How to Improve Your Well-Being Through Journaling
Everyday you are faced with situations and the emotions that come with them. Often we want to push those feelings aside and just try to decompress at the end of the day. However taking the time to reflect on our experiences and how we responsed can be an important tool for personal growth and self-improvment.
Keeping a personal journal can help improve your health and well-being. By writing things down, you are able to really think about the details, how you felt in the moment, how you feel now, and what if anything you would have done differently. If a problem still exist, journaling about it can help you find solutions if necessary. Along with these benefits, let’s look at few more ways that journaling can improve your life.
How Journaling Can Help Your Mental Health
Boosts Your Mood with Gratitude
So many stressful things happen each day that we can sometimes forget all the good things that occured. A key element to daily journaling should always be to include something that you are grateful for.
Honestly, it doesn’t have to be something profound. Even the smallest things should be appreciated. For example, maybe you didn’t hit any traffic on the way work, an old friend sent you message, or your child drew you a cute picture.
It might not seem like much but it’s very powerful to think positively about your life. I bet that when you start adding graditudes to your daily reflection that you will begin to notice more and more small things to cherish each day. Not only will this improve your mood, but the difficult things won’t seem so bad.
Can Help You Deal With Stress & Anxiety
Stress affects almost everyone at some time in their lives. For some people, it’s more of a problem with their genetics and for some, it’s due to their situation. Whatever reason you are stressed, congratulations for recognizing it and wanting to do something about it. Here are some good ways to journal to combat your stress.
The problem with anxiety is that it was designed to help us get away from immediate danger. It triggers the “fight or flight” response. If each time you have that anxious feeling you choose to write in your journal how you are feeling and why, you’ll start to control it better.
Understand that depression is something different from sadness, and that you likely need a counselor. Writing it all down can make it seem less horrific so that you can feel better. Plus, you can look back at days you thought life was “over” and see better days after.
Increases Your Sense of Well-Being
As you write out your thoughts, you’ll start seeing issues from a new angle just because you’re opening your mind to think about it. This is going to make you feel more capable of dealing with whatever happens.
Lowers Avoidance Behaviors
Many people who have mental health issues practice avoidance behaviors such as not going to places that cause them anxiety, or not doing the things they need to do due to how they feel. When you write it out, it helps you get the feelings out but do the thing anyway.
You’ll Sleep Better
Pouring your heart out into a journal is a great way to get things off your chest. However, for sleep, go to the gratitude journal and write down what you’re thankful for today and go to sleep thinking of that.
Makes You a Kinder Person
Exploring your own emotional state and accepting your own feelings while you work through what makes you who you are in your journal is going to make you naturally more empathetic to others too. Letting go of judgment for self improves your thoughts for others also.
Improves Your Memory
This is almost a situation where you want to say “duh” but it has to be said. Writing down things helps you remember them because you can go back and read it, but also because the act of writing something down enables you to recall it.
Self-reflection entails asking yourself questions about your values, assessing your strengths and failures, thinking about your perceptions and interactions with others, and imagining where you want to take your life in the future.
robert l. rosen
How to Get Started with Journaling
One thing that can really help you make your journaling work is to learn how to keep one effectively. Make some journaling rules, do it every day to create a habit, and keep it private unless you decide to let your therapist see it or you decide to use it to help others. This is for you and only you for the most part.
Work Journaling Into Your Routine
The thing about journaling that is important is you need to do it long term for it to really work. It takes a lot of writing and insight to figure out why you’re dealing with stress and how to overcome it.
To do this, you want to make journaling part of your daily routine. I good way to make this happen is by setting aside a specific time of day to sit down and write for 5 to 15 minutes.
First Document What’s Happening In the Present
Put out of your mind what you did, what someone else did, or what can be done. Instead, start with what things are happening right now.
Write about precisely what is happening right now and where you stand with the issue causing your stress. If it’s generalized stress, try to make a list of things that might be contributing.
Be Detailed About Your Worries
Go straight to the problem and write about your worries. Describe them from every single angle you can come up with. The more descriptive, the better. Go back to the first time you felt this feeling regarding this topic so that you can get to the bottom of it.
Always Try to be Honest & Realistic
As you are writing, be very careful to be realistic and honest above all else. Other than when you imagine the best and worst, ensure that you are also documenting the reality of what is happening to you right now. That way, you can narrow down identifying the stress-inducing situation.
Describe the Worst That Can Happen
As you look at the situation, one thing that often causes stress is the unknown, or the “worst thing” that you think can happen. Describe this worst thing but make it realistic. For example, don’t make up something like an airplane falling on your wedding party. That isn’t realistic. However, bad weather, rude in-laws, and other issues may be.
Acknowledge the Best Possible Outcomes
Let’s get serious by thinking about and writing about the very best (realistic) outcome of the situation you’re stressing about. Include potential steps and tactics to achieve this best-case scenario so that you can see it to fruition if you so choose.
Write a Counter-Argument to Yourself
A really good way to overcome some stress about a situation is to argue with yourself. First, tell your story as a letter to yourself about what is happening. Then write a letter back to yourself in answer, arguing all the negativity and turning it into positivity. If your best friend wrote that, what would you say back?
It’s surprising that writing can accomplish so much, but if you go into journaling to help with stress under the right attitude and with a goal in mind, you can achieve a lot. The important thing is that you need to be honest with yourself so that you can find out the true causes of any problems you are having. In this way, the actions you take to overcome it really are effective.
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