How to Keep a Journal And Why Even Bother Doing it
If you are a typical adult or a young adult, then it is likely that your normal workday consists of a jam-packed schedule from morning to night, and adding something meaningless to it is the last thing that you want. But when it comes to writing a journal, there are great number of reasons why you might want to squeeze it into your tight daily schedule.
Ways Writing a Journal Helps You
Make things clear
○ Writing things make them clearer, and by keeping a journal, you may notice that you’re understanding things around you better. This includes your problems, your goals, and even yourself. Sometimes, we get on with our problems by merely avoiding or denying it. By writing what bothers us, we can thoroughly understand our problems and figure out a way to solve it.
○ Our goals are another thing that can get all over the place very easily. So writing about your progress with your objectives can make you more focused on your priorities and realign them to achieve your end goals. Journals can even help you understand yourself better by encouraging you to self-reflect on how you feel about the things that you’ve experienced.
Manage stress & anxiety
○ You can manage stress and anxiety through journaling by noting the mistakes that working out a way to avoid them in the future. Another thing that we seem to forget and ignore are the good things happening to us. When you write these things down, you can have better perspectives, be more grateful, and realize that life isn’t that bad.
○ Lastly, journaling helps you be organized. When you write down things, they get clearer in your head, and ease out any feelings of stress and anxiety.
Write better
By keeping a journal, you also get to improve and sharpen your writing skills. When you write daily, it’s hard not to enhance your vocabulary and style of telling your story.
Tips in Starting your Journal
If you’re already convinced that keeping a journal will do you good, then here are some tips to help you start.
Be true
○ The main reader of your journal will be you, so there’s no point making something up when writing it. After all, the benefits it can give you only manifest if you remain honest with your journal.
○ So don’t write it if it didn’t happen. And about the things that happened, remember that being able to write all the important moments of your day can be beneficial, but if you are really uncomfortable writing an event down, then don’t force it because writing a journal shouldn’t feel stressful.
Date it
This is a very basic knowledge when keeping a journal. Everything must be dated. Trust me, when you get to read these journals in the future, you’ll want to know when these moments in your life happened.
Do it every day
You will get more of the benefits of journaling if you try to be consistent about it and do it everyday. But then again, don’t be too hard on yourself if you miss some days, this will only make you feel bad and stop journaling altogether. So just write again. It will soon be implanted into your daily routine.
Know the types
To help you set some direction for your first journal, there are different types of journals that you can try to follow. Here are a few:
○ Diary journal: Anything that happened to you throughout a day.
○ Gratitude journal: Things that you are grateful for.
○ Travel journal: Things that happen during a trip to other places.
○ Morning pages: Things in your head after you wake up in the morning.
Knowing these types of journaling can greatly help you, but remember that they are just patterns you can follow, and there really is no standard structure to strictly observe when journaling. Just be comfortable and get creative.
Get a journal suitable for you
Yes, I mentioned that there are no rules to strictly follow in journaling, but getting a wide array of journals will make you discover the styles that you love and might like to apply in your own writing.
Fortunately, there are people who share their journals for others to learn from. In fact, Joyce Pring, recently released “Adulting Journal,” a journal focused on adulting that was created and written by her. What’s great about this journal is that it even guides you to starting your own journal by coming with things like notepads, bookmarks, and an access to videos that will help you in journaling.
Here are the packages of her journal perfect for your adulting journey:
Don’t Overthink
Aside from being true to what you write, there are no other hard set rules when it comes to journaling. Don’t overthink it and make this another source of stress and anxiety for you. Journaling should be something you look forward to every day. So start it today and enjoy the wonderful experience and benefits of keeping a journal!
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Adulting With Joyce Pring is the How-To’s of your 20’s told by a 20-something, traversing through life expectantly and with gusto!
Episode summary by Chiara
Soli Deo Gloria!