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Do you ever write down your thoughts rather than listening to them in your head? Positive or negative thoughts can be better understood when you transfer it to a piece of paper. Journaling will help you become more in tune with your emotions, better understand your situations and how to combat them with a clearer mind, and give you a sense of companionship with yourself and thoughts.

I fell upon journaling when I had hit “rock bottom” in my life about 7+ years ago. With little money to eat, breaking up with the love of my life, not having any close friends to turn to, and several health issues all piling up on me, I was not feeling alive. I turned to books, articles on TinyBuddha, and countless motivational videos to change my life around. It was not really that helpful – until I came across journaling. I now know that what felt like a never ending horror story, was merely a bump in the road.

Journaling was one of many many methods I had tried to change the trajectory of my downward trending life. And it was the only one that stuck, and the only one that worked.

Journaling has dramatically improve my everyday living and has been a huge reason for my growth, clarity, and happiness over the years.

The most difficult part of journaling that I experienced is the idea of writing with a purpose. It took me so long to actually start journaling because I did not know what to write about. It honestly just felt weird to me. Unnatural.

Over the years, I have adapted my approach to journaling so that it best fits my goals, needs, and .

You can journal to unfold the contents that are plaguing your mind and come up with efficient solutions to your problems. Each negative thought you experience, try and counter with humor, positive emotions, or authentic ideas. You need to hold yourself accountable to what you write and since you are talking to yourself about how to improve, you may be more inclined to try.

To get started, there are 5 methods you can use to empty your thoughts to paper.

1. Gratitude

The most common and simplest form of journaling is writing about what you are grateful for. This practice is great for beginners to get into the habit of writing everyday. It can be done at any time during the day and takes less than 15 minutes of your time.

Journaling about what you are grateful for each day will bring more positivity to your world view. It will force you to think positively and slowly change your view on the world.

The moment I started thinking about what I was grateful for, it helped me see the good in people, how lucky I am to be where I am, and thankful for all that my family, friends, and my circumstances have provided for me.

2. Journal Prompts

There are many thought provoking journaling questions you can find online. Thousands of them. You can find specific types of questions you want to answer about yourself with a simple google search. Use the keyword of interest followed by “journal questions” and you will get thousands of search results. (Example: Marriage journal questions).

If you are looking for some great journal prompts, sign up for my newsletter and get a new question daily!

Here are a few of my favorite prompts:

For the major areas of your life ( health, finances, career, relationships, spirituality, beliefs, and whatever else you consider important ) write down your goals on what you want to achieve 5 years from now and what you see yourself doing. Then, map out what you need to do to achieve your desired goals for the next several years? </li><li>Explain and define what success means to you.
Write down what you feel that you are the best at and what you love doing most. Then investigate how you could spend more time doing both!
What is your relationship to social media? How has it been making you feel?
What is one thing you can improve about yourself? What actions can you take to make that change?
Write a list of everything, if you were to die tomorrow, people will remember you by. Is it positive or negative? How can you leave a more positive impact onto others?

Answer these questions with detailed explanations to get the best results. Also, remember to be true to yourself when writing – the beauty of journaling is no one else has to read it but you!

3. Describe your day

Another great way to get into journaling is to simply describe your day.

Try and recall the main details of your day (if you journal in the evening), or the day before (if you are journaling in the morning).

This simple task will force you to think about how you spent your day. You can rate how well you think the day went and write down what would make that rating increase.

This is probably the easiest method of journaling as you are simply writing about things you actually did, said, and felt.

I started journaling about my day in the evenings before I started answering thought provoking questions. It was easy. And if I had a bad day, I told myself what I was going to do to make it better and sure enough, I started listening to my self.

It prevented me from carrying anything upsetting or negative from the previous day and allowed me to start each day with fresh new thoughts and ideas.

Try it out. #NoBadDays2022

4. Goal setting

Because journaling is personal, you can write about the goals you want to achieve.

You can refer to these goals whenever you want and modify anything on the list of things you want to accomplish.

