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Why do I like journaling so much?
Keeping a journal helps you create order when your world feels like it’s in chaos. You get to know yourself by revealing your most private fears, thoughts, and feelings. Look at your writing time as personal relaxation time. It’s a time when you can de-stress and wind down. Journaling is something that either feels childish or intimidating to most of us, but the incredible benefits we get from it are well-documented. If you’re like most of us, you’ve probably started a journal at some point or kept a diary when you were a kid. Journaling might just be the thing to help you rewire your brain, whether it’s a shift in attitude you seek or you’re trying to reach other life goals. Research even points to health benefits that can result from keeping a journal, such as increased immunity and reduced stress. Benefit #5: Keeping a Journal can Improve Memory Function boosts long-term memory, illuminates patterns, gives the brain time for reflection, and when well-guided, is a source of conceptual development and stimulus of the brain’s highest cognition. Perhaps you needed an outlet for your thoughts, or maybe you were recording your experiences to revisit later in life. According to surveys, about half of us have written in a journal at some point in our lives, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 6 people are active journalers right now.
Why do some people not like journaling?
But journaling isn’t for everyone. Some people find that it doesn’t feel calming or fulfilling and the stress of finding the “perfect” words to put on paper can be overwhelming. As a child, I would get super excited every time I got a new diary or notebook—and then stress out if I missed writing for a few days. Although there’s not officially a “right” age to start journaling, in my experience sooner is better! As soon as little ones can hold a pen (or a crayon, a paintbrush, etc.) let them get started on a journal by allowing them to sit in front of a blank page and get creative. Therapeutic journaling can help improve physical and psychological wellbeing in various ways, by: Keeping a record of ideas and concepts, or things you learn in therapy. Tracking your progress. Helping to make sense of thoughts and experiences, and organizing them in a meaningful way. Enhance Your Intelligence Writing has long been connected with the ability to increase your own intelligence and even to improve your IQ. By writing through a journal, you’re actively stimulating your brain, putting thoughts into written form and expanding your vocabulary. According to Stosny, journaling can become dark when you it makes you live too much in your head, makes you a passive observer in your life, makes you self-obsessed, becomes a vehicle of blame instead of solutions, and wallows in the negative things that have happened to you.
Why do psychologists recommend journaling?
The simple act of expressing thoughts and feelings on paper about challenging and upsetting events can allow us to move forward by expressing and letting go of the feelings involved. Expressive writing also provides an opportunity to construct a meaningful personal narrative about what happened. Journaling can make you feel worse when you brood on the page, when writing is just a method of venting in which you constantly reinforce the story at the core of your reactions and emotions. In this case, indulging your anger only prolongs it — and your suffering. THE THERAPEUTIC WRITING PROTOCOL bring up anger, grief, anxiety, or joy that occur in daily life. It can also be used more therapeutically to deal with specific upsetting, stressful, or traumatic life events. Dear diarists take heart. Writing about your feelings can help the brain overcome emotional upsets and leave you feeling happier, psychologists have found. Keeping a journal helps you create order when your world feels like it’s in chaos. You get to know yourself by revealing your most private fears, thoughts, and feelings. Look at your writing time as personal relaxation time. It’s a time when you can de-stress and wind down.
Why Keeping a journal will change your life?
Journaling helps you declutter your mind, which leads to better thinking. Writing in a journal also sharpens your memory and improves your learning capability. There’s a reason why when you take the time to pen your thoughts, plans, and experiences, you remember them better, while also feeling more focused. Journaling helps keep your brain in tip-top shape. Not only does it boost memory and comprehension, it also increases working memory capacity, which may reflect improved cognitive processing. Boosts Mood. While some can write for hours at a time, researchers say that journaling for at least 15 minutes a day three to five times a week can significantly improve your physical and mental health. Jim Rohn said, “A life worth living is a life worth recording.” Most successful people keep journals and there are many reasons why. A journal not only gives you a place to record your thoughts, but it also allows you to analyze where you are, where you are going and where you have been. Rereading Journals is a Valuable and Powerful Activity. We not only keep journals and find the process of writing in our journal valuable. We also often reread our journals, for all sorts of reasons. This rereading experience can be just as valuable and powerful as the initial writing experience—sometimes, even more so … You can absolutely journal on a computer or other electronic devices. In fact, some people swear by these methods as a way to keep their journals organized and effective. Due to how much newer electronic journals are than pen to paper ones, it can feel almost wrong to go this way.
Why do successful people keep journals?
Rather, it’s a place where you jot down daily goals, achievements, observations, ideas for projects, quotes, or other bits of inspiration. If you’re working on a project, you can fill your journal with updates on your progress, thoughts on how to improve the project, and anything else that motivates you. Writing, like anything, improves with practice. When you journal every day, you’re practicing the art of writing. And if you use a journal to express your thoughts and ideas, it can help improve your communication skills. Here are some of the key benefits that keeping a journal may bring, beneath this we will go through a few methods that we found helpful! Increased serotonin and dopamine. Journaling can be a great self-care idea for introvert. It gives us a chance to reflect in solitude and channel our thoughts into words. If you have trouble sitting still for an hour every day, journaling can be a less intimidating alternative. So often, we let our minds slip through our jam-packed schedule.
Is it OK to journal everyday?
Writing, like anything, improves with practice. When you journal every day, you’re practicing the art of writing. And if you use a journal to express your thoughts and ideas, it can help improve your communication skills. Journaling also helps people hone their focus so that they think about only one thing at a time. When you write your thoughts by hand, you can only write one word at a time. Your thoughts slow down to match your writing speed and you’ll find that it’s easier to slip out of your overthinking mindset. Journaling is one self-care method counselors can recommend to their clients. Clients can use this tool on their own and incorporate these entries into a therapy session. Counselors refer to journaling in therapy as writing therapy, journal therapy or expressive art therapy. This seems to be a common refrain amongst the journaling community and especially for memoir writers. Don’t throw out your journals—they are tiny pieces of you. They are the raw materials for whatever autobiography you may want to write later. If there is one inviolate rule of journal writing, it is that there simply are no rules! Do what works. Don’t worry about what you’re not doing. Give yourself permission.
What does psychology say about journaling?
The results suggest that keeping a journal led to more optimism and gratitude, both of which can boost well-being. A 2018 study suggests that writing about positive experiences for just 15 minutes a day three times a week may help ease feelings of anxiety and stress and boost resilience. Journaling everyday is a great way to become more in tune with your inner thoughts and feelings and get in a better headspace. Starting your journaling according to specific prompts is a great way to shift your mindset and put yourself in a positive frame of mind. Journaling via an online blog or through an app can be just as helpful. This carries similar benefits to traditional journaling by triggering a dopamine release, a chemical that helps regulate emotional responses and improve mood. Whether you’re dealing with stress from school, burnout from work, an illness, or anxiety, journaling can help in many ways: It can reduce your anxiety. Journaling about your feelings is linked to decreased mental distress. Sometimes keeping a journal of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences helps, but often it makes things worse. In general, it is likely to hurt if it tries to help you “know yourself” in isolation and helps if it leads to greater understanding and behavior change in your interactions with others. Journaling might just be the thing to help you rewire your brain, whether it’s a shift in attitude you seek or you’re trying to reach other life goals. Research even points to health benefits that can result from keeping a journal, such as increased immunity and reduced stress.