Journaling is a great tool to help you find balance in all areas of your life, from organising your thoughts to writing down what you did that day to self-reflection.
You don’t need to be a wizard with words or a grammar nazi to start journaling. Your journal is for your eyes only.
There is no right or wrong way
There is no right or wrong way to journal. You can be as creative as you like, use coloured pens and draw images to express your thoughts, or as structured as you want, text only using a template of pre-decided questions.
It doesn’t matter what format you choose; journaling is about creating self-awareness.
In this post you will find the benefits of journaling, why you should keep a journal, a few beginner-friendly methods to try, how to create a journaling habit, and strategies to get you started on your journaling journey.
Benefits of Journaling
There are many reasons why you should start a journal to help you find balance in all areas of your life. Journaling enables you to improve your writing skills, organise your thoughts revelling what is most important to you, boost your memory, and inspire creativity.
Why journal:
- Notice your habits – Writing about what you did that day gives you a visual image of all the routine tasks and habits you do every day, even the tasks and habits you are unaware you are doing.
- Reflecting on your thoughts & emotions – When you put pen to paper, you’re bringing your emotions front and centre to allow yourself to reflect on why you’re feeling a certain way. When you feel upset, and you journal about it, you’re allowing yourself to explore WHY you’re upset, what is causing this emotion and allowing yourself the opportunity to learn and act on it by making necessary changes in your environment and internal thoughts.
- Set and achieve goals – Writing in a journal can help achieve your goals by giving you a clear picture of what you’re trying to achieve. Setting specific goals in writing can be a great way to measure progress over time. Writing your goals down and tracking how they went can help you achieve more in the long run.
- Problem-solving – If you’re facing a difficult challenge, journaling can help you approach the problem pro-actively. It can help you focus on what you can do instead of things that are out of your control.
- Self-Awareness – Journaling can help you explore who you are by answering big questions like what does success look like for you? How do you want your life to look and feel like? Are you fulfilled at your current job? What do you want out of life? If you could live anywhere, where would you live? And many more, you can find more self-awareness journaling prompts here. As you begin to gain clarity on what matters most, you will be able to align your actions with your values better and started making more intentional decisions with your time, money and energy.
- Exploring your desired life balance – When writing in your journal, let your imagination run wild. Journaling is a fantastic way to explore with new ideas, to put your dreams on paper, to write about your desired life balance and what that looks and feels like to you.
- Write about fear – You could write about quitting your job and how that would look like from start to finish or maybe what it would look like if you started your own business? Writing about all outcomes defuses the fear factor as you have already gone through the emotions while writing. Taking the leap to quit or start doesn’t seem so scary anymore.
Journaling methods
There are thousands of ways to approach journaling, so I have compiled a beginner-friendly list.
Here are a few to get you started:
- Gratitude journaling – Practice gratitude by writing down the things you’re grateful for each day. Practising daily gratitude boosts your mood by starting the day in a positive mind frame.
- Bullet journaling – This method is great to track your feelings, tasks and events. A bullet journal allows you to organise your thoughts in a trackable format. Great if you want to track your mood with specific activities or if you’re starting a new goal.
- Journal prompts – Journal prompts are great when you first begin on your journaling journey as it takes away the dreaded writer’s block or the fear of staring at a blank page and not knowing what to write. You can find thousands of FREE prompts on the internet. Type in “journal prompts” into Google and explore what kind of questions you would like to ask yourself. Self-reflection? Self-discovery? Thought-provoking?
Create a journaling habit
Consistency is key when journaling. The more you write, the easier it will become and the more you’ll notice the benefits. Doing it regularly can help you blend it into your day. It is important to find a habit that works for you.
Here are a few tips on creating a journaling habit:
- Habit stacking – James Clear explains a strategy called habit stacking; essentially, you stack your new habit (journaling) onto an existing habit. For example, if you meditate every morning, try leaving your journal in the same room and journal after you have finished. Meditating will become your cue to journal.
- Start with small and intentional actions – It’s exciting when you first start your journaling journey, but it’s easy to get carried away with the many prompts and methods you can try. You are more likely to give up if you decide to do more than one at a time. Try write in your journal using one method of journaling and build on that once you are comfortable with writing 5 minutes a day or answering one question a day.