The only person who is holding you accountable then, is you.

If you do not believe in yourself, you cannot exactly become who you want to become. The self limiting beliefs that I had about myself really stopped me from growing all these years. Today, I feel I am making strides in my development and I owe it to journaling.

I write down what it is that I want for myself along with all the ways that can help me get there. I then learn and practice the skills I need to get over those things.

Fun fact: A lot of my 30 day challenges come from the goals I want to set for myself.

5. Affirmations

We love being negative. It is a default mechanism we turn to.

Try keeping count of the number of times you criticize, talk negatively, and wish sad/bad things about yourself. You will probably lose count.

Negativity really does consume us and our mind.

Writing positive affirmations down in your journal can help build your confidence.

Writing about positive thoughts and all the things that you love about yourself will remind you how great you are. When you know you are great, you can take on challenges you never thought of, and laugh at anyone that tells you that you are not great. It will be difficult for people to catch you without a smile on your face.

Final remarks

I have given 5 strategies for journal writing and you can mix it up or stick to one method. But you can literally start by writing about whatever you want to talk about: a bad day, a person you miss, a job you got denied for, a vacation you are planning to take.

Just write!

As long as you practice writing regularly, you will be able to slowly change the way you think.

You will be able to see your own growth before you as you write.

You will be able to overcome any self limiting beliefs you have as long as you write about what is going well in your life rather than what is wrong.

Above all, it can help tame your negative thoughts and prevent you from going crazy.

In todays climate, it is so easy to forget who we are, compare ourselves to others, and get angry at pressing issues in the world. Fight these urges by writing your own truths, where your opinion is the only one that counts.

person in black adidas cap sitting on bench writing on notebook

You might have heard many mental health professionals recommend journaling over and over again as a way to combat overwhelm, stress, and fear of change. But why is it one of the top recommendations? As we navigate through the past two years of an extreme global crisis, it has become clear that many people struggle with their day-to-day stress and the many external factors they face.

The main goal of journaling is to help your brain process your emotional responses to the external and internal events we go through. Our daily interactions with everything and everyone in the world can provide us with insight into who we are and why we think and act in certain ways. By documenting everything happening in our lives, there can be various benefits that, by being aware, can be used to drive change and improve our lives.

There are 9 main benefits that you can consider to start your journaling journey (alliteration intended) to help to manage change, stress, self-development, and your career/business.

Improving memory

If you need a method to help you remember things easier, the best method is journaling. If you’re easily frustrated by overwhelm, you might not even remember the most basic tasks that you are supposed to carry out or any other tasks that you are committed to. Journaling can help you build structure and help you list the number of tasks in a structured to-do list according to the most urgent priorities. Journaling also helps you recall long-term memories that you might have forgotten and responding to the right prompts can help you work through childhood memories that you might have hidden or distorted. It can also help to give you clarity in order for you to manage your working memory to improve your reasoning and make decisions in the short term.

Finding inspiration

We might be focused on sharing our thoughts on the internet and this is easier to do on public boards like Pinterest or to tweet everything that we’re thinking about without really processing it. To some people, that might be helpful. However, digital platforms are designed to occupy our attention and heightened the obsession to immediately publish our thoughts. Using journals might be the safe retreat that is needed to make documenting your thoughts and feelings a safe, private experience. This will give you a fair opportunity to disconnect from your mobile devices and reconnect with your thoughts and utilize quiet time to think.

Building self-awareness

Reflecting on your day and assessing your feelings is a way that you can fully process your surroundings and your own thoughts. A lot of people can go through life accumulating a lot of unresolved feelings and trauma. If you are unable to process your daily thoughts, you could really benefit from a guided daily prompts journal. This type of journal asks you daily questions in order for you to write down your feelings and subsequently assess how you’ve reacted to them.

