Why You Should Journal…Daily

Welcome to the new Coffee, Grit, and Inspiration theme – journaling! Over the next four weeks, we’ll give you lots of tips, ideas, and reasons why journaling can help you in your journey of self-development. In this particular post, we’ll talk about the real, tangible benefits of journaling. We’ll also look at reasons why journaling, especially daily, is a critical piece of this journey.

What Do We Mean by “Journaling”?

If, like me, you kept a diary when you were a kid, that’s a form of journaling. Maybe you have or have seen the sometimes amazingly artistic bullet journals flooding the internet; if so, that’s also a form of journaling. If you’ve ever kept a little notebook in your pocket or purse in which to jot down ideas and observations, that too is a form of journaling. The form doesn’t matter as much as does the intentionality behind it. It’s the effort that goes into evaluating yourself and recording your thoughts, hopes, dreams, and observations. It can be a memoir, a tracker of many different things, or even a planner. As long as it involves at least a little bit of self-reflection, that’s what I mean by journaling. 

The Benefits of Journaling

One of the primary benefits of journaling is for your mental health. Writing about yourself and your experiences can help you get them out of your head and onto a piece of paper (or pixels, depending on your format). In addition, there are studies that indicate actual, physical health benefits of journaling. In “The Health Benefits of Journaling”, an article by Maud Purcell in the PsychCentral website, she covers several of these points, including that there is increasing evidence that journaling can strengthen your immune system, reduce asthma and rheumatoid arthritis, and decrease stress. Journaling is also a way to spend quality time with yourself. It’s an easy way to practice self-care and self-compassion, and a way to get to know yourself and be curious about yourself.

In this article, I want to focus on how journaling helps reduce your stress. I believe that is an immediate and tangible benefit that will help you almost as soon as you start doing it.

Journaling to Reduce Stress

When I think about stress, I think about feeling anxious, or not knowing what is coming next. I think about how my mind will run in circles around a problem without finding a solution. Or how I feel weighed down by my worries. Journaling helps me with all of that by allowing me a way to get my worries out on paper, to creatively problem-solve for a solution. Sometimes, I’m able to write it out then realize that it’s not as bad as I thought. 

In an article called “5 Ways Keeping a Journal Can Help You De-Stress” by Carolyn Gregoire on Huff Post, something that really rang true for me was that in writing about your stressors, you gain a new perspective. It’s almost as if the act of writing something down and getting it out of your head allows you to look at the problem with new eyes. 

It also allows you to get clear on your feelings about something. Clarifying your thoughts about a topic or an event will lead to greater self-awareness and self-knowledge. This is very well expressed in an article called “The Benefits of Journaling for Stress Management” by Elizabeth Scott in VeryWellMind, and I did a podcast about this that will come out on Wednesday 10/16 also!

Journaling: What It Takes

Fortunately, journaling is one of those things that doesn’t require a bunch of expensive supplies. All you really need is a pen and a piece of paper. You can journal electronically, and depending on your format, that can be very similar to writing with a pen on a piece of paper. People also use blogs for this purpose – kind of an open forum journal that can be read by anyone. Personally, I keep a public blog as well as an electronic journal using a program called GoodNotes on my iPad. I write in it using my Apple pencil, so it’s almost like having a pen-and-paper journal, but I have the added benefit of being able to search, include photos and other digital resources, create links to other pages, and so on. I decided to invest in an iPad though, and not everyone may want to. 

Starting a Journal

For that reason, we’re going to be releasing a free course on starting a journal. In it, we’re going to go over several different types of physical journals and pens and the benefits of each, look at some ways you can digitally journal, then show you how to organize your journal and give you some prompts to get started. You can look for that within the next two weeks. 

Time Commitment

As far as time commitment, you do need to commit to at least 20 minutes a day. The reason I say this is that it should become a habit – something you do without even thinking about it. And the best way to make this a habit is to do it religiously, every day. I like to do it as I’m settling in for bed at night. Yes, I miss some nights, but for the most part I do it every single day for between 20 and 30 minutes. I track all kinds of things. I’ve seen that the act of tracking and jotting down what I’m thinking has had a positive effect on my stress. It’s also been a great way to document the good things that happen to me! I have a section for gratitude, where I try to find something I’m grateful for every day. I also have a section for the lesson I learned that day, my wins, my challenges, and so forth. Having these sections has helped guide my journaling, to where I never have to think too hard about what to write about. 

The best thing is, you can try it yourself for a while without needing anything more than a pen and a piece of paper (or, a Word or Google Docs document!). So it’s a low-cost, low-effort way of starting something that will help you. 

At any rate, I’m really excited about this theme and the opportunity to write about writing! I hope you’re as excited as I am. Have a wonderful week and I’ll talk to you soon!

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