As a life coach, journaling is one practice I take very seriously and if you’ve been following my content you’d know by now that journaling is one way I get to relax and let things off my mind.
For me, it’s more about self-reflection. It’s how I pen down my feelings on paper in order to achieve some form of relief and is also a great way to start my mornings every day, helping me prepare for the rest of the day.
Journaling is also a learning experience. As someone who journals, I get to intensely engage my memory, perception, and judgment. I’m not just pouring out my emotions or feelings; journaling makes me think, write, read, decide, think again, write some more, and gets me digging deeper into issues until I can unravel all that there is to be unraveled within it.
Journaling is one way of capturing beautiful experiences in my life. I’m often surprised at the amount of information and level of details I get to capture when I begin to pen down my experiences and these can also be a source of inspiration for creating new ones. Journaling helps me to reflect deeply and awaken my consciousness of self-love and mindfulness.
If you are thinking of keeping a journal, then you’re thinking in the right direction. There are numerous benefits of journaling that I can’t possibly mention most of it in one write-up.
Journaling is also very easy to start; after all, it’s just a daily system of capturing (in written form) records of personal experiences and observations. All you truly need is a pen, writing material (or a journal), and a set apart time each day to perform the task. By keeping a journal, you can find things out about yourself you may never have thought of.
I’m usually fascinated by what I get to write whenever I journal. All of a sudden, things become clearer to me, I find new patterns that I previously didn’t identify and I often come up with better and more reasonable interpretations of events and circumstances around me.
Journaling also helps me with lowering my stress levels, improves my sleep habits and my overall physical and mental well-being. Journaling encourages me to regularly reflect with gratitude, find new ways to love myself, helps me set positive life goals, and discover the foods and habits that best suit me so I can devote more time and attention to them.
If you want to start journaling, the first thing you need to do is buy a journal. It could be a plain one or a simple spiral-bound notebook or you can choose to be fancy and get a beautiful journal with special binding, a leather cover, or lots of colors; you decide.
Alternatively, if you’d rather get yours done on a computer, then you can use free journal software or just type into a Microsoft word document on your computer system.
Once you have your journal, the next thing is to start writing. You have to be consistent at it! (Now maybe, that’s the hard part). For you to truly get the value out of this practice, you have to do it often and regularly (at least once daily). Even if it’s just for 5-10 minutes, either as one of the first things you do in the morning, or one of the last things you do at night before going to bed; IT HAS TO BE ON A REGULAR BASIS and the more frequently you do it, the easier it will be to make it a habit.
Another interesting thing about journaling is that you can write about absolutely ANYTHING you want. You can write about your previous or current day, write about your feelings, write about the people in your life, write stories, poems, and screenplays, or write about the first thing that pops into your head. Journaling is supposed to let you be creative and release everything. So don’t try to confine yourself!
Right now, I’m going to share with you some suggestions for journaling just in case you haven’t tried it before or you haven’t done it in a long while and want to pick it up again.
- First, buy a little journal of just about 30 pages
- Date each page.
- Make sure to write no more than one page every day
- If you skip a page for one day, make sure to return to it later
- Have fun with it (You can even choose to do it with a friend or in a group)
So now that you’ve decided to take up journaling once again, take it for everything it’s got! Journaling has so many advantages, some you’ll immediately notice, and some you won’t.
Just make sure to have fun doing it and don’t stop!
With Love as always, Xo
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Disclaimer: Please note that I am not your doctor while I am a health coach by profession. This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice nor does it establish any kind of medical relationship between you and me. I will not be held liable for any damage resulting from or related to your use of this information.