Have you been considered starting your journaling journey? What’s to lose? Nothing but there is definitely a lot to gain. It has been proven time and time again that journaling safeguards your mental health.
Here we will outline ten powerful benefits of journaling and why starting today is the best decision.
Table of contents
What truly is journaling?
Journaling is a personal experience that is not measured by any competitive means – it’s all about writing and expressing your thoughts, feelings, experiences, visions and understanding. How you decide to journal is totally up to you. You can draw, type, or handwrite on paper, computer, or any smart device. Journaling is an effective approach to nurturing your mental health and more than anything its cost-effective.
Starting may feel like quite a task. You might be saying ‘what will I write’, ‘the words won’t come’ or ‘I don’t know how I will find enough words to write everyday’. These concerns are reasonable and being honest with yourself in this manner will aid the process for you even more. Don’t worry if you will come up with the correct words, what matters is that you just be you and express yourself. In no time journaling everyday wont longer feel like a job but an anticipated adventure of becoming the best version of yourself.
1. Reduced Stress and Anxiety Levels
When you spend the time to express yourself through journaling it drastically calms you and brings you to a place of peace.
Journaling helps to regulate your mental health by reducing how stressed and easily triggered you can be to experiencing anxiety.
2. Improved Self-Awareness
Journaling helps you to connect with your feelings better and aid in you having a better understanding of any circumstance you might be facing.
Being able to ably put your experiences in words gives you the opportunity to truly visualize the situations and gain a greater insight where necessary.
3. Allows You to Become More Open About Your Emotions
When you spend the time to write about yourself and your experiences it helps you to visualize when you may need external social support from a professional mental health provider.
Being able to open up in this manner will encourage greater opportunity to encounter emotional healing, even from childhood traumas.
4. Improved Physical Health
When you spend the time to journal you grant yourself the opportunity of relieving yourself from stress that you may not have even observed are negatively impacting your mind and body.
As you seek to simply express yourself through journaling your peace of mind creates a healthy environment for your immune system by boosting it and giving it the strength to overcome many physical illnesses.
5. Improved Mood
Journaling gives you the opportunity to encounter how you are feeling mentally.
Spending the time to write gives you a chance to visualize your fears, issues, and deep-rooted concerns. By doing so you have a better chance of seeing trends in symptoms and understanding the things that trigger you.
The more you understand symptoms and triggers the better you are able to regulate your mood to one that is positive.
6. Encourages Self-Talk
Journaling is written expression of your emotions and experiences as earlier expressed.
What this does is that it helps you to build a bond with yourself, normalizing the beauty of self-talk. Self-talk helps you to pinpoint toxic thoughts that feed negative feelings and emotions.
Thus, journaling is a great coping mechanism tool to aid in correcting thought patterns and improving mental illnesses where present.
7. Allows You to Keep Connected to The Present
Spending the time to journal grants an improved mindfulness.
Mindfulness helps you to tap into the present and remain within this space.
When you are not able to remain in the present you are prone to entertain anxious thoughts. In this realm of presence, you are able identify self and manage your emotions.
8. Better Brain Cognition
Our days can become colored with brain fogs and reduced levels of concentration to effectively take on our tasks. Spending the time on a daily basis to journal is known to recharge the mind.
This happens because when you have the ability to unload your mind through writing you leave room for your mind to be less bugged down with concerns. When this happens, you will naturally have the ability to have better focus on your tasks and be more successful.
9. Improved Communication
It’s interesting how you are able to give more in your relationships when you spend time in your own presence. Quiet time spent in journaling unlocks a deeper connection with self that promotes self-confidence and boldness of expression.
In extension having a better relationship with yourself enables you to more freely express and communicate in your relationships.
10. Goal Planning and Achievement
Writing is one of the most powerful tools to help you connect with your dreams, passions, and desires. By doing so you are able to form your goals and work to aspiring them.
Goal tracking highlights your mental blocks that are fueled by self-doubt. By seeing these limiting thoughts that clouded your judgement you feel more impressed to take on the dreams you have buried for so long.
20 Prompts for Mindfulness & Self- Improvement
- What are 3 things I like about myself?
- What lie do I keep telling myself?
- What is something I need to work on?
- What is something I need to stop doing?
- I feel the most authentic when I…
- A past memory that hurts the most…
- I would like to fix my relationship with…
- What would my { insert body part } say about me?
- A highlight in my life is…
- The person I miss most is…
- What is my biggest pet peeve and why?
- The one thing I wish I could tell my younger self.
- Something I would like to past down to my future/present children.
- Something I wish I could unlearn…
- When was the last time someone said they were proud of me?
- Do I feel proud of myself?
- What is something I want to achieve next month, or year?
- What am I most grateful for?
- Who am I most grateful for?
- How do I feel about myself right now?
In Conclusion
Journaling is worth considering as its benefits to improve mental health are simply remarkable. Knowing that spending time with yourself to transcribe your feelings will motivate your strengths and lessen your weaknesses is a complete win!
Just remember don’t focus on how to get started. Even if you decide to start with a few sentences, that’s the momentum that will get you to where you need to be in no time – taking care of your mental health is key.
