The magic of writing is more than the telling of a story. Writing is a deposit in our memory bank, has been proven to be a health benefit, and, when applied, the rule of three creates neurons that help make things more memorable.
Our memory bank
In my recent eBook published on Amazon Kindle “Book of Intuition” I stressed the importance of note taking in order to record your best intuitive ideas. The reason is simply that we (almost no exception) have a very short memory span and quickly forget just about anything we want to remember. We are made that way, it is part of our human nature. Writing down moment-to-moment intuitive thoughts is crucial to being able to use them later on. Edgar Allan Poe has a funny quote on this point.
“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”
In the majority of languages, writing is a complement to speech. Humans started to write as early as the 6th millennium BCE. One theory tells us that the reason humans started to write was due to the necessity to ease the burden of memorizing. Ancient people gave up memorizing everything in their brain and created writing so that they could access the record anytime they wanted.
In ancient times education was restricted to members of the elite society. People who were privileged by virtue of birth, wealth, and social prominence were the only ones who could read and write. It wasn’t until the 19th-century that education became widespread and the skills of reading and writing became common place.
Health benefits
Writing has a strange magic power most of us are not aware of. The American Psychological Association tells us that writing is no stranger to therapy. For many years, practitioners have used logs, questionnaires, journals and other writing forms to help people heal from stress and trauma. Writing has health benefits: it has been documented to help patients get better, and also kept them from getting worse. If you are a student and have an exam coming soon, take 10 minutes to write about anything you worry or are concerned about right now. You’ll get better results on the exam. Writing has a calming effect.
Rule of three
The magic of writing does not stop there. The rule of three is a writing principle that suggests that when things come in threes, they are more effective than in any other number combination.
This is another tenement, or magic, of writing.
Whether writing for yourself, or for a reading audience, try breaking your points into three. Intuitively, the subject becomes more memorable.
Slogans, firm titles and a variety of other thing have been purposely structured in threes. The Latin phrase, “omne trium perfectum” means “everything that comes in threes is perfect.” Some examples:
- Our telephone numbers are grouped in 3 units, (xxx) xxx-xxxx which is easier to remember than xxxxxxxxxx.
- In the USA law, oath by a witness in a US court proceeding is asked to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,”
- The Olympic motto: Faster, Higher, Stronger
- Time is divided by three: past, present and future
- Expel from your heart: anger, hatred and jealousy
- Public road crossing safety slogan: Stop, Look and Listen
- US The Declaration of Independence: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
I encourage you to write as a way of strengthening your intuitive powers, as a way of self-discovery that benefits your mental and physical wellbeing and to make use of the magic of three, in writing as a way of reinforcing that wellbeing so that you can live a life free of stress and filled with more happiness.