What a Couple of Years It Has Been!
There’s no doubt that 2020 and 2021 have been stressful for everyone – and 2022 is bound to bring challenges too. As an aid to reducing stress, here we take a look at the mental health benefits of keeping a journal.
Not only does journaling help with your mental health, but specific types of journaling, like mindful journaling, can be crucial. If you’ve never considered keeping a journal, here are some things to know about how to approach it and how it can help your mental health.
What to Write About In Your Mental Health Journal
You may already keep a journal – it’s a great way of remembering all the things to be grateful for each day, and to keep a record of important events and happenings in daily life. It’s good to know that journaling for mindfulness purposes is that not very different than regular journaling.
the main difference is that instead of just writing about your day, you take it to the next level by taking the time to reflect on how you felt, your moods (good and bad), your motivations, and reflect on what occurred during the day. What made you feel good, and why you think it did. What really put you on a downer and what you think cause that too.
As for when it’s best to write your journal, there are many approaches and you should find one that suits you and your routine. Some people write them at the end of the day, some early in the morning before your day starts, others carry it with them and write in it as the day progresses. That might not suit everyone’s day as you need to write with total honesty about what is affecting your state of mind. The true mental health benefits of keeping a journal will only be at their fullest when you are open and honest about what is impacting your moods.
There are many ways to use a journal for mindfulness and help your mental health in the process, so let’s look at a couple of tips to help you get started.
The Reflection Method Of Journaling
Probably one of the most popular times to write a journal is at the end of the day, in the privacy of your own home or room. This is a great time to write about your day and allow yourself to reflect on what happened, in comfortable surroundings. It should be the easiest way for you to write and reflect honestly on your day.
Think about the day and make notes of the things that have happened to you or actions you took during the day. A good way to start the day’s entry is to write down some bullets of the day. If you think of short bullet entries of the things that spring to mind for the day, these are most likely to be the things that impacted you that doy – good or bad.
Next, spend some time thinking about each of the different bullet points you made at the start. It may be you had a meeting at work, met a friend for coffee, had a chance encounter with an old friend. It may be a post on social media either, directly to you or one that passed in front of you, that had some form of impact.
For each bullet point in your list, reflect on those meetings, social media posts, or interactions. Did it make you feel happy, sad, annoyed, elated, or indifferent? Be totally honest with yourself about how it made you feel. It made your initial bullet list so there must have been something about it that made it stick in the front of your mind.
How did you feel? Reflect on it – but don’t beat yourself up if it didn’t go the way you would have hoped. What would you have done differently? Are you okay with any mistakes you may have made and ready to move on? If not, what do you think you could do to help you move on. Remember though, there may not be anything you can do as it’s out of your control and that’s absolutely fine. The important thing is to accept that t is out of your control.
This practice not only lets you experience and reflect on your decisions and actions, but gets you into the mindset of moving on and doing better tomorrow.
Start The Mental Health Journal Habit
The mental health benefits of keeping a journal have the best effect when you write in it as a habit. It’s better to write short entries at the start just to make it habitual. Don’t overthink it when you first start using a journal for mindfulness.
Just get a journal or notebook and get into the habit of using it every day. We have a few we have published and are available on Amazon. Here are a couple of examples of some soothing butterfly design journals with soothing cream paper.
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| Ideal Gift For Journaling And Writing, An Elegant Butterfly Design Notebook With 120 Blank Lined Pages | Butterfly Design Blank Lined 120 Page Journal | Perfect Gift For Journaling And Writing | |
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Once you have your blank journal, find a time of the day when you want to write, and you can ensure you be alone to do so. This might be in the morning before the household has woken up, at night just before bed, or during your lunch break. Once you are in the habit, it becomes easier to start using it for mindfulness. It has to be a time when you have time to think, write and be honest. A rushed journal is not going to improve your mental health and, in itself, maybe the reason you are feeling stressed. If you can’t find 10 minutes to be on your own with your thoughts then think about why that is – and write about it in your journal.
We all need to take care of our mental health and encourage others to take care of theirs too. If you are interested in improving your mental health, whether you deal with a lot of stress, anxiety, or other mental health disorders, then keeping a journal as a way of aiding better mental health a great place to start.
Happy journal writing!
