It’s true. The “secret of my success” is a little black book. Actually, mine is blue and white. It’s a journal, and the practice of keeping notes has provided moments of sanity when everything seems crazy.

We have to learn how to let go of what we cannot change while figuring out our feelings. I offer the following simple and specific suggestion:

Keep a journal.

A simple journal. Five minutes a day. Think of it as tossing a small stone rather than trying to lift a boulder.

To make letting go an experiment, for one week keep a journal (it can be a 99¢ notebook and nothing more!). For six days, devote five minutes or less every day; simply enter the date, the time, the place, and one sentence about what kind of day you are having, what is happening or happened: “Iris the tutor came. Good session.” Or “…appointment with Dr. Lee was…” “brief,” “long,” “tiresome,” “helpful,” “discouraging,” or “She is always late.”

Take 30-60 seconds ANYWHERE (waiting in doctor’s office, lunch, subway, train, taxi, bedtime) to do this. Absolutely note anything of importance about medications or anything else the doctor or therapist tells you. (If you want to write more, fine, but this is not about writing Moby Dick! No one is checking your spelling or grammar either!) Keep the journal—notebook—with you in a convenient place all the time all week (it’s nice to find one that will easily fit in your purse or backpack).

In the second week, try to be a little more expansive. Write a piece of information you heard, like, “There is a doctor who is supposed to have a real knack for making connections between food and behavior. Her name is …” Or you may have learned that a particular author is speaking on such and such a date or that there is a meeting at the school or your child is in a play. That is the second week. Less than five minutes if need be.

Journaling is how we capture the technical and emotional details that are so meaningful for future decisions and for reminders—precious markers—of what came before.