Keeping my mind focused and disciplined has always been a challenge for me. I had tried many different things without much success, until one of my friends suggested journaling.
Many successful and notable people have kept journals. I had come across Anne Frank’s diary in high school, and also heard about Benjamin Franklin’s journaling habit to keep a record of his scientific theories.
I am neither a nomad nor a scientist. I just wanted to write a journal to keep track of my thoughts. That’s why I was a bit skeptical about this approach in the beginning. However, as I continued journaling, I realised that it played a crucial role in improving my mental health and also helped me to grow as a person.
I am sharing the benefits regular journaling for the last three years offered me. Hopefully, these advantages convince you to start writing a journal today.
1. Helped Clear My Mind and Organise My Thoughts
Dealing with a demanding boss, attending children’s soccer matches, helping with daily chores, and running errands for my elderly parents in a day was taking a toll on my mental health. All those bottled up frustrations and negative emotions left me feeling all jumbled up inside.
However, when I started putting this complex mix of emotions and feelings into words, it allowed me to sort them out into coherent chunks of information. As a result, it became easier for me to process those feelings and emotions, which in turn, improved my focus and creativity.
2. Made Me More Mindful
Keeping a daily journal can also serve as an extension of a daily mindfulness exercise. While meditation calmed my mind, journaling allowed me to vent out both negative as well as positive emotions. I have recorded the worst and the best moments of my life in the last three years.
Journaling allowed me to focus on different moments throughout my life, making me more mindful of the experiences. Over the years, it taught me to control my mind and keep it focused on the positive things in my life. But, most importantly, it helped me learn to live in the moment, which is nothing but practicing mindfulness.
3. My Emotional Intelligence Kept Getting Better
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise and manage your emotions. In other words, people with higher emotional intelligence are less susceptible to emotional outbursts.
The more I wrote about my past experiences, thoughts, and emotions, the better I could understand how it affected my emotional responses. As I became more aware of my own thoughts and feelings, I learned to look at things objectively. Developing an objective point of view enabled me to understand how my feelings affected others and how others may be feeling emotionally.
When you have a fair understanding of how others feel or think, you can make a more informed and sensible decision. The same thing happened to me thanks to journaling. As my emotional intelligence improved, I was able to balance the complex dynamics of professional and personal relationships readily.
4. Reduced My Stress and Anxiety
Before I began journaling, all the bottled up negative emotions such as anger, sadness, and frustration lead to increased stress and anxiety. I used to mull over things which undoubtedly brought back a host of bad memories, causing unnecessary suffering to myself and my loved ones. It also affected my self-confidence.
At one point, my family feared that I may go into a deep depression. However, I was lucky to have started journaling before all that negativity turned into a full-blown depression. Others may not be as lucky as I was.
Journaling served (and it still does) as an emotional outlet. It worked like a therapy. It was as if I was talking to a shrink, but without costing me a couple of hundred bucks an hour. It gradually relieved my mind of all those negative emotions. I stopped being an emotional burden on my partner, family, and friends. Now, whenever I write down a painful experience, I feel light-headed, calm, and less stressed.
5. I Became More Confident
Journaling increased my mindfulness and self-awareness, which in turn, helped me to get a deeper understanding of my strengths and weaknesses. Glancing back at the events of the day, I could see how I dealt with various situations. I could see when I acted confidently and when I panicked.
Gradually, I began to understand that if I have braved many challenges before. If I have done it before, surely I can do it again. Journaling gave me the opportunity to look back at my past achievements objectively.
Now, whenever I feel down or low, I open my diary and go through those achievements and happy memories instead of pondering over my failures. My very own writing has elevated my spirits on countless occasions when everything seemed to go against me. These seemingly small wins have helped build my self-confidence over the years.
6. Helped Me Track My Personal Growth
Being able to see how I have grown as a person was perhaps the best benefit journaling offered me. As I jotted down all of my memories and experiences, I could look back to at specific people or events that provoked me. Every time I found myself facing the similar situation, I was able to come up with a better emotional response. Thus, it helped me grow as a person without expecting others to change. Now I know that change begins with me.
But, that’s not all. Almost a year into my journaling I realised that I could also use it to set and achieve my personal goals. I did yoga before journaling, but there was no consistency. With the help of journaling, I started keeping track of my yoga ritual. How long I did yoga, which poses I enjoyed doing most, and so on.
This record helped me devise a yoga routine with maximum output and consistency. Now, I am using this method to set all of my daily and long-term goals and to stick to them on an ongoing basis.
Parting Words
Although journaling comes with a range of mental health benefits, keeping a journal is an intensely personal thing. You can do it any way you like or for any reason you want. But, it will provide you with the above benefits one way or the other. Hopefully, this article will encourage you to take up journaling. Feel free to tell me about your journaling journey. Get started today and see the benefits for yourself!
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