The Ten Benefits of Journaling
1.Stretching your IQ: Journaling is an exploration of language, and you’ll have the natural urge to search for new words and increase your vocabulary.
2.Evoking mindfulness: It’s the buzzword for good reason, as there is a strong connection between happiness and mindfulness. Journaling brings you into that state of mindfulness where past frustrations and future anxieties lose their edge in the present moment. It calls a wandering mind to attention, from passivity to actively engaging with your thoughts.
3.Achieving Goals: Journaling often includes writing about your dreams and ambitions, yet the idea that scribbled words can help achieve goals is understandably fanciful. However, writing goals signals to your brain, “this is important”. Your brain’s reticular activating system (RAS) flags relevant opportunities and tools to achieve that goal. More detailed goals provide a psychological blue-print and increase the likelihood of achieving them.
4.Emotional Intelligence: Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive and manage your emotions and those of others. Journaling is an outlet for processing emotions and increasing self-awareness. This internal familiarity becomes a bridge of empathy, where you will better intuit and understand what others are experiencing.
5.Boosting Memory and Comprehension: The composition of thoughts and ideas creates a unique relationship between the hand and the brain. Words are representations of ideas, and the formation of letters causes the mind to compose or re-compose ideas while journaling. This strengthens previously covered information and forces you to engage in cognitive recall.
6.Strengthen Your Self-Discipline: Setting time aside to write, whether morning or evening, is an act of discipline, and discipline begets discipline. Like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes.
7.Improve Communication Skills: Writing has critical connections to speaking. Anyone journaling must deliberately aim to tidy up their writing to see benefits in verbal communication; making that decision during writing will benefit your speaking.
8.Healing: Expressive writing routes emotional, physical, and psychological healing. When we translate an experience into language, we make the experience graspable. In doing so, you free yourself from mentally being tangled in traumas. Studies have also shown that the emotional release from journaling lowers anxiety and stress and promotes better sleep.
9.Spark Your Creativity: Stream-of-consciousness writing is a powerful tool for writing without thinking. In addition to overcoming writer’s block, stream-of-consciousness writing brings out thoughts and ideas you never knew you had and loosens up your expressive muscles.
10.Self-Confidence: Journaling about a positive experience allows your brain to relive it and reaffirms your abilities when the ugly head of self-doubt appears. The release of endorphins and dopamine will boost your self-esteem and mood. These reflections can become a catalogue of personal achievements you can continue to revisit.
As you work to incorporate journaling into your life, remember that the elephant is best eaten one bite at a time. Patience and consistency are crucial in forming new habits. First, try writing three days a week, first thing in the morning or before sleeping.
