How to journal for self improvement
INTRODUCTION
Whenever you come across any self-improvement blog or YouTube channel, this is one of the first things you’ll see – “How journaling changed my life.” Or perhaps – “How to journal for self-improvement.”
But is it really true? Is journaling worth the hype?
You might’ve heard so many people say that you should start journaling or that it’s so helpful to maintain a journal, especially for your personal development. But why exactly should you do it? What benefits will you get from it?
Have you ever wondered about this? Keep reading this post to learn about why you should journal for self-improvement, how journaling can help you become a better person, some tips for journaling, and more!
Read this post to know how to set up bullet journal. You can also bullet journal in a binder. If you prefer using a digital journal, you can check out Notion, as it is easy-to-use and has plenty of helpful templates.
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HOW JOURNALING HELPS YOU WITH SELF IMPROVEMENT
Journaling is one of those things that is on top of many people’s New Year resolutions; everyone wants to do regularly, but very few actually make a habit out of it. But there are actually many advantages of journaling for self-development, both in the short run and in the long run.
You can use any notebook or journal. I like using a dotted bullet journal.
Here are some (of the many) benefits of journaling regularly.
1) Journaling is therapeutic
We experience so many emotions every day and there needs to be an emotional outlet for our thoughts and emotions. Yes, talking with a friend or even a therapist helps, but you may not always have that option.
On the other hand, you can share anything with your journal anytime and without worrying about how it will react.
Journaling enables you to get those feelings and thoughts out of your mind and on paper.
There are two things you can then do with it.
If you used your journal to vent and purge the negative emotions, you can just ignore what you’ve written and carry on with your day with a better state of mind.
If you wrote about any anxieties, fears, worries, or any problems, you can go through the entries later to get valuable insight. Maybe you’ll find some behavioral patterns, which will make overcoming obstacles easier in the future.
If you’re introverted and don’t like to share your feelings with anyone then this becomes especially important. You need to have an emotional outlet. Otherwise, you will combust! And understanding and addressing your thoughts and feelings is the first step to solving your problems. Is it any wonder that journaling is also good for your mental health?
2) Helps you gain mental clarity
If you’re anything like me, your mind is a mess of thoughts. It can be quite difficult to untangle these thoughts and make sense of them if you keep them in your head.
That’s why writing them down makes them easier to understand. It also frees up a lot of your brain space, which you can then use to actually solve the problem. Journaling helps resolve internal conflicts and develop clarity.
3) Helps you solve problems
The act of actually writing down your thoughts bridges the gap between your thoughts and reality. As you write, you may even come up with solutions you hadn’t thought of before.
And if you tend to magnify the problems in your head, seeing them written down on a piece of paper helps put things in perspective. It helps you distinguish between things in your control vs things, not in your control.
As a result, you can also concentrate and focus better on the things that are in your control.
4) You can evaluate how you spend your time
When there are a thousand things you need to be doing, you need to prioritize and work efficiently. Journaling helps you do both these things. You only have a limited number of hours in a day, and writing down your schedule allows you to hold yourself accountable.
You can use time blocking spreads to make time management easier. The Pomodoro technique is another great time management technique that you can implement in your daily life.
5) Helps you better understand yourself
Writing about the ideas that flow through your mind can allow you to tap your inner creativity and might also be helpful for individuals that want to identify their passion or interests. Your journal is a safe place for you to express yourself. It can help you understand your thoughts and emotions better. As a result, you can effectively identify your triggers. You’ll also be able to develop a deeper understanding of your strengths and weaknesses and learn what you want from life.
It helps you introspect and to assess if you’re life is going in the direction you want it to go. You can also understand your mood, mental health and how it correlates with your sleep or exercise habits with different trackers.
6) Helps You In Achieving Your Goals
Everyone has goals, but how often do you actually write them down and work on them? Journaling is a great way to think about your goals and to create an action plan that’ll bring you closer to achieving them.
The process of writing your goals keeps you focused. Sometimes, seeing your goals written down fuels you with more motivation than anything else.
By understanding yourself better and having more mental clarity, you make sure that your goals are aligned with what you really want to achieve.
7) Helps You Make Better Decisions
Journaling allows you to understand yourself better, gain mental clarity and reduce your tension. All this helps you in making better decisions.
Also, by recording your experiences and thoughts, you can avoid mistakes you’ve made in the past. By going through your past journal entries, you can see what you did right or wrong while taking important decisions in the past. All this will help you in making the best decisions in the future
8) Improves your writing skills
This might not be on the top of the list of benefits, but it’s useful to know nonetheless. An inevitable consequence of writing in a journal is that your writing skills will improve. By journaling regularly, you’ll learn to express yourself in a better way. And don’t be surprised if your speaking skills improve too.
You use your creative writing skills when you journal. and this leads to better vocabulary and new ways of sentence formation.
These are just some of the ways in which keeping a journal for self-development is beneficial for you.
TIPS ON GETTING STARTED WITH JOURNALING
Now that you’re convinced (or at least thinking) about starting journaling. Where do you start? Do you need any fancy materials? What do you write about?
When you’re just getting started, all this can feel very overwhelming. It may seem like there’s everyone out there telling you what to do and what not to do. All these “rules” can make it scary to start.
Well, always remember this one thing: You’re doing this for YOU. The fact that you’re thinking about improving yourself and working towards self-development is commendable in itself. There are no hard and fast rules for journaling and you can work with whatever format seems comfortable for you.
You’re keeping a journal for personal development; you don’t need to follow what someone else is doing, just for the sake of it.
That being said, here are some tips that can help journal for self-development:
1. Be regular
Make it a habit to write in your journal every single day. it may seem difficult at first, but once you develop the habit, it’ll get easier over time.
