Journaling is one of those things, where if you’re like us, you love the concept but have no clue how to start or maintain the habit. Once you get the basics down of HOW to journal, you’ll wonder why you never tried it before! You don’t need to be a writer or even enjoy writing to get the benefits of journaling. It’s a great creative and honest outlet to help clear your mind and gather your thoughts. We’ve come up with a list of the benefits of journaling, and how to get you started!
First of all, the benefits of why you should journal:
- It’s a stress reliever: think of journaling as one giant ‘brain dump’ of all your thoughts for the day, no matter if they’re positive or negative, to get it all out of your head and clear some space up in your brain.
- It’s a goal setting tool: journaling helps you get what you want to achieve and certain goals you want to meet, clearly written out on paper. It helps you to visualise and manifest the achievement of these goals.
- It’ll improve your memory: you know how sometimes you try to recall a minor detail from a day or two ago, that should hold some significance but you really can’t until a couple of hours later? Journaling will get your thoughts about your day out on paper, and leave space in your mind for other important things!
- It’s all about self-reflection: Journaling will help you reflect on your day, your mood, how things made you feel and help you become more self-aware of your patterns and habits, of yourself while being present in the moment.
We think they’re pretty decent reasons to take up journaling!
Next, here’s how to journal:
- Start small: don’t think you need to go for hours on end writing every single day – set aside a couple of days a week for 5-20 minutes at a time until you get into the routine of things.
- Find your structure: there’s two popular ways to journal – bullet journaling and gratitude journaling. It could be a daily ‘5 things I’m grateful for today’ or a bullet list for ‘today I felt…”
- Find the way you want to journal: Do you like shopping for that perfect diary to suit your aesthetic to write in, or would you prefer to go digital? There’s a number of great apps that can help you with your journaling!
- Don’t use full sentences (unless you want to): when most people think of journaling, they think of what you see in the movies with long poetic sentences about life, love and loss. Journaling can be as disjointed or put together as you want – as long as it works for you!
- Find fun prompts: get on google if you’re feeling uninspired and check out journaling prompts! These are short starter sentences to help you find your inspiration for how you want to reflect on that day.
Like anything, making something a habit takes practice and patience. Just start with 5 minutes everyday and build up from there!