, at best, Halloween, than it is Thanksgiving or Christmas. Those are the big ones, the ones that not just get families together but bind them together.

Not my family, though.

No, while we enjoy the other holidays (and certainly gather more frequently at Christmas), the day that binds us together is St. Patrick’s Day. It is only in the last couple of years that I have recognized this, and truly it was not always the case.

When I was a kid, we wore green just to avoid getting pinched, and of course I loved to get a Shamrock Shake at McDonald’s when we went to Montana