Hello my Charmed Ones!
If you have been curious about journaling, today I have some great information to share with you. In this post, I will explain:
- Why you should start journaling
- Strategies to consider for journaling
- Tools to use when beginning your practice
- Building the habit of daily (or regular) journaling
Why you should start journaling
There are plenty of reasons why someone would want to journal, and if you are reading this I assume you are trying to get some inspiration for yourself or you already know why you want to start in some form. I think it’s very important when you start a practice and regular habit like journaling that you know what you intend to get out of the experience. When you have that personal reason why or your intention for it set, it makes it much easier for you to decide the strategy you want to use, stick to the practice and remain accountable to it.
Documented Benefits of Journaling
- Mental clarity
- Improve your Productivity
- Reduced Stress and anxiety
- Increased Happiness
- Identify and overcome limiting beliefs
- Reprogram your mindset
- Self-therapy and reflection for self-awareness
- Manifestation of goals
Okay, now that you know why you want to journal, let’s discuss the common strategies that you can use to do so. I have seven to share with you and I want to make it clear that you can choose one or more of these types to use at once. I myself often switch between these different strategies of journaling often or I tend to do more than one in a single journaling session.
Strategies to consider for journaling
- Brain-dump – write down all the things your holding in your mind to organize and prioritize them.
- Stream of consciousness writing – just writing out all your thoughts feelings emotions to release your thoughts and self reflect. See morning pages from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
- Gratitude journaling – list out gratitude, good to set your mindset as it’s documented to make you 10% happier.
- Journal prompts – guided journaling for self reflection, great for people who get overwhelmed at the thought of having to fill a blank page.
- Affirmations – repeatedly writing out affirmations. Stick to 1-3 as to not overwhelm yourself.
- Scripting – writing out how you want your day to go for the purpose of manifesting it.
- Future writing – journaling as yourself but at a future date in time after some goal or achievement has been met and chronical everything that happened to bring you to that point
Tools to use when beginning your practice
For the most part you can get started journaling with just some blank note paper or even a note taking app on your phone or computer. There is some data that supports writing by hand rather than typing but that is really for specific benefits of stress reduction. So, what you intend to get out of your journaling is key to know when choosing the tools to use.
As an example, a notebook like the Stalogy Editor’s Series gives you a years worth of undated pages to really do any of the journaling strategies we discussed already.
For myself, personally, I get a little intimidated by a completely blank page with no structure or guidance so over the years as I’ve been journaling for various reasons, I’ve designed different inserts for journaling to accompany my planner.
- Weekly gratitude insert is great for beginners trying to develop the practice of journaling
- High Vibe Bible inserts are designed for a loosely guided gratitude and manifestation journaling experience
- I designed a number of guided journaling workbooks for my Empire Building students and Productivity Master Mind Members with prompts intended to help them in specific areas of productivity, mindset and business
- Most recently I designed a day on two page planning and journaling insert based on my previous video 5 Daily Prompts and Affirmations for Making a Plan that Comes True. I’ve been loving this insert even though it’s a little more than I’d normally use in my planner I’ve been enjoying the daily page to supplement my weekly master planner spread.
Building the habit of daily (or regular) journaling
The final piece of the journaling equation is to actually build the habit. Now, it’s up to you to decide if you need journaling to be a daily practice, a weekly practice or just something you do sporadically when you need it. This links back to your why, and ultimately is your choice. You can’t mess up journaling and there are no rules that say you have to journal a specific amount of times or at a specific time of day to get benefit from it.
Is journaling a habit that the more you do, the more you improve… of course! But I want to remind you not to turn the idealization of a perfect journaling practice that is going to change your life forever, into an expectation that you struggle to meet and then end up beating yourself up about. As you get started with journaling, I’d advise you to invest in the tools that make you excited, and then set a reasonable schedule for journaling. Some people prefer journaling in the morning, some in the evening. I aim for the morning but when I forget I have no problem doing a midday reset or even a bed time journaling session.
Start slow, maybe one day a week. And then after a few weeks, build up to two days and so on. There is no reason to overwhelm yourself! Use journaling as a tool for your self improvement. And remember the affirmation I gave you last week what I decide gets to be the path for me this is definitely true of journaling!
Watch the video
I hope this information has been helpful for you in determining how to begin your own journaling practice. In the comments I would love to hear about which strategies you are interested in trying for yourself!
xoxo,