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There are so many benefits of journaling and today we are looking at five ways keeping a journal can improve your life. From helping you to discover what’s important to encouraging you to be more creative.
Benefits of Journaling
You may not have journaled since you were a kid. Or maybe you’ve never tried it and just don’t see the benefits of journaling.
Maybe it sounds too simple, but the action of putting pen to paper really is an extraordinarily beneficial way to improve your life.
Journaling is a wonderful way to memory keep and document your story but it is also a powerful way to change your life when nothing is going right.
Here are five benefits of journaling that you might not have thought of before.
It can help you to discover what’s important
When you start journaling, whether you document things that have happened in your life or you use a form of expressive journaling to explore your emotions you will end up writing about the things that are most important to you.
They may be things that you don’t even think of as that important but looking back over your journaling later will give you a strong inclination of what you find the most rewarding in your life.
For example, if you find yourself coming back to the idea of starting your own business over and over again, it’s obvious that it’s a dream that’s important to you.
It can help you to track your successes
We get used to living in a routine and frequently overlook the small actions we make that add up to beneficial changes in our lives over time.
Another of the benefits of journaling is that it helps us see all the successes we’ve had, even when life isn’t going the way we want it to.
Using a journal as a form of tracking our successes can bring us a great deal of comfort when times are tough.
Whether you are trying to walk more, eat healthier or spend more intentional time with your family, if you journal about it you will have a better chance of achieving your goals.
And if you do have a bad day and lose sight of where you are going you can look back over your journal and see just how far you have come.
A journal can help you to let go of old emotional blocks
We can share our deepest fears and worries in a journal because it is a safe space. You don’t have to share the contents of it with anyone else, unless you want to.
When we feel down, we often need a sounding board more than we need advice, and journaling gives us that.
We can let out and then let go of past hurts and failures without having to tell anyone about them but ourselves.
Writing is cathartic and can help us release old emotions and beliefs that are no longer serving us.
That is why starting a mental health journal can be so beneficial in helping us get our life back on track.
It can help you to find the answers
People who journal often report that they find the answers to problems within themselves by using journaling to tap into their subconscious.
Each of us has the answers to every problem already inside of us and journaling is a way to access those answers in a positive way.
It’s amazing how allowing ourselves to be honest and open to our struggles ends up making the answer we’ve been seeking so obvious – it’s all there in black and white.
Journaling encourages creativity
Many people who journal find themselves writing poetry or using art to express themselves.
A journal is a safe place to be creative.
There’s no judgment from others, just an open invitation to express ourselves in whatever way comes up.
Allowing this creativity to spring forth is another way that our problems get solved because we allow our minds to be in a different, creative space that is open to all possibilities.
These are just five of the benefits of journaling, but there are many more. We hope that these are enough to encourage you to pick up a pen and paper and start a journal of your own today.