Manage stress and anxiety

Mental health management and working from home conditions have been talked about at length on the internet. More and more Gen Z individuals and millennials have been rejecting the idea of traditional work to pursue running online businesses, becoming digital nomads and influencers. The boundaries of official working hours have also been blurred due to Zoom meetings happening at any time and everyone trying their best to manage health protocols post-Covid. All these external circumstances directly impact each individual and their ability to process change and work demands. Journaling can be a healthy escape to deal with this type of trigger. It can also be a way to resolve work demands that can not be immediately dealt with. Keeping track of it can help you decide to create boundaries, especially if you’re an introvert who feels uncomfortable with confrontation.

Help you deal with trauma or get you through recovery

There’s also been a rise in the need for support groups. These groups can now address more than addiction recovery but can also help support other lifestyles like codependency, depression, PTSD, Bipolar disorder, etc. All these conditions can be supplemented by journaling especially when people struggle without their groups. They can later on share portions of their journal entries to ensure that they address certain issues that came up in other parts of the day that might not be present at the meeting. Journaling can also help recovering addicts build a routine that their daily structures can be based on in order to handle daily life.

Helps you process wins and losses

Overwhelm might be caused by placing a lot of emphasis on failures than victories and this might give you a skewed version of reality. However, if you could journal about your wins, no matter how small, it can balance your reality and help you feel like you’re progressing instead of being stagnant or going backward. At this age, you are at the prime of building your career and your experiences. Therefore, utilize a journal in order to help you figure out your next move and keep track of your goals in order to advance in your chosen career or lifestyle.

Promote self-discovery

The path of self-discovery is continuous and you might not know how you feel about something until you react to it. This is where journaling can help you question your behavior and your beliefs in order for you to determine who you want to be at this moment. Self-discovery also involves facing some emotions from your childhood that you might not have had the courage or capacity to face and journaling through that can help you make sense of your feelings and help you decide on the values that you want to keep or change.

Help you remain grounded/rooted in gratitude

Gratitude journaling involves intentional observation of your surroundings and choosing to be thankful for what you have rather than focus on what you lack. The benefit of this type of journaling is reduced comparison and reduced anxiety and it helps you refocus your attention on what you have and how far you’ve come. It’s also beneficial for your health, as constant stress can manifest itself into other physical ailments such as tension headaches, stomach upsets, panic attacks, fatigue, etc.

Help you make decisions by weighing the pros and cons

If you’re overwhelmed by all the roles in your life, you might also be crippled by decision fatigue. You’ve already had so much to decide on – you need to decide where you can work or whether you prefer working from home or the office or deciding how to start paying off your student debt. Journaling can help you weigh your options. This will improve your cognitive ability and lower your stress because you would have made the best decision in your current situation rather than being weighed down by paralyzing indecision.

To help you get started, here are some prompts for you to explore:

What can you do to make your day as relaxing as possible?
What’s one fear that you can work on this week?
What can you do to take better care of yourself?
Are you on track with your monthly goals?
What’s the one thing you can do today to make a little effort in your relationship?

If you’re brand new, you can start off with one week of consistent journaling and stick to this one structure:

What am I looking forward to today?
What am I grateful for today?
What is the one task that will do to the best of my ability?

When building habits, you initially need a cue that will get you to start a new routine. This might be hard at first because it’s a new activity. Pair it with a task that you already do. If you drink coffee every morning when you wake up, make sure that you journal while drinking your coffee in order to maintain this new routine. If you can keep it up for a week, that could possibly mean that journaling can become a crucial part of your routine and might help you manage your emotional state.

Once you’ve accomplished the first week, it’s time to reach your next milestone. Attempt to journal for one month. It will also be quite helpful to journal how journaling has helped you approach the past week differently. The easier you anticipate and restructure any resistance that might affect your journaling routine, the longer you’d be able to keep journaling. Nothing worth having happens overnight and journaling is a way that you can observe your progress.

If you can journal for at least 3 months, it will be a set part of your routine and you’ll be able to experience an uncomplicated, stress-free life that you are in charge of. Based on how fast our external environment can change, journaling can be a safe haven for you where your thoughts and feelings can feel secure.

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