What I learned from journaling for 30 days
I spent the last 30 days trying to establish a habit of journaling. In this blog post, I’ll talk about what I learned from journaling for 30 days and what you can take into your own challenges. You can find the original blog post along with the challenge in my post, How to make journaling a habit.
I started this challenge because while I used to be very consistent with journaling, I fell out of the habit after the chaos of moving to Chicago. Without journaling, I had felt a loss of clarity in my thoughts and emotions. I didn’t think things through as well as I did before. It seemed that there was a fuzziness in my mind, and I didn’t have a clear vision for each day or week. I needed to establish a journaling habit again.
I entered this challenge with the hopes that I would be able to think more clearly. Along with that, I was hoping to reason through my problems more effectively and establish my goals. If I gained nothing else, I wanted to have a clearer vision of my goals each day.
While 30 days of journaling isn’t really a life-changing experience, I found change in small but important ways. Before starting this challenge, I would start the day without a clear vision of what I wanted to accomplish. I would see my tasks for the day and feel overwhelmed.
After journaling, I found that my thoughts were clearer throughout the day. Instead of thoughts roaming my mind freely and becoming overwhelming clutter, I took those thoughts, wrote them in my journal, and left them there. The worry no longer took center-stage. I was able to focus on more important issues throughout the day because the worry was written where I could look back if I needed to. I could look at my tasks for the day without feeling overwhelmed.
Whether you are looking for relief from stress, depression, anxiety, trauma, or plain old worry, give journaling a try. I promise that recording your thoughts will positively impact your mental health. If you don’t like writing, try recording your voice. I like writing because I have to slow down enough and think about the sentences I am writing. Also, it is easy to flip back to a day and skim over my thoughts from the past. But if video is your thing, don’t be afraid to go for it!
So, let’s get writing!
In the next section, I’ll detail the process I followed during this 30-day challenge. While journaling is instinctual to some, many people don’t get that blessing. This next section will be a simple guide to getting started journaling. Read on to find out how to journal more effectively each day.
My journaling process
For those who would like more details about journaling, I broke down my process. Here is the process I went through each day.
After Spencer left for work in the morning, I would pull out my journal and sit at my desk with a glass of water. While I didn’t set a time limit, I always had the goal of writing at least one page in my journal. This typically takes me about 10 minutes. If my thoughts feel extra cluttered that day, I would write for two pages or as long as I needed to sort through them. By giving myself time to write, I knew I would be ready to face the day with a clear mind when I closed the journal.
In a stream-of-consciousness style, I would write everything on my mind. I would write things like:
- My dream from the night before
- Worries
- My mood and motivation level
- Ideas to boost my motivation
- Self-care checklist
- One major goal for the day
- Positives and negatives (for evening reflections)
While I prefer to write in a stream of consciousness style, sometimes my mind was blank, especially on groggy mornings. Using a template of sorts gave me a structure whenever I didn’t know what to write next. This would change depending on what I wanted to explore that day or just what I felt like writing at the time.
The issues I found myself coming back to over and over again were:
- My general thoughts for the day (stream of consciousness)
- My mood
- What I wanted to accomplish that day
- My to-do list to reach that accomplishment
If your mind works similar to mine, create a guide like mine above that fits to what you want to write about each day.
While the change was not drastic, by writing in my journal, I would start the day with a clear vision and a glimpse at the roadblocks ahead. I would know my motivation level for the day and come up with a plan to be productive regardless.
“Writing in a journal reminds you of your goals and of your learning in life. It offers a place where you can hold a deliberate, thoughtful conversation with yourself.”
Robin S. Sharma
Today, decide to have a thoughtful conversation with yourself. Each day is an opportunity to become better. Take this opportunity today.
If you want to take the challenge so you can find clarity too, check out my first post, How to make journaling a habit, with more ideas to get started.
Let’s start a conversation in the comments below. What do you like to journal about? How do you keep a consistent habit of journaling? Consider sharing so others can be uplifted from your experiences. Thank you.
Pin it for later!
