5 Surprising Benefits of Journaling

improve cognitive skillsThere are many ways to keep a journal. You can record the events of your days, plan a vacation, analyze your dreams or use a bullet journal to organize your life. Journals can help you capture your thoughts or plot out your career.

As well as decluttering your mind, keeping a journal can have some surprising benefits.

1. Journaling helps reduce stress
The act of putting your feelings on paper helps you to manage your stress levels better. All those anxieties and worries stop going in circles inside your head, allowing you to step back and get a deeper perspective on the things that are troubling you. It can even help with problem-solving!

2. Journaling can improve your mental health
Journaling is often recommended by psychologists and therapists. Journaling helps you to work through the issues that come up in your therapy sessions, complementing and supporting the process of healing. It can be a powerful tool in removing psychological blockages.

3. Journaling improves your cognitive skills
Developing a journaling habit helps your brain to function more efficiently. Studies have shown that the act of writing strengthens the learning process and stores facts and concepts more firmly in your memory. Writing helps to develop new neural pathways in your brain, connecting new information with data already stored in your memory.

4. Journaling helps you meet your goals
Studies have found that you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down! Journaling gives you the space to work through ideas, setting out the details and the possibilities. Writing about the process helps you to track progress, so you can see how close you’re getting to achieving your goal or where you may have gone off track.

The habit of keeping a journal gives you a physical and mental discipline and focus that will influence other areas of your life. Writing down your goals and aspirations gives you a strong motivation to achieve them!

5. Journaling inspires creativity
Keeping a journal allows you to write down whatever ideas come into your head. The brilliant thoughts that you have in the shower can be lost forever – or kept safe if you write them down.

Journaling is a private, safe space for you to explore ideas that might not have a home in your professional or everyday life. And once let off the leash, there’s no telling what sort of magic your creative mind will come up with!

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4 Journal Prompts to Help You Discover Your True Self

head for ten or fifteen minutesKeeping a journal can be one of the most powerful tools for working through issues, unburdening your problems and connecting with your inner self. It can give you a quiet space to find your voice in a noisy world. It’s easy to feel undermined by social media or your Inner Critic telling you what you ‘should’ be doing, how you’ll never get there and generally that you’re not good enough. Journaling can help quell those loud outsiders and focus on what’s important. You.

Here are some prompts to help you get started.

1. What do I write about?
The famous ‘tyranny of the blank page’ can be off-putting. But accept that feeling and commit to writing whatever comes into your head for ten or fifteen minutes. Set a time and write whatever comes into your head. It doesn’t matter if it’s not Pulitzer Prize-winning prose, it’s about getting into the writing flow. It’s okay to start by writing “I don’t know what to write about,” or even “I don’t want to write about my job.” By getting that reluctance out of your head and on the page, you’ve already cleared the way to start to resolve the issue.

2. What feels good right now?
Journaling about the good things in your life can help reset your focus on the positives around you. It’s easy to get stuck on the things you don’t like, but how often do you take time to write down what is good? Think of the last thing that made you smile, or the highlight of your last vacation, write down the big stuff and the small. Start a list you can come back to when you’re not feeling so good.

3. List your good qualities
Most people tend to focus on the things they don’t like about themselves. Forgetting that everyone is a mix of talents and flaws. Write down ten things that are great about you. What makes you special? Do you have you a green thumb? Do you make great slide presentations? Do dogs and little kids gravitate towards you? Are you funny, helpful, insightful, compassionate? Make a list that will make you smile when you go back to it.

4. Talk with your older self
Imagine yourself as a wise, experienced older person. Someone who has seen good times and bad, who has weathered the ebbs and flows of life. Project into the future and ask future-you for advice on how to live your best life. What should you concentrate on? What should you avoid?

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