Anxiety
1. Sometimes situations can be too emotional or overwhelming. Writing it down can get these thoughts out of your head and onto the page. This can give you some space, to breathe and to be, which can help to reduce anxiety and stress.
Having a Journal Can Be Fun!
2. A journal doesn’t need to be a formal diary, it can be made up of anything: cuttings from a magazine or a newspaper, squiggly shapes, patterns, different colors using pens, pencils, paint, or crayons. Just let your imagination hit the paper!
You can write about an idea you have or an idea you have been thinking about for a long time. Journals can be a great creative way to keep track and write about anything you want to.
Emotions
3. Overwhelming thoughts can be reduced when they arrive on the page. Perhaps this is because the page has a limit, so therefore the overwhelm is contained.
This may help give a sense of the person writing to change their way of thinking or deal with past emotions easier. Or even keep track of how they are feeling in the present, and how they felt in the past.
Dopamine
4. Don’t just type your journal. When you write with a pen or pencil, you make a totally different connection to the page.
Neurologically you fire up dopamine as your mind becomes creative; this is a natural process. Pretty cool!
Dopamine is a feel-good drug that your brain releases when you are curious or creative and a very powerful tool to help you along the path of getting well again.
Writing or drawing with a crayon can also create a regression process, taking you back to early childhood where magical things were real.
Maybe accessing that time can help you to create the magic you need today, right now to help you right now.
Score yourself!
5. Give yourself a score out of 10 before you journal and afterward. 10 being great and 0 miserable. The score could be about life or the world or an idea or how you feel or even about journaling itself. This helps you to get in touch with your emotions, and how you are really feeling that day. All too often, we are so caught up in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives that we forget to acknowledge and address our own state of mind.
Start with a positive!
6. Allow yourself the self-confidence to start your day on a personal 8/10. Most people start their day on a 5 out of 10 but this doesn’t allow you much scope before you start to feel low.
If you start on an 8 you will be surprised at the extra energy your mind can create.
They’re only numbers so starting high can only ensure that you finish your day with a little bit more in the fuel tank.
Time Capsule
7. Your journal is also a time capsule. You will be able to look back at this time in a few months and realize this period was necessary for you to pause, gather your thoughts and now, looking back you can see the benefits of having had this time.
Delays are not denials. Just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t. In years from now, you may even struggle to remember why you were feeling this way, imagine that?
Oxytocin
8. A strategic process from which you can learn. If you look back at your journal you will be able to soften your gaze as whatever the problem was in that moment is now in the past. Softening your gaze releases oxytocin, which is a feel-good drug released by the brain.
Picture time!
9. Make sure to add an image or two. Feelings don’t have words because they are generated from the primitive brain region, the amygdala. When you use an image, it can evoke more feelings.
Reflect
10. Look back and learn from how you were. The ability to take the lesson and unlearn certain things is a process that begins and ends inside your mind. There is an article on split-second unlearning that you could benefit from reading. It may give you the insight that you are currently craving.
Journaling helps!
Journaling can help to increase your writing skills as well being fun. You can get creative with pen and paper or so many different ways to tell your story.
You can write about what you desire, the future, happiness, inspiration, family, and friends, or even business- keep track of all the important things!
There is a multitude of reasons to keep a journal and journaling in practice can help you to keep track of your goals and a record of how far along you have come.
Mental health
Keeping a journal can also help with problem-solving as well as helping to keep negative thoughts at bay. Journaling makes your mental health, dreams, or ideas more real.
Thinking and seeing your thoughts in black and white are two different things.
It has been a proven method for personal growth and mental clarity.
The person who is writing the journal can keep it private to them to help achieve their dream or share with loved ones and friends, either way, it will help increase self-confidence.
Writing
Journaling makes writing easier if this is something you have been wanting to practice. Using paper or whatever method you prefer, you can write about your future and any cool ideas you have that you wouldn’t like to forget.
To write, you don’t have to be a writer or to have big dreams to start journaling. You can just start writing things down that would normally remain inside your mind-it can be as simple as your personal thoughts on a movie you’ve just seen for the first time, or a song that resonated with you. You can even make a new journal for each individual thing.
Like writing to reduce stress or start journaling to help you journey through life. Whatever the reason, journal entries can help with progress in lots of different ways- not just your feelings!
There are already studies that prove that journaling relieves stress and people who started journaling found journaling helped them through life.
With it being such a simple practice, why not write and start journaling today?
To-do list
Some people like to include a to-do list as part of their daily journal entry!
This can help you stay on track, achieve goals for the day, and that little tick you make next to one of your completed tasks has a greater positive effect on your mood than you’d expect!
Journaling helps towards self-improvement and can also help in life to give you a new perspective.
Albert Einstein and Da Vinci
Even they kept journals about life, emotions, and experiences. Making notes and filling up your journals can be one way in which success is written. These great people knew that.
There is no perfect way to do it if you worry about such things. It is just a matter of finding what is best for you. Writing on a specific day may help you keep track.
It is not an art form, but about finding a sense of what’s best for you, and to figure that out may just be the thing you will be thankful for.
Conclusion
Journaling can be a journey into the great unknown of your mind. Journaling can help on the path to progress and keeping a journal can be very personal and a great inspiration for leading the life you want to live.
Journaling can help you keep on track towards your future and keep your dreams in reach of you. A journal can help for self-improvement and self-confidence by utilizing tools of self-reflection and using your own words to express yourself.
Thinking deeply about what you write and working towards your goals can give great benefits and deep satisfaction to the person keeping the journal.
All in all, to start journaling would be of great benefit to the writer. It can keep negative thoughts at bay and help to reduce stress.
This would be a big step towards getting a new perspective and gaining ideas that will help you to stay out of the dark corners of your mind, reducing the worry of every day and helping increase the happy and healthy emotions that we all crave.
The road to success can be a very long one, there are many things that will try to take you off it, but journals can help keep you on it.
