Journaling basically means writing in a journal or a diary. Journaling involves writing down your personal events in a journal or a diary, which is used for personal purpose.

People can write down their own personal day to day events, feelings, thoughts in a diary and it is a great tool used by almost all accomplished individuals.

Journaling has scientifically proven benefits. For example, a study found that people who wrote down their deep thoughts and feelings reported reduced levels of stress, lower blood pressure, improve mood and general feelings of well-being. [1]

Journaling is a great tool to write down various specific events other than just thoughts and feelings. It has enormous benefits, and it can help an individual in various aspect.

Some key benefits of journaling are described below:

Better emotional processing

Journaling will allow you write down your thoughts, feelings and memories, and it will allow you to process the relevant conditions and stimuli. It will allow you to think clearly and further help you take appropriate actions to resolve any issues.

Writing will also help you make a pinpoint a major event in your writing, helping you identify a significant case which wouldn’t be noticed otherwise. Journaling helps you identify specific emotions you are feeling, process it and work on resolving or restructuring it.

Track progress and achieve goals

Journaling is another great tool to write down various life goals, milestone and objective. It helps you identify key steps to achieve success in goals, also identifying the hurdles. It also further helps you set goals complying all the elements required in the path to goal achievement.

Through the help of journaling you can also track progress in the journey of achieving goals. Journaling is a measurement process of goal achievement.

Increased creativity

As writing is a creative process. It helps generate great ideas. Writing helps you communicate your thoughts, feelings, memories and knowledge in written words and sentences. And journaling is the same aspect of that.

Journaling also involves generating and writing ideas in more creative form, arranging sentences in appropriate fashion. Also writing involves using basic intelligence of a human being. So, it is supposed to increase creativity.

Mental Clarity

Mental clarity is another benefit of journaling. It helps you release your concerns, identify your key hurdles and obstacles in life. Because when you write your day to day events, and your internal or external events of life. It helps you navigate many aspects of life. Suppose, if you feel stressed out or unable to complete a task. Journaling the steps to resolve the issue, pointing out the barriers and setting up realistic expectations, can help you clearly resolve any issue and further recover from mental hurdles. Journaling also helps in emotional processing, goal achievement, tracking progress, reducing stress etc. So, it definitely has potential to induce the mental state of Mental Clarity.

Increased communication and writing skills

One of the biggest benefits of journaling is Increased communication and writing skills for the fact that journaling involves writing, and communicating ideas in written form. As briefly mentioned above, writing can generate great ideas. It can also boost good handwriting, and enhance the ability to form better and creative sentences. Thus, enhancing the writing skills.

It Boosts memory

Writing can increase your memory and retain the best memories of your life in a piece of note. Daily journaling can help you remember important daily events. As you write those, it helps you remember specific events.

Writing can retain memories. Imagine, you write best moments of your life in a note book or a diary. It can help you retain those memories. So, journaling is a must to do thing for those who would love to remember best moments of their life.

How to perform effective journaling?

Find out the objective:

People do journaling to fulfill certain objective. Such as, writing day to day events, tracking progress and goals, writing to process emotions etc. If you find out the specific objective you want to achieve from journaling rest will become easier.

Do it regularly:

Journaling should be done regularly. Even couple of sentences is fine. It depends on your mood and interest. You can perform journaling every other day or every day. It depends on your intention. But to keep its effectiveness try to do journaling regularly.

Do it at your own style:

You don’t need much formality at your writing process in journaling. Just write at your own style. You won’t have to follow any structure. The purpose of journaling is generally personal. So, it doesn’t have to be professional. Just write whatever you want, and however you want. It doesn’t matter. If you see benefits, that’s what matters.

If you use journaling for tracking progress or goals, make sure to review your journal regularly. Make sure if you are achieving things complying with the journal. If you see any imbalances in your goal, you can restructure your goal journal anytime you want. But it is highly important to set goals which are realistic, and which are achievable according to your ability. Changing your plans frequently may disrupt your plan and increases the chance of failure.

Try to find purpose from your writing:

Journaling should give you a sense of purpose. For example, if you feel distressful emotions. Writing down the feelings in words, identifying triggers and working to resolve the issue will help you make it more purposeful. So, when you perform journaling with a purpose and you find success in, it is worth it.

Summary:

Journaling is writing your thoughts, emotions or day to day events in a journal. The intention of journaling is personal. It has several benefits such as, better emotional processing, tracking progress and achieving goals, increased creativity, mental clarity, increased communication and writing skills and memory boosting ability. The article also highlighted the method to do effective journaling.

References

[1]	K. A. Baikie and K. Wilhelm, “Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing,” Cambridge University Press, 2 January 2018.