How Journaling can Improve Your Life
Journaling is the practice of habitually writing out one’s thoughts, ideas, emotions and opinions in a private book. Although people have kept diaries for centuries, the therapeutic practice of keeping a journal only became popularized in the mid-1960s.
Little did we know at the time, journaling would become a cultural phenomenon across the world as a method for processing complex feelings, traumas, or simply recording the events of daily life. But the benefits don’t stop there. Here are 4 more reasons why journaling can improve the quality of your life.
Adds structure and routine
Routine promotes the development of healthy habits. Whether a daily, weekly, or even monthly practice, keeping a journal can add a refreshing sense of structure to one’s life.
Even though some people complain that journaling can be initially tiresome, just a little bit of patience and commitment can have you relying on it as a major source of sustainable emotional upliftment. Dedicating a few minutes of the day after you’ve enjoyed your favourite Australian pokies online to write out what’s happening or how you’re really doing can help you carve out a healthy routine of self-management and care.
Provides space for reflection
Contemplating on your mental and emotional state can seem scary at first, but the more you do it, the more clarity and self-acceptance you can experience. Sometimes, feelings can be erratic and elusive, making them hard to understand.
However, writing them out word for word (even if it looks like a jumbled mess) can allow you see things from a new perspective. This can promote clearer, more honest reflections on the personal patterns or behaviors you exhibit that require support and attention.
Improves fine motor skills
Want to improve your writing skills? Picking up a journal is not a bad start. Writing every day (or at least, on a regular basis) can help advance your fine motor skills, leading to better writing, drawing, and other activities which require hand dexterity.
Expands empathy and creative thinking abilities
When you start dissecting your thoughts, emotions, and experiences, you naturally start to expand the way you perceive not only your own life, but the lives of others around you. This can act as a powerful fertilizer for cultivating empathy and creative thinking skills.
If you want to gain a deeper understanding of human nature, there could be no better place to start than with yourself. Over time, empathic perspectives such as sonder will begin to naturally evolve. This is great for exercising compassion for others and thinking outside of the box.
Gives the gift of hindsight
One of the most powerful gifts a journal will ever leave you with is the gift of hindsight. By keeping journals, you keep an intimate record of your life – one that can be read over the course of decades.
By the time you are old and withered, a recollection of your life’s most poignant memories will be all you have left. Journals can serve as an emotional portal to those pivotal moments, filling you with nostalgia of the very best kind. This is the legacy of a journal.
