The 8 Key Benefits of Keeping a Journal
You’ve heard for years that “journaling is good for you!” but you aren’t so sure if it’s just pseudoscience or something lifestyle gurus are telling you.
However studies have shown, again and again, that regular journaling has a plethora of benefits, both for mental and physical health.
Read on for the benefits of writing in a journal and how to implement the practice into your life.
Journaling aids creativity and provides inspiration
Journaling stimulates the right side of your brain - your creative side - strengthening it for better creative thinking. By getting thoughts and ideas down onto the page, it becomes easier to pick up on ideas that keep coming up for you, and that you might like to explore.
In the seminal The Artist’s Way Julia Cameron talks extensively about Morning Pages, a freewriting and unstructured journal exercise where you write down everything that comes up, without censoring or self-editing, for three pages. She calls this ‘writing past the censor’.
‘The censor’ is the part of our brain that self-edits, the part that says something isn’t good enough before we can even create it. Cameron believes that by journaling in this stream-of-consciousness way regularly, we can learn to stop doubting our creative ideas and stopping ourselves before we even begin.
Journaling before bed helps you sleep better
Journaling before bed helps to clear your mind by putting your thoughts down on paper so they aren’t rattling around your head when it hits the pillow.
Studies have show that you fall asleep 37% faster when you take a few minutes before bed to write out things you have coming up over the next few days.
If you find yourself tossing and turning at night, with an endless list of things to do, ideas you want to action, or worries you have, try writing them all out on paper to get relief and well-earned sleep.
Self reflection is improved by journaling
Self-reflection is the ability to evaluate and get to know your actions, thoughts, and even past experiences, in a way that helps you improve.
At work you might reflect on how you did on a project, what the outcome was, and how you might change your approach to a similar approach in the future.
In your personal life you might reflect on a past relationship and
Self-reflection journaling is a great way to get to know yourself and what makes you tick better. Self-reflection prompts provide clarity and structure to this practice.
Try these questions out:
What do I get excited about?
What would I do if I wasn’t afraid of what others think?
What makes me lose track of time?
Journaling provides clarity
Journaling allows you cipher through your thoughts to find the ones that feel good, productive or true for you. We have up to 60,000 thoughts a day. Most of them are not entirely useful or important. The act of writing down what we are thinking allows you to see what’s important and what’s not.
Regular journaling lets you to see your thought processes more clearly, and recognise reoccurring themes and ideas. For example, writing about an argument with a friend can help to see things from their point of view, or realise that your friendship is more important than an argument.
For me, journaling has helped me find clarity on my goals and what I really want from life. Before I was feeling muddled, until day after day I answered the question in my journal: what do I want to do today? This simple and quick journal exercise showed me exactly how I wanted to spend my days, and what was ultimately important to my happiness, such as walks through my city with an audiobook playing, or grabbing a pistachio latte on a Friday morning before work.
Try these prompts out for more clarity:
If money wasn’t an issue, how would you spend your ideal day?
What do you want to do today?
If you could only achieve one thing this year, what would it be?
Journaling helps to reduce stress
This benefit is touted a lot and there are many studies to back it up, such as this one and this one.
By being a way to clear the mind and get clear on how we are feeling, journaling can release built up stress. It helps to identify stressors in our lives, as well as creating space to practice more positive self-talk.
Journaling has also been used to help process trauma by fully exploring the event and emotions in order to transmute or release them. Always seek professional advice when dealing with trauma, whether a doctor or a therapist.
Try these prompts for stress relief:
How does stress feel in your body? How can you ease it?
Evaluate a situation you are in, and write a letter to yourself as if you were your own friend in this situation.
What has been causing stress lately? How might you ease this burden, delegate or get rid of the stressor all together?
Keeping a gratitude journal makes you happier and more positive
The act of writing things that we are so grateful and happy to have in our lives has been proven to give us a more positive and hopeful outlook on life. A simple way to incorporate gratitude journaling into your life is listing 3 things everyday that you are grateful for. It can be as big as your home and your love, or as small as morning coffee and sunshine. It’s all valid.
Supercharge your gratitude practice by adding a why to each entry. For example, one of my recent gratitude entries was: I am so grateful for my new warm duvet because I sleep so much better when I’m snug as a bug. I was really, really excited about my new duvet. (Still am.)
Journaling makes you a better writer
The more you do anything, the better you get at it. The act of writing, even for yourself or on how you’re feeling, will make you a better writer.
It also has the benefit of making you less self-conscious about your writing as journaling never has to be perfect. In fact, there is no such thing as a perfect way to journal. It’s freeform nature gets you out of your head, and trains you to stop self-editing.
Your memory is improved by keeping a journal
Our brain likes when things are written down. The mere act of writing something down signals to the brain that it’s more important and must be remembered. Returning to things you have written years ago can trigger memories from that time also.
Writing helps us to recall memories from the past that we may rarely think of. Even simple things such as going to the supermarket with your Dad every Saturday morning, or how you spent many happy hours trying to find four leaf clovers in the grass with your childhood friend. As Joan Didion wrote on keeping a journal: “Paid passage back to the world out there. It all comes back. Remember what it is to be me. That is always the point.”
4 (more) prompts to get you started
Free write for a full page. Write down everything that pops into your brain. (Even, and especially, if that thing is ‘I don’t know what to write.’)
What are you grateful for in your immediate surroundings, and why?
What went well for you today? What did you do well?
Check-in with yourself and complete the following sentence: I’m feeling… because…
If you liked this post you might also like Journal Prompts for Complete Beginners.
