How to make journaling a powerful practice in your life
The art of journaling is a mindful practice that allows you to connect in with your mind, body and soul. A beautiful way to become aware of your thoughts and feelings and a powerful technique to use for gratitude, manifestation and even has benefits for stress management.
Journaling can also be a great way for you to retain information and remember the small things in life that bring joy. The best thing with journaling is, it doesn’t have to be a practice that takes up hours in your day. A simple 10-minute journaling session a day can have great benefits to your health and wellbeing.
What is journaling?
The practise of journaling is an exercise of simply keeping a journal, which is a tool to explore your own thoughts and feelings that occur in your life. There is a range of different journaling styles (mentioned below) which work to help with self-exploration, stress management, gratitude and handling emotions.
Here are some of the different types of journaling you can implement into your life:
Gratitude journaling: writing down things you are grateful for in your life
Free flow journaling: this can be whatever you want it to be. A recount of your day, the feelings and emotions you are experiencing. You can even ask yourself questions to answer or pull an oracle card and journal on the thoughts around that card
Manifestation journaling: writing down a visualisation of things you want and desire in your life. Writing them down as if you have them, which is all part of the law of attraction
Affirmation journaling: writing down beautiful affirmations to yourself
Bullet point journaling: as a way to remember things that have occurred in your day
What type of journaling resonates with you? Come over to Instagram and tell me!!
Why should you start journaling?
Journaling has a lot of beautiful benefits for you and your health. As Very Well Mind has said, journaling can help with decreased symptoms in certain health conditions, it helps with cognitive functioning, helps to strengthen your immune system response and can counteract the negative effects of stress!
Of course, journaling also helps you be more mindful and present in your day to day. With around 60,000 thoughts per day, we have circling around in our head (with most of them being unconscious) you will definitely come across some negative thoughts. But journaling these out and uncovering these thoughts will help you with the following:
To feel better
To create results
To become conscious
To think more deliberately
To create/manifest what you want in your life
To remove negative thinking and emotions
Journaling is an easy practice you can add to your morning, afternoon or evening to help you make sense of your thoughts and feelings.
How to start journaling and easily implement it into your day
You want to add a practice like journaling easily into your life. You want to make it a habit so you continue to do it daily to see its full benefits. The first step is to choose a time of day (roughly) that will work for you. Can you journal as soon as you wake up? Maybe on a lunch break or in the evening before you got to sleep.
Once you have chosen your desired time of day, set yourself a timer for just 10 minutes. All you need to do is 10 minutes a day and you will find you will end up finding more times throughout your day to journal!
During that 10 minutes you are journaling, don’t censor yourself. Remember, you are the only one who will see what you are writing. Don’t worry about your grammar or spelling, just write. You might find yourself trying to stop your negative thinking, don’t. Write what comes to your mind, this will help you reframe it later.
A powerful technique is to also review what you have noted down at the end of the week or each month, it is a great way to see how far you have come and what thoughts once consumed you are probably not even a thought anymore.
How journaling has helped my life
As a girl, I did manifestation journaling.
I would be writing down to talk about my friends, my crushes and the things I wanted in life - I didn't even know it was manifesting.
When I would go to summer camp, I took my journal and in the evening would write down all the adventures of my day to be able to tell my parents what I did and remember the connections I made - some of the people you meet at summer camp you never see again.
Then when I travelled and lived in India, I would journal daily. I did it so I could capture what I was doing, what I saw, how I felt and what I learnt, this helped me to keep my memory active.
On holidays I would write in a journal and also keep all my mementoes from my holidays. Now I can go back and read over what I saw and how I felt on those beautiful trips.
I then began to realise the importance of noting down our thoughts, feelings and how to manifest during the power of journaling.
After having my first child she never really slept well. I was struggling with acceptance, trust and surrender - I felt I needed something to help me in these times where I had no control.
When pregnant, I was meditating and journaling but when my baby was born it was harder to keep up. Then I realised, I had to make time - this was so powerful. Gratitude journaling, free flow, manifesting and intentional journaling has huge benefits to my life and my wellbeing.
Also, when I took part in Brooke Castillo’s group program, it again showed me the power of journaling every day. Looking back on those journals it is amazing how far I’ve come.
Some of the journaling I do includes:
Oracle cards journaling
Manifesting
What is on my mind - free flow
Based on the chakras
Journal prompts to help you right away
Not sure where to begin with your journaling, here are some prompts to help you!
How can I be of service today?
What relationship am I thankful for?
What abilities do I have that I’m grateful for?
What am I grateful for today?
What is wanting to be born/to emerge today within myself? Within my relationships? Within my community?
What have I learned from this situation? How have I grown?
Who do I appreciate?
What advise would you give yourself?
Final thoughts
Truly understanding the benefits of journaling is the first step to getting the most amazing outcomes from the practice!
Of course, you want to find a journaling style that works for you and try to implement it into your life daily - even if it is just for 10 minutes.
The power of journaling can help with the thoughts and feelings you have, your stress levels, your cognitive functioning but also, it can help you visualise and manifest the life of your dreams!
What are you waiting for, get writing!!