We hear a lot about journaling, but we are often not told why it is so important. Journaling is an easy thing that we can do to promote healing and bring peace to ourselves. A lot of times when we find ourselves awake at night, it’s because we have something on our minds that’s bothering us. Getting it out of our head and into a journal can help put our mind at ease so that we can sleep. It can also help us process how we’re feeling so that we can find better solutions to whatever it is that we may be struggling with.
Why Journal
This is our outlet to process our feelings. Sometimes we struggle to talk to others about how we’re feeling, but we still need to let our thoughts and emotions out. Let’s use our journal for this. Even if we feel like nothing is worth writing down, try anyways. We may surprise ourselves once we put pen to paper.
How to Journal
Journaling can be messy and imprecise. It can take a while to understand how we’re feeling. We should not wait until we’ve sorted out our feelings to write them down. It’s ok if we don’t understand how we’re feeling or don’t have any solutions right now. Healing takes time. Keep in mind that we are not writing for an audience so it doesn’t have to make complete sense. This is where a brain dump can put our mind at ease.
Building habits
Try to be consistent with journaling. But, we should not pressure ourselves to write a certain amount. We just need to write as much as we need to. Let’s not beat ourselves up if we don’t write every night. This is not homework or an assignment. Trying to force ourselves to write the perfect journal or to write when we truly have nothing to write will negate the healing properties of journaling. It won’t help if it feels like work. Building a habit takes time, just remember to keep at it.
Be honest with yourself
The most important thing is to be honest with how we are feeling. If we’re feeling truly upset about something, let’s not sugarcoat it. Lying to ourselves is counterproductive and will actually set us back in finding peace. If we’re used to bottling things up this can be hard, but we need to write honestly and allow ourselves to feel. No one will be reading it, so write down everything, even if it would hurt someone’s feelings to read what we’ve written.
Find a notebook and a pen, sit down, and write.
“Your Journal is like your bestfriend, You don’t have to pretend with it, you can be honest and write exactly how you feel”
– Bukola Ogunwale
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