Here’s why this is so important: everything that we talked about earlier – the physical and mental benefits, goal setting, keeping track of your progress only makes sense if you do it often and regularly. You can’t expect it to work if you write down your goals today and check in the next month.
If the thought of writing every day is scary for you, then start small. Start by writing a couple of times a week and then slowly build your habit from there. Also, you don’t need to write pages full of information each time. Just set aside 5 minutes each day and write about any one thing that’s important for you.
Often, you’ll find that once you start writing, you’ll automatically come up with other important things you want to write about. And if not, then writing a few sentences is also fine. Just keep it up regularly and you’ll reap the benefits over time.
2. be open and honest
Don’t be afraid to open up and write about your deepest emotions. This will help bring you mental clarity. It also allows you to connect to your inner thoughts and feelings.
Remember, this journal is only meant for your eyes. You don’t have to show it to anyone else if you don’t want to.
So write without holding back any emotions or feelings to get its true benefits, You’ll be surprised at how much you get to know about yourself if you follow this routinely.
3. write down your goals
Setting goals is the first step in your self-development journey. Research shows that writing down your goals actually signals to the brain that this is important. You can (and should) use your journal to set goals, and specifically, SMART goals.
SMART goals are goals that are “SMART” – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. It has been said time and time again that writing your goals on paper makes it easier for you to achieve them. And this is in fact backed by science.
Different research has shown that the physical act of writing down a goal can make it feel more real and can motivate you to achieve it. Just by setting these goals in your journal, you’ll be ahead of the majority and they’re a great way to set yourself up for success.
4. track your progress
Just setting goals is not enough. If you don’t track your progress every so often, you’ll never know what changes you need to make in order to actually achieve them. Tracking your progress is another important thing where your journal can help you.
And going after a big goal can be overwhelming so you can break down the goal into smaller steps. That way, it doesn’t look intimidating and it’s easier to keep track of your progress.
Make sure you check in once a week or once a month to see how far along you are to achieving your goals. You can reflect on what you did right or wrong and keep tweaking your action plan till you achieve a particular goal.
5. be kind to yourself
When you’re writing about your goals and evaluating your progress, you might tend to get overly self-critical.
So it’s very important to remember that we’re all humans and none of us is perfect. The main point here is to constantly keep getting better at whatever it is you’re doing.
Always be kind while talking to yourself. And write without any judgment. Your journal is also a good place to practice positive self-talk.
Replace black and white statements about yourself with more rational and positive statements. Trust me, it works. Your self-confidence will increase greatly if you practice this often.
6. practice gratitude
This is another practice that will be greatly beneficial in your self-development journey. It’s very easy to complain about everything that we don’t have. Do you wish that you had more time, more money, better grades, better clothes? We’ve all been there- Our wants are unlimited.
And there’s nothing wrong with aiming for bigger and better things and working towards that. But at the same time, it’s equally important to be thankful for the things that you do have.
You can use your journal as a means of actively thinking about the things that you already have and being grateful for them. Practicing gratitude has been linked with feelings of satisfaction and happiness.
And the logic behind this is simple, there are so many things in our life that we just take for granted. So just spending a few minutes every day writing about this in your journal will have a positive impact on your life.
You can read this post to get gratitude journaling prompts.
7. lower the barrier to entry
Many people either don’t start journaling or give up too quickly because it seems too daunting. We talked about being regular. And the best way to be regular is to make it as easy as possible. Keep a pen and paper handy at all times. That way, whenever you have a great idea, you can quickly jot it down.
Don’t worry too much about following a fixed format or being grammatically correct. The most important thing to do is let your pen flow when you feel like it.
MY EXPERIENCE WITH JOURNALING
Personally, I mainly journal for personal development. I have been journaling for a few years and I have to say it has helped me a lot. I maintain a bullet journal and (try to) follow all the tips I’ve mentioned above.
I use my journal to set different goals and I also use different trackers to track my productivity, stress levels and mood. I have found habit trackers to be really useful. (You can read about them here.)
They have helped me get on track with the habits I want to incorporate into my daily life such as exercise, meditation and reading.
I am very much into self-development and try to be 0.01% better every day. And by better I don’t mean more productive – I mean understanding myself better and even coming to terms with the fact that I may not be 100% productive every day and may not be able to achieve all my goals. And that is perfectly okay.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you haven’t tried journaling, I would definitely recommend that you give it a go.
You don’t need to journal every day if that’s too intimidating for you. You can start by journaling once a week, maybe on the weekends.
Keep at it for a few months in the very least and then check back to see how much it has helped you – you’ll be surprised! You can also choose to maintain a digital journal. I’ll talk about the different types of journaling in a different post.
But journaling is a very valuable habit for self-improvement. It’s amazing that you’re actively thinking about working on yourself and being better and journaling will help you immensely in this journey. If you haven’t journaled before, you should certainly start to journal for personal development as well as for your mental health.
I hope you got some useful self-improvement journal ideas from this post. Do you already use these tips? Or are you planning to start journaling? Let me know your thoughts below!
CHECK OUT OTHER POSTS:
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22 MUST-HAVE BULLET JOURNAL PAGE IDEAS FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS THAT YOU NEED IN 2023
HOW TO BULLET JOURNAL IN A BINDER
HOW TO SET UP A BULLET JOURNAL FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS
BULLET JOURNAL FOR GRAD STUDENTS
INTUITIVE JOURNALING FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS
This is so helpful!!!! 🔥
Thanks! Glad you found it helpful 🙂
Wow, this is definitely one of the best posts I’ve read in a while! Super useful 👍🏼👍🏼