- Write when inspiration hits you – If you are using an app, you can write in your journal while you are waiting in line or using transport. You could even use your journal to track all the ideas you have throughout the day. The more you use your creative side of your brain, the easier it will become.
- Create self-awareness – Journaling is about creating self-awareness and being creative. Enjoy the process of writing down your thoughts and let go of the misconception that you “should” journal and make it your own.
Strategies to get started
There are several strategies you can use to start journaling, whether you want to use your journal for a tool to be creative, reflect on your day or your thoughts and feelings.
Journaling is a personal task/habit, and we all write differently, so everyone will approach and experience it differently. It’s important that you feel the benefits so play around with a few strategies and find the ones that work for you.
Here are 11 different strategies to try:
- Think about what you want to write – You don’t need to have a theme, but an easy way to start writing in your journal is to think about what you want to write about and write about it. Do you want to write about that day’s events? Do you want to write about your plans for tomorrow? Are you planning a trip and want to write about what you would like to do on that trip? Decide what you want to write, put pen to paper and start writing.
- Start with a journal prompts – If you find yourself staring at a blank page lookup “journal prompts” on Google, copy and paste a few pages of prompts you would like to write about and print them or save them in WORD. Now you have a library of questions for the next time you can’t think of anything to write about.
- Plan & schedule time to journal – Add an event in your calendar for journaling. If you meditate at 6am add journaling at 6:10am. <– remember habit stacking? Consistency is key to building a habit and feeling the long-term benefits. Planning and scheduling time to journal gives you time to think about what you want to write about, and over time you will start to look forward to writing in your journal.
- Journal about your conversations – Did you have a conversation with someone and walk away wishing you said something different or thought of a great comeback after the conversation? Write about it! Feeling upset over a conversation you had with your best friend but not sure how to express your frustration? Write about it! Address it to them but don’t send it. Get those feelings off your chest. You might be surprised to find that you were overreacting and can see the situation more clearly after writing about it.
- Write a different perspective – Pick a topic or an event and write about it from another person’s perspective. Maybe your parents, friends or colleagues. It is beneficial to think about things from another’s point of view.
- Draw your thoughts – You can try drawing your thoughts and writing about the image, such as what is happening in the image or why you chose to draw instead of writing. Drawing your thoughts can also create inspiration on what to journal.
- Free write – Freewriting is writing whatever is on your mind at the time. If you decide to write when you wake up every morning, you could write about what you recall of your dream. Maybe you are sitting on the bus and decide to write, you could write about the people around you and what they are doing. It could even be a few words, like how you feel at that very moment. Example: I feel awkward that I don’t know what to write about, starting is hard, but if I keep at it, it’ll get more comfortable. DONE! It is as simple as that.
- Use a template – Using methods like bullet journaling or gratitude journaling, can make it easier to get started. You might use a template with a mixture of gratitude journaling, ‘3 things I am grateful for today’ or ‘3 things that inspired me today’ or ‘my intention for today is’ and dear diary-style ‘Dear diary today I…’ or ‘Dear diary today I ate… and I drank x litres of water.’
- Use an app – You don’t have to use a physical diary. There are many apps you can use. SHAPE and Lifewire both have a comprehensive list of journaling apps you might want to try. On some of the apps, you can even add photos!
- Use bullet points or note-taking styles – Some people think journaling your thoughts and feelings have to be structured and poetic. This is so far from the truth! You can have your journal as disjointed as you want. If you only want to write in bullet points, then go for it. Make journaling as easy and attainable as possible.
- Write on a calendar – Buy a dated notebook/diary or print out a blank A3 or A4 calendar for that month and write a sentence or 2 each day. It’s great when you are beginning as you are starting small, so it becomes attainable, and it is easy to see when you’ve missed a day.
Hopefully, by the end of this post, you have learned that there is no right or wrong way to journal, it is all about personal preference and creating self-awareness by aiding you to find balance in all areas of your life from organising your thoughts to writing down what you did that day to self-reflection.
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