6 Ways Journaling Will Change Your Life
September 2 by CM Smith in Lifestyle | 481 Shares
I have been writing something about myself or my everyday for almost 2 years now. It has been one of greatest and most freeing experiences in my life because I can actually slow myself down to think about what’s truly happening around me as well as my part in it.
Most people treat journaling as something they “know they should do” but rarely ever take up the practice and if they do, they fall off the wagon within a few months. But, it doesn’t have to be this way, especially when you learn about the amazing benefits of journaling.
Here are 6 ways that journaling will change your life.
- How do you really feel?Journaling can help you get out of the way of what you truly feel on the inside. In other words, taken the time to sit and write about something that is affecting you can lead to a deeper and more realistic view of what feelings you are actually feeling.
When we are caught up in the “rat-race” of life, we tend to disregard our feelings and keep ourselves, busy and jaded. It isn’t until we slow down for some time to let the feelings inside be what they truly are.
- Point of viewAnother thing that journaling can give us is a better understanding of our own point of view as well as what others may think of a situation. It’s always tought to know exactly what others are thinking, but journaling can allow us to slow down enough to start to try to understand someone else’s point of view.
- A life worth livingI like to think of journaling as “my life’s story”. That alone makes it fun, enjoyable, and inspiring to write a little about myself and what is going on with me every single day. After you have journaled continuously for sometime and you look back on the things that you have written you may realize that your life is much more interesting and deep than you once thought. In fact, if you are down on yourself alot, journaling is a great way to get around this and discover that your life is truly worth living.
- Hi, my name is…Do you know yourself? Without thinking too hard about it, you may just simply say, “of course I do,” yet if you haven’t done some serious introspection and work on who you are, chances are you may only know who you think you are.
This was definitely the case for me before I started writing for myself every single day. I thought that I knew what I liked and disliked, who I was, and where I was going in life. But in reality I these aspects of myself were what I thought I should be; not actually who I was. With journaling I uncovered dreams and goals that I never imagine would be mine. I realized that there were so many things that I just couldn’t stand to do and therefore gave myself boundaries to say “no” more.
Journaling can do this for you too. You can finally say hello to yourself.
- A cooler old personThe idea of being able to write for your life and then pass that writing onto someone else, whether it be old friends, children, grandchildren, etc. is inspiring. I could only wish that my father or grandfather would have been able to pass on something like that to me. It wouldn’t have mattered if the words they wrote were deep or insightful; just as long as they were words that I could read and feel more connected to them.
You can journal every day and then pass this legacy on to loved ones later in life. They can learn about you and what made you tick as a human.
- Build your serenityGetting back to number one; when you start to write about your feelings and how situations in your life change your feelings you gain the ability to start to process those feelings. Rather than leaving feelings completely bottled up inside, you can put them down on paper and get them out of your heart and mind so you can process and understnad them more which will lead to a more serene exsistence.
This especially works well with feelings like anger, jealousy, resentment, etc. Putting these feeling out on paper and letting them take their course is a great way to stay balanced.
The simple act of writing a few words, sentences, or paragraphs everyday can have a profound and instant effect on your life for the better. Journaling can change your life and make you more interested and interesting through the years.
(Photo credit: notepad with pen via Shutterstock)
I like
your approach CM. I consider saving personal experiences, in any form, a very
important task for everyone. I feel that loosing important details about your
history is just as bad as loosing personal photos.
I
personally don’t like to write about myself every day. I only write down the experiences
that I feel are important to me. I write them down in the form of a story and
safe them on my website that I’ve made especially for that purpose.
As you
say, most people agree on the importance of writing down their story, but when
it comes to doing it, that’s a different story. I’ve invited many of my friends
to store their experiences on my website, but most of them fail to do so.
I’m affright
they will regret it, but only after they’ve lost many memories. I mean, I also
lost memories of experiences I know I’ve had in my youth. But there is nothing
I can do to restore them. Sometimes my mother knows a bit more details, but
that’s not always the case. I wanted I started earlier with journaling.
I hope
your 6 ways will motivate more people to start journaling. They won’t regret
it.
It is a good way to compromise all of your privacy. For lots of things better to stay unrecorded. And if you can not record things and be true to yourself – better not record at all.
I think I failed last time I tried because I was just keeping a record of the things I did each day. It was really dry and boring. I would like to try again with more a focus on what I felt, how i reacted to things and more introspection, basically avoiding the list-like formality I created in my last attempts
Journaling? What a monstrous neologism: it’s like butt-fucking the English language without any lubricant
Journaling is not a proper word.
“Journaling”? What an abomination of a non-word
What dreadful use of English
I plan to use the Six Ways that Journaling Will Change Your Life in journaling class at our Church this month.
Along with some of Julia Cameron's Artist's Way and Walking in This World…all good helps in passing the word along.
about journaling. I've kept one since 1974. Norma J. Sundberg Tallahassee, Tallahassee Florida.
Are you teaching the class? When is it?
It's Saturday at 4:30 Thomasville Road Chapel; Janet's Third Ward is
doing it in their Relief Society classes….clicked and should have just let the line "wrap" ..(warp?) You are welcome to come I suspect?