So, what is journaling? How do you get started? And what in the world do you write about? In this video, I’m going to show you those three things, and I’m telling you, this is coming from someone who used to be completely terrified of the practice himself. But I’m telling you, it’s not as hard as it sounds, and you can do it. So let’s get started.
The Benefits and Misconceptions About Journaling
So, how do we journal? If you’re like me, you’ve heard a lot of positive and good things about journaling. You’ve heard that journaling is therapeutic. It can boost our mood. It also… and you can Google it, but it also boosts our immune system. And it has so many benefits. But you have no idea where to start.
Maybe you’ve seen all those beautiful journals online, you’ve typed in “how to journal.” And you look at all those journals with all these fancy things, and then you’re like, “Yeah, I can’t do that. It’s beautiful, but it’s not for me.” All of those things are good, but I’m telling you, it doesn’t have to be that way. And today, I will walk you through a straightforward, non-threatening way to start a journaling practice.
Preparation for Journaling
So, let’s start with prep. Preparation. There are two different materials that you would need to start your journaling practice. You can either choose to go the handwritten route, which is just simple pen and paper, or you can choose to go the digital route, which is your phone, your tablet, your computer, or any one of those things. We have access to that all the time.
Pros and Cons:
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Handwritten: Reflective, helps memory, but is less portable.
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Digital: Convenient, allows copy-paste, searchable, but less contemplative.
Try both of them, try both methods, and see which one works better for you. I linked some things below, some resources for the handwritten, and I’ll also link some journaling apps for you if that’s you as well.
Finding Your Why
So the next preparation step is to find your why. Why is it that you actually wanna journal? It’s called setting your intention.
Is it that you wanna vent?
Do you want to record something that happened today?
Are you looking to connect with your emotions, or maybe you’re looking to find out more about yourself?
Maybe you’re looking for more self-discovery.
Or maybe you’re just trying to catalog things so that you can track your overall development over time.
It can be any one of those, and all those are very, very good reasons to journal. So find your why, and keep it in your mind. Because that’s gonna be what keeps you coming back to the practice again, and again, and again.
Bonus Tips Before You Start Writing
Two bonuses before we get into what you write in your journal:
1. Stretch a Little
The first one is to stretch a little bit beforehand. Now, I know that it sounds super like weird, like, why am I gonna stretch before I’m writing? But it does help.
Even just a light stretch, raising your hands in the air, just a little bit two-minute stretch that does wonders to just release our brain and release the tension before we start writing it down.
2. Set the Environment
The next bonus tip is to just set the environment. Whatever keeps you calm or makes you feel free and less anxious. So that might be putting out candles, maybe you like to listen to some music, maybe you like to have a certain corner of your house that makes you feel comfortable and at home.
But set a specific environment that makes you wanna keep coming back to it again and again. My thing is candles. I love my essential oil diffuser, and I love my salt lava lamp, ’cause I just love that little dim light. That is my thing, and it helps me to come back to this practice over and over again, because it just really keeps me super calm.
Oh, and I love nature sounds. So let me know below, what is something that you can use or incorporate into your routine that will keep you super calm, relaxed and make you feel free to start your journaling practice.
What Do You Write?
So now that we understand what the prep work is, all the groundwork, we laid it down. What do you write?
And I know this was something that plagued me so much. I would see people sitting and writing, lying by the beach, or like on the boardwalk, or… Whatever, I don’t even go to those places that much.
But I would see people sitting down and writing, like at the park, I would go there. Then I would just see them sitting down and writing, like, “What could you possibly be writing about?”
Like, “How are you writing that long?” And, “You look like you’re in such deep thought, what are you writing?” So I had no idea.
Journaling Methods
Start with the Basics
The first thing I like to do is tackle the lowest hanging fruit. And that’s gonna kind of trick your brain to think, “Oh, actually, maybe journaling is not that hard after all.”
So, the lowest hanging fruit for me is writing down the date, the time, and the location. Where I am when I’m journaling. Some other things you might wanna add are maybe your mood, or the music you listened to at the time, or even the weather. You can write down anything at the top of your page.
And I do it at the top of all of my journal entries. I’ll write the date, the time, location. Like every single one. And that just kind of gets my brain into the mode. “Oh, we’re writing now.”
We’re gonna start writing, and it’s a lot less intimidating than starting with a completely blank page.
1. Brain Dump
After you write the date and time, I’m gonna give you three different methods you can use to start journaling.
The first one is to brain dump. Now, that might sound scary, but it’s not as hard as it seems. Brain dump just means to take everything that’s going on in your brain and just dump it onto paper.
Imagine taking a purse and dumping all the contents out onto the paper. It’s in no order. It doesn’t matter which comes out first, which doesn’t. No, you’re just trying to get everything in the purse, out onto the table, that’s all you’re trynna do. You’re just trynna clear your mind.
You kind of clear your purse. That’s all you’re trying to do, it’s just clear your mind out of everything that is in it. It’s just releasing. And you will be surprised what comes out.
What emotions come out that you didn’t know were in there, what feelings come out, what clarity comes out of it, you’ll be surprised what comes out when you just brain dump.
There’s a pretty famous system called Morning Pages. You can look it up online, but it’s just writing three pages of whatever comes to your mind in the morning. That’s the idea of brain dumping.
If you journal for no other reason than to see your growth over time. ‘Cause sometimes you don’t see it, when we are in it, but you’re writing it down, you see your growth over time. Like, it’s worth it. If just for that, it’s worth it.
2. Use Journal Prompts
If the thought of writing at random completely intimidates you, and it just like doesn’t appeal to you at all. There’s also something called journal prompts. Journaling prompts are a simple statement or it’s a question that just gives you inspiration on what to write about.
So a journaling prompt example might be:
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“One thing you wish other people knew about me is…”
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“The place I wanna visit the most in the future is…”
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“I feel the most energized when…”
Now, those are just some examples of journaling prompts that are linked more to self-discovery. But it doesn’t have to be like that. It can be about anything.
3. Bullet Listing
The third option for journaling is, believe it or not, a list. Now this, you might have seen it if you’ve like, looked online for journaling, but it’s called bullet journaling.
Now bullet listening is really good if you wanna be more organized, or you’re trying to understand your thoughts, or you wanna be more productive, in your day, your month, your week. It’s good for that.
You might see it online, and it may look super beautiful. That is so good. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
It can literally be you dotting and pointing and putting lists of your goals for the month, your goals for the day, your thoughts for the day, your gratitude, things you’re grateful for.
It can be any type of list. It can be pretty, but it can also just be on random bits of paper, I mean, I probably wouldn’t recommend that because you can lose it, but that is also journaling.
Getting our thoughts out of our heads, out of our subconscious, and bringing them into the conscious light so we can learn how to deal with them. So there is no right or wrong way to do it.
Final Thoughts on Journaling
The last thing is that there are no hard, fast rules in journaling. So everything, even in this Article it’s just tips, it is just advice, it is just guidelines that you can use if you’re new to this. But please, once you get into it, make the practice your own.
It will change your life. You will be able to look back at it and see your growth. Like, yeah, I want that for you, man.
And if I didn’t journal, I would have no catalog of that growth from last year to this year. I would have nothing. I wouldn’t even know.
So I promise you it is worth it! It is worth it!
