What is Journalling?
In simple words, Journalling is writing what you think and feel on a notebook, so you can visibly see what goes on in the inside of your brain. A Journal is merely, a written record of what you have done each day, sometimes including your private thoughts and feelings, as per the Dictionary. But we can do way more in a Journal to get more benefits out of Journalling. We can include organizing tools like our day's plans, tasks to do during the day; include our thoughts and feelings with the day's overview, thoughts about an event or an action, ideas for your creative self, habit tracking, habits building and breaking, feelings about something or someone.
Why should we Journal?
While there are several benefits of journalling, here are a few most yielding ones:
1. Journalling is the best way to manage your emotions in the best possible way- Writing about anxiety, fear, gloom, cheer or anger enables you to know how you exactly feel and you can better manage them.
2. Journalling helps you find the root cause of a problem or a feeling or a thought.
3. It makes you take action on thoughts, ideas and feelings that constantly appear on the journal.
4. It helps you make the best use of your time by freeing up your mind off distractive thoughts.
5. It helps in combating mental illnesses like depression and stress.
Two kinds of daily journals I use:
1. The Morning pages
Mentioned by Julia Cameron in her book 'The Artist's Way', this is by far the best way to start my day. Morning pages is a stream of conscious writing, unfiltered and written in a flow as it comes. I write about some out of the blue wishes, dreams and ideas, or a new routine for the morning. I also write about the things that bother me constantly. Writing 3 pages everyday in the morning as soon as I wake up clears up my mind to face the day. This also enables me to get rid of unnecessary mind voices and thoughts that are ready to pop up through the day. The Stoics religiously follow journalling just to get in touch with our inner self.
2. The reflections
We go to bed and things that our mind voice debated and concluded flash in front, letting us to stay awake for over an hour after the bed time. Instead of listening to those contradicting mind voices I write this as a gratitude journal every night before I go to bed. I reflect on the events of the day, the amount of time I spent or wasted on doing unproductive and non- essential actions. I write to check on how my day went, areas of improvement, the aspirations and goals for the month/year. This helps me sleep with a clearer mind and to not carry over any unwanted thoughts and feelings to the next day if I wake up.
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