Did you know that journaling stimulates personal growth and is a powerful tool for mental and emotional health?

The therapeutic potential of journaling didn’t come into public awareness until the 1960s, when Dr Ira Progoff, PhD realised that persons needed to work from their inner levels to develop their true potential in life. The self-reflection that the insight of a journal provides is only one of many benefits of journaling.

Let’s discuss some more:

Mental Clarity

There are so many thoughts and worries that we go through daily. That’s normal! However, remember that a busy mind comes at a price – fatigue and mental depletion. Once you have a journal, you have the option to look over your notes. The insight gives a chance to track your mind and to gain control over worrying. You will have the opportunity to reflect at the moment whether what you worry about requires as much processing as you dedicate to it. You will also be able to look back and witness that many worries are momentary and don’t deserve the attention we dedicate to them.

Tip: when faced with an important choice, write down the pros and cons in your journal as well as concerns and fears. You will notice how the picture clears up, and the knowledge of the direction in which you need to act will come to you.

No Negativity

By describing how you feel, you release negative energy outward. When feelings are transferred to paper, they are no longer harmful to you and don’t affect your environment. As a result, thoughts clear up, and you are ready to make rational decisions.

Insight

Summarizing your problem or day gives a more objective look at it. Having an objective look provides knowledge, and knowledge holds a solution. 

Tip: If you are summarising a problem, set clear questions on what the problem is about. Sometimes a problem originates in the way we look at it.

Personal Growth

By reviewing your journal, you will notice behaviours that make you happy. You will also notice those behaviours blocking the path to inner harmony, growth and healthy relationships. Once you recognize your weaknesses, you are more likely to start working on them.

Creativity

Who do you want to be? Where do you want to travel? How do you see your ideal future? Journal is a place where dreams come true. Intention transferred to paper is already an action. A small action is enough for the energy of attraction to create a favourable surrounding for your dreams to come true. Energy flows where attention goes.

Positivity

We tend to give weighted focus to the negative events that happen. Bigger focus means more thinking. Thinking eventually leads to emotion, and emotion leads to some action. This is also the law of attraction. By putting a focus on the negative, you attract the negative. Try to spend some time favouring positive events and memories and elaborate on why they were meaningful to you. Without much effort, you will be positive.

How does journaling work!? Do I start with  “Dear Diary…”?

Great, this sounds promising. One issue, though, I don’t know where to start!

I get you! Starting to journal is not easy, however, I emphasize that your journal is not what it looks like in movies or pictures (unless that’s what you want). It’s completely for you to decide what journaling is about! It can be a part of a morning routine, a night routine or a mid-day check-in! You know what? It can also be a weekly or a monthly evaluation of what you WANT to reflect on. Until you decide what journaling could look like for you, here are some ideas:

Do you prefer morning routines? This might be for you:

Dreams

Start writing your dreams down. It is worth recording absolutely any dream. This practice strengthens the connection with the subconscious – a source of creative inspiration. It also improves our intuition – our dreams hold answers to our questions.

Self Affirmation

Energy flows where attention goes. To set the tone for your day, start by writing a positive phrase. If you believe the phrase you are what you think, life stems from your thoughts. We must translate thoughts into words and eventually into actions to manifest our intentions. Affirmations help purify our thoughts and restructure the dynamic of our brains by restructuring automatic thoughts so that we truly begin to think nothing is impossible.

Please note to formulate affirmations in the present tense, as if you already possessed these qualities or were already in the given circumstances. Then write your phrase in the diary 15 times. It will take no more than 5 minutes. Repeat the technique every day for a week to several months for the same phrase. Such a technique will trigger the desired action, you will see! Once your brain gets used to the confirmations, it starts rooting behaviour that corresponds to the affirmation.

Be Better

The goal of this practice is continuous self-improvement and personal growth. Every morning you focus on the quality or aspect of life that you would like to improve. This may be due to a stressful situation that occurred the day before. First, write down what exactly you want to fix, and then offer a short solution. 

Perfect Day

As you imagine the day and make notes about it in your journal, clarify as many details as possible, such as places, people, emotions and feelings. You have the power to build your day from the morning hour! 

I am a night owl! Do people journal in the evening as well?

Of course, here are some ideas for the evening practices.

Three things I’m grateful for

Write down 3 things that have happened in the last 24 hours that made you happy and end your day on a positive note. The technique teaches you to live in the present, experiencing happiness and satisfaction from what is already in your life. Teach yourself to see life in a positive light.

Address Stress

Writing about stressful events removes psychological blocks and uncovers your intellect to understand yourself and the world around you. It is also helpful to reorganize and structure bad memories. Describing stress every day is not necessary. This technique also works for the future, preparing us for less intense reactions to similar events. Try not to postpone this exercise until the very late hours, as very emotional memories can cause short-term anxiety and disrupt sleep.

Gratitude Letter

Have you ever heard about writing a letter to a person who had caused you intense emotions and never sending it? Well, how about writing an “unsent” letter to someone who inspires you! You write to affirm yourself and discover what inspires and aspires you. This opens your potential to be that person.

Does a journal have to be hand-written?

Remember, journaling is for you to discover your true potential. Your true potential is your energy, by creating your own journal through handwriting you share the energy that you want to charge from and work with. A laptop or a phone can’t absorb your energy as the devices have their own waves.

Hand writing promotes heart and hand connection and bridges you to the core values through a shortcut of neural pathways. Writing by hand connects you with the words and allows your cognition to direct all attention to the meaning of your words. Once you grasp the power and meaning of your words on a body level, you have the choice to think whether the word that you write down is the word you want to process and assign meaning to.

For example, typing a swear word and writing it in a journal is a very different experience. It is much easier to type a word that doesn’t hold much meaning because typing doesn’t use more motor skills and a collection of links around the brain called the “reading circuit.”

As one of the benefits of journaling is mental clarity, it can be achieved easier if you exercise your brain. Writing by hand helps to retain the information as your brain is told to label the information important.

The motor process of writing is associated with calming of the nervous system, an effect you can’t achieve with typing. In fact, looking at the computer and typing gives psychological arousal. However, don’t over do handwriting, writing for 5-7 minutes is the perfect time to feel the de-stressing benefit of journaling. Writing for longer can induce stress and adrenal spike.