On to week two! Our second week is all about what all the extra time we’ve collected from creating a proactive daily routine can do for us. Read about how I created more time for myself here! I’ve heard a lot about how journaling has helped people to understand their emotional and cognitive process, how we think and feel about things to be simpler. There are some parts of our minds that many of us have a hard time understanding like, “Why do I get so irritable when I talk about this?” or “Why can’t I control my emotions like other people?” I think diving a little deeper into my own daily thoughts and feelings will answer a few questions I have about myself and why I think and feel the way that I do.
I tested this week’s journaling for a month prior to writing this so I could provide better advice on building your entry templates and the positive outcomes you can get out of your journal.
Preparations
Being that my handwriting is a bit of an ugly mess, I have opted to type out my journal entries rather than filling a notebook with slopping penmanship. My first goal was to create a journal template for myself. If I were to simply scribble out my thoughts and feelings in a big blob of words, it would be harder for me to go back and analyze my entries. For this step, I separated the elements of my journal entries that felt the most significant. I was able to complete this by generating a fresh page in the Notion app for my template and dated entries. If anyone would like a more in-depth look at my Notion and how I utilize it, I would be happy to make a little video tutorial on it!
Journal Entry Categories
Intentions
Starting with my Intentions portion of the entry, this is where you could include the mental health awareness tactics you wish to be mindful of for the day or even goals you wish to complete within the day’s time. From my experience, overcrowding this portion can make your day harder to manage and how mindful you can be of yourself. Starting smaller with two or so intentions lets you focus more on incorporating positive mental health tactics. It can also give you a great sense of achievement as you complete your small goals when they are easier to manage. As your journaling progresses and you become more comfortable with yourself and viewing yourself internally, you can add more intentions or bigger goals.
Daily/Weekly Happenings
The second portion of the entry would be Happenings. This portion is pretty self-explanatory. Write out what happened during that day. What was on your mind for a lot of the day? What did you find yourself being worried about? When did something that made you happy happen? When did you laugh, cry, get annoyed, or angry? Having this little recap put the day into a much more condensed perspective. I was able to determine the value of my time and how I spent it. It’s not often that we reflect on our day without the chance of it ending on a negative note.
A lot of times our reflections are just us worrying about what we’ll have to deal with tomorrow. Including some of your positives, even if it was just one, kind of perks me up in a way, makes me want to have even more tomorrow.
Remembering What We’re Grateful For
The third entry, and my favorite, is your Grateful For section. I use bullet points in mine so I don’t have to make a long paragraph if it’s just something simple that I find gratitude for that day. Here I add little things whether they happened that day or were simply on my mind that I am grateful for. They don’t have to be big serious subjects or long-winded “thank you”s if you simply want to put the nice weather outside or perhaps a tasty meal you had. My grateful for’s usually look like this:
Grateful For:
Greeting Toby (my dog) when I come home
Morning sunshine
Cheap candles at Marshalls
A VERY fat cat that sleeps on my feet at night
To-Do’s in Action Items
The last portion of my template includes a common entry in journaling and that is Action Items. This is like a little to-do list for yourself. But because I complete my entries at the end of the day, my action items are usually meant for tomorrow. I will include things like folding the laundry, picking up a birthday card, or even work-related tasks for the next day. A lot of times, action items can be things you wanted to complete that day but didn’t get the time to. This happens to me a lot when it comes to filing paperwork for my job.
Action items for the next day force you to look back on your entry from the day prior and look at it with a pair of hopefully well-rested eyes. You can see and feel how you felt that day and ask yourself the reasoning behind it. It gives you a chance to reflect which is the whole point of journaling for me. We want to treat ourselves well! Knowing how to find our personal preference is important in that.
Process
Taking to my favorite productivity tool, Notion, I incorporated my brand new template and got to writing. A little addition I quickly made to my journaling page was a complete list of all of the Grateful For’s I had written. Taking a look at all of the little things I included and just how many of them there were gave me a little sense of satisfaction. It felt almost like a little kick in my step knowing all the little things I could appreciate in a single day. In total, I have racked up 64 things I have been grateful for. Sure there may be some repeats but I still think it’s a nice number.
The Journaling Scheduling Issue
Starting things off, I did not want to just smoosh an entry into my day every single day. Trying it for the first few weeks, kind of sucked the life out of it. Many of my entries became repetitive or bare because many of my days would run together. This was because of work and staying on top of school tasks being similar. To avoid getting journaling burnout, I reduced my number of entries to about twice a week. This would happen once at the beginning and once at the end of the week. This made journaling more of a special occasion. My entries became fuller and more reflective of my time and gave me a general review of my week. It also brought a lot of unexpected motivation for me! Knowing my end-of-the-week journal entry was coming up, there were a lot of positive things I wanted to include.
After that little hiccup, the process ran much smoother and I ultimately ended up looking forward to completing my entries. I was able to look back and observe some of my productivity faults and certain patterns in days that could be described as “good” days or “bad” days. It was also nice to read about previous days that I’d had and what made them special to me. Another positive outcome to this was me being more mindful and present during the day. I would often find myself paying more attention to daily events and thinking, “I need to remember this for my journal entry.”
Pros
The positives of journaling weren’t immediate but the impact they had was rather significant for me personally. I slowly grew more and more aware of myself and how I was feeling as I submitted my entries. This made me become more knowledgeable of myself in general which felt powerful. I believe recent events in the past few years have encouraged me to retreat into myself and isolate myself from my experiences. Journaling and reconnecting with my day in a way, has brought on a new motivation to see what I can accomplish, both literally with work and school and mentally, over a week’s span. It doesn’t have to be a specific growth, it can be just a generally positive feeling that makes my perspective on my time spent change.
There are a lot of mental health positives that come with journaling that has been scientifically hypothesized and researched. To learn more about these benefits for those dealing with anxiety I recommend reading about them here!
Cons
I believe if I become careless with journaling, it could have a negative effect on me. In order to continue on a positive path, I suggest making sure you are being as present and in the moment as possible throughout your week. On a few occasions, I found myself dipping back into my head and separating from my environment because I was a little too caught up in how my entry would look or what I could put in it. Also, I can also see where journaling could become a bit of a negative tendency. If all you write about are your troubles and the things that upset you in your entries it could feel like all the negative things in your life are piling up.
Final Thoughts
Overall I found journaling to be very enjoyable and something I plan to continue doing. There are a lot of good things that I seem to miss during the week. Having the entry to bring more of those to light has given me a more positive outlook. It also gave me a reliable outlet to reflect on my mental health and how I am feeling. I find that to be one of the most significant pros that came about the past month.
I do, however, recommend keeping some of the cons in mind when journaling for yourself. Know that it can become something that isn’t helpful to you if you are not careful. If you do not feel confident in your growth it may seem like journaling is just more negativity you have to endure. It can also become something of a social escape that removes you too much. To avoid these cons I would suggest giving more time to being aware of yourself. Look at how you interact with others and how often you find yourself zoning out because of journaling.
I wish the best of luck to those who may adopt journaling into their routines. I recommend seeking out other resources, like this one, as well to better understand if journaling is right for you. Ultimately, the best decider of that is you. You have the power to make the journal whatever it is that you want it to be. Scribble all over it, draw pictures, make jokes, and do whatever feels right. The best way to know where you are is to express freely and that is what your journal is meant to be. It’s your outlet to express and emote as you would naturally. I hope my experience has given you a better idea of how you want to live better. Have fun writing!