7 reasons why you should start journaling
When you think about journaling, there is always that underlining teenager vibe. But journaling isn’t only for emotionally confused teenagers. It is the best tool for adults that you could think of and here are 7 reasons why you should start journaling.
It’s out of your mind
If you write something down on paper you stress less about it. Normally we try to have a thought in our brain until we do the task that it belongs to and this is what stresses most workaholics and students out. Write down all the feelings and tasks instead of panicking over them. Perform a brain dump (yes this is a thing) where you write down every task that comes to your mind and organize it into 3 categories: urgent, this week & this month.
After doing that your brain will feel so much lighter and you can start working on your tasks so much easier.
You can reflect and analyze your thoughts
Using a journal like a diary from back in the day is very helpful for reflection. Even if you are out of your teenage years you can learn a lot about yourself when you write down your feelings and just take a closer look at them. There are a lot of thought patterns that are reoccurring in life that you need to notice, analyze and change. The best example would be the classical βIt won’t workβ thought pattern. It’s so easy to break it if you know where the root of the problem is and how you can break it. If you need journaling prompts for the beginning: My whole blog post last week was about that. Check it out and grab yourself the freebie too!
Plan your days beforehand
Sitting down in the evening to write down what needs to be done the next day, helps to wake up calmer and makes time management a lot easier. Block off your time for all your tasks and ask yourself things like: What needs to be done? What isnΒ΄t urgent? What should I eat for dinner? Planning little things like that out makes your days flow a lot easier. Especially when the planning becomes a habit you will ask yourself why you didn’t do it before.
Find Gratitude with it
Write down what went well at the end of the day or the things you were grateful for. This might not help with stress, but it makes you a more positive person. Our society forgets to be grateful for the little things very quickly, so it helps to write down your appreciation for a Whatsapp message or your dinner. Everyone that already knows the Law of Attraction also knows that you tend to get less upset about bad things that happen to you when you are a grateful person. It’s amazing how grabbing a pen and a notebook and writing down 10 little things can help your mindset.
Get creative
Journaling doesnΒ΄t need to be just for writing. A lot of people that journal daily started implementing a bit of art journaling where they experiment with different art styles and pens. This is especially nice for people that travel a lot or have a different schedule every day. You can draw landscapes or just a random place from the day. This could be a meeting room, a colleague doing something funny or just the landscape that you saw in the train on the way to work or school. You could also just learn anatomy over time through drawing something related to it in every journal entry. There are endless opportunities to use your journal to get creative. I also made a blog post about creativity a weeks ago, check it out it might inspire you even more.
Brainstorm
While we are talking about being creative: Creatives have ideas floating in their head all day long. I personally can come up with 5 ideas for the same thing in a second and those ideas would just vanish if I wouldn’t write them down. Having a journal just for work and creativity related ideas and brainstorms is worth a lot. I filled almost 2 notebooks just with ideas over the last two years and I still refer back to them. It’s the best thing to have when you have a lot of creative ruts from time to time or when you are simply just someone that overplans everything.
Start your day with a calm brain
Writing Morning Pages is perfect for stressed, anxious or depressed people. Most of the time those feelings have their highest point in the morning and as I already mentioned: Writing helps to get things out of your mind. Morning Pages are 3 pages of writing, no matter what is on your brain or if it makes sense, just write 3 pages of thoughts. You can write about cute dogs in one moment and your deepest fear in the next one. The point is to get things off of your mind and start the day fresh. The concept of Morning Pages comes from the book βThe Artist’s wayβ if you want to learn more about that. There are a lot more tips about journaling and being creative in there.
And now I wanna see you all grabbing a pen and a notebook and write down something. I don’t care what, but get things out of your brain onto paper. Having a free mind is so much better for a stress-free life.
Not good at journaling without a prompt? Maybe start by using prompts. I recently created a small personal development plan freebie to fill out. It might help you with figuring out your goals and gives some tips on how to create a habit. I think it could help you develop a journaling habit. Sign up for it down below. Or just work with an entire workbook and have it all figured out at one and easy to reference. Check out my new workbook HERE.
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