MY DAILY JOURNALING HABIT
I've been journaling every day, fairly consistently for well over a year now. Most days I journal in the morning as part of my morning routine.
Other days, I will write in my journal right before bed to help calm my mind if anxious thoughts are spiralling out of control.
Some days, I will forget to journal or decide that I don't have time, and I let that be okay- I just pick up my journal the next day and get back into it.
Journaling has helped me gain control of repetitive thoughts and process emotions. It has helped me pep talk my way through tough projects and has been a great place to vent angrily about things outside of my control. It has been a habit that has served me well, and something I will always try my best to make time for.
My history with journaling:
I first came across journaling as a child, documenting family trips and writing down the stories of what had happened that day. My first experience with "stream of consciousness" journaling was in my first high school English class. We were encouraged to write continuously without filtering, essentially capturing the ongoing chatter in our minds, until we had filled up our page. I was fascinated by this assignment and employed the practice many times after it was submitted.
Over the years I have returned to journaling in this way whenever I experienced distress in my life, whether that due to strain in relationships and friendships or frustrations that I was too scared to vocalize. This journaling only ever lasted a few days in a row and I often abandoned the practice when all was well or I had moved on.
Gratitude journaling experience:
I lived abroad for a year of university and brought back a regular journaling practise during this time. I decided to keep a record of all the fun things I got up to and people I met, including photos documenting the experience. Every few weeks I would print a bunch of photos and glue them into my journal with written descriptions of the fun-time or memory captured.
I think this was the least like my currently journaling practice and more resembles a gratitude practice, as I was focusing on all the incredible things I was experiencing and writing about them with so much gratitude, instead of processing events and emotions (positive and negative). This practice, however, was so beneficial during that time and encouraged me to make the most of the experience. I keep contemplating resuming a practice like this again because I so often forget the good experiences and spend too much time ruminating on the bad.
Why I journal
As mentioned above, I find journaling nowadays helps me process my thoughts and feelings, and impart wisdom on my life so I can learn to manage my mind better and live with intention. I use journaling as a way of both self-coaching and self-soothing depending on how I'm feeling going into it. I often brainstorm ideas if I'm unsure how to tackle something or list and talk through pros and cons when I'm being indecisive.
Most days I feel quite neutral when I pick up my journal and I blandly reflect on what has happened to me since the last session or write about an upcoming exciting thing. This is mostly to keep the habit going, but also to cleanse my mind and keep it healthy.
I'm thankful for myself for maintaining the habit because my journal is my go-to coping mechanism whenever I'm upset about something. I find that I will write and write and write until I have nothing more to say and am at least feeling more neutral about whatever spurred me on. I'll usually start by ranting, move to show compassion for myself for having that reaction and then end with coming to some sort of resolution. Often, that will just be giving myself permission to be upset and awareness around the situation. Other times I will be able to process through it all and realize that it isn't the end of the world. As someone who is an overthinker and experiences anxious thoughts, journaling is a tool that helps me stop the spiralling thoughts and move on.
I also journal when I'm feeling great and good things are happening. This is especially helpful when I'm feeling motivated about a new project or inspired by an experience. This helps because there inevitably will be a dip in that motivation and I love coming back and re-reading these entries. Sometimes they even re-inspire me, but even just being reminded that there was a time that I was feeling good about said project, motivates me to stick with it.
How I journal
When I re-started this journaling habit I grabbed a Moleskine journal from years ago that I had written a travel itinerary in the first third of. The perfectionist in me wanted to start in a brand new fresh journal, not have a mish-mash of topics in this one book, but I refused to be wasteful of the rest of the journal and chose the uncomplicated option of using it up before I purchased anything new. Since then, I've used up another mostly empty notebook before finally purchasing a basic black notebook from my local office store, well actually I'm on my third. I've come to realize that as much as the beautiful journals are nice to have, it doesn't really matter what I use to write in as it is more about the practice than how good the final product looks.
I have two strategies when I'm struggling to motivate myself to journal: time and space.
Time is straightforward, I'll just set a timer and write until it goes off. Even if I keep writing the same thing over and over again, I'll just keep going until the timer goes off. I'll usually do 5-15 mins depending on how much time I have.
The other, space, simply involves committing to filling 1 page with writing. I use this when I don't have a timer handy or can't be bothered. One page is also my daily minimum, and probably my most common entry length. Sometimes if I'm struggling to focus, I'll put on an instrumental music playlist in the background to help drown out distracting noises from my environment.
My most used journaling prompts
I often start by journaling about either: a) how I'm currently feeling; or b) what has happened recently or is about to happen. These kinds of prompts get me going and I just get into a flow building off of each thought and idea onto the next. When I struggle to start or feel discouraged about journaling, sometimes I use a prompt or theme to journal about. Some of my most used ones include:
Giving myself a pep talk, re-affirming my commitment to something and identifying one small step I can take in the right direction.
Defining what I believe to be the worst-case scenario and figuring out how I might still survive, even if that happened. Often what I'm fearing happening isn't that likely and in the unlikely case that it did happen, I would be okay, maybe hurt and sad, but for most of my worries, okay.
My ideal self, day, experience, etc. This is about dreaming about what I want AND finding a way to add one of those ideals to my current self, day, experience. It's about not waiting until the right time to start and being unrealistic and unfair in my expectations of myself.
How to make the scary or hard project a little bit more fun. This helps me get into the growth mindset and enjoy the journey and work behind something.
Asking myself what would the easy way be? Often I overcomplicate things, sometimes doing it the easy way is the right way and is adequate for what I need to do.
Brainstorming many ways to do something. At least 2-times the amount I think I need to. I usually let some of these ideas be ridiculous, never going to happen ideas because once I get through all of those, I usually have some breakthroughs and things come up that I had never considered before.
How might this difficult situation be an opportunity to show up for myself? This one has been a game-changer for me when it comes to my relationships and people letting me down. Re-framing it as an opportunity to give myself that thing I was hoping would come from another person is a great pathway to increasing my self-love and independence.
My journey with journaling has been a long one but has been incredibly transformative. It has given me so much self-awareness and wisdom about my own life. Journaling will be a practice that I continue to use for many years to come.
Do you have a journaling habit? How does it compare to mine? What are some of your go-to journaling prompts?
Comment below, I would love to hear about your experience with journaling and maybe add some prompts to my repertoire!
