Benefits of journaling

Journaling is not what you may imagine it to be. There are many benefits to journaling. Here’s the key, it has to be constructive. Effective journaling can result in many positive outcomes as well as improve your quality of life. What one considers effective may be different than the next but it is best to figure out what suits your needs. Keeping a journal is beneficial to having a relationship with your mind.

Why you need to journal

• Helps with your mood
• Helps with stress and anxiety
• Improve communication 
• Track progress and goals
• Journaling can aid in managing depression and anxiety, It also helps relieve stress and even buffer or reduce the effects of mental illness! 

Benefits of Journaling

A big benefit of journaling is that it helps shift thoughts from a negative mindset to a positive one. Those thoughts that you have about yourself, the not so good thoughts, journaling helps you push those thoughts to the side and allows for more positive thoughts to come in. Have you ever heard of limiting beliefs? Limiting beliefs are the things that you think about yourself and they tend to be negative beliefs that are untrue and hold you back from “living your best life”. Here is an exercise that I have done. Grab a piece of paper, got it? Now write down as many limiting beliefs that you have of yourself. You’ve just had your first journaling experience.   

Putting pen to paper and writing it out allows you to make important connections between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Journaling is therapeutic here are so many ways to journal

Vent it out

One way of journaling is to vent. You can write your negative thoughts out just to release them but there’s one rule that I stick to that goes along with that venting session… Destroy it once the rant is complete.

Recovery method

You can journal through recovery. Recovery can be in any form such as the death of a loved one, a divorce or bad break up.  Journaling about your experience can help you to see the positive side of the traumatic experience.

Track your nutrition 

Food journaling is a big thing, even though there are apps for that, I think they count as journaling.. When you are tracking your progress with your nutrition and or weight then keeping a journal of what you eat can help you accomplish what you are trying to do.

Monitor your goals

Benefits of journaling and writing out your goals allows you to know what you want. It’s a tool for coming up with the steps to accomplish those goals. A journal forces you to commit. It allows you to record your progress, measure and keep track of what you are trying to achieve. Journaling is a way to keep record of what you are accomplishing and helps to propel you forward to the next step.

My method

I am a person who tends to journal about gratitude and manifesting vs anything else. I try to stay optimistic and keep my mind in a positive space. Some things that I write daily are How I want to feel today, I also write out three affirmations and three gratitude’s. I take the time each morning to do my journaling because it sets the tone for the day.

The point of journaling is to keep a record of your thoughts, feelings, emotions and anything else that is important. Writing helps you to process.

Prompts to get you started

You have already written out your limiting beliefs so here are a few  more prompts to get you headed in the right direction.

1. What three changes can you make to live according to your personal values?
2. Finish this sentence: “My life would be incomplete without …”
3. What difficult thoughts or emotions come up most frequently for you? (This is another limiting belief exercise)
4. What aspects of your life are you most grateful for?
5. What do you look forward to most in the future?

I think five is enough right? This is a good starting point. Grab yo a piece of paper, your favorite notebook, a napkin, whatever you can and get to journaling. You can thank me later lol. Are you a person who journals? If not, are you excited to start?