5 Reasons You Should Start Journaling (Online or Offline)

Last Updated on February 28, 2024

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“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrow disappear, my courage is reborn,” wrote Anne Frank as she lived through one of the most harrowing events in human history. For centuries, humans have used writing as an instrument to record history and discoveries, weave and share stories, and communicate their emotions, thoughts, and ideas.

Writing is a valuable skill to develop whether you do it for as your profession or don’t. You will encounter many opportunities where you need to use your writing skills in your everyday life. But that’s not the extent of the benefits of writing. Personal writing, particularly journal writing, has many advantages for your well-being.

With so many modern tools for writing, you don’t have many excuses to not keep a journal. If you’re partial to Moleskine notebooks, there’s the portable smart typewriter to help you write faster minus the distraction of the internet.

Destresses and Declutters the Mind

Putting your thoughts into words and writing them into paper concretizes them. You make them tangible and understandable. As a result, you’re also able to put a finger on what you are feeling, which greatly helps in processing negative emotions.

When your thoughts and emotions are all over the place, writing them down helps you figure out what’s really the problem, making it easier to face them. Venting out your frustrations and grievances through writing also helps calm your mind and give you relief.

Helps Develop Creativity 

Writing itself is an act that requires creativity. When you write, you turn the abstract—memories, emotions, and ideas—into something concrete. You create something seemingly out of nothing, and this requires creativity and imagination.

The brain is like a muscle; it generates lots of amazing thoughts and ideas When you write, you’re exercising your brain, making it more creative and prolific. Regular writing also enhances your ability to understand complex ideas and put them into words.

Allows for Self-Reflection

Self-reflection is crucial to an individual’s personal growth. Self-reflection lets you get to know and understand yourself better yourself better, making you more aware of your strengths, flaws, emotions, and thoughts. It helps you make sense of everything that’s going on with your life, both inside and outside of yourself.

When you self-reflect, you look at yourself and your actions objectively. You can then identify what you did right and what you did wrong in a particular situation, which is vital to stay in touch with your humanity. It also helps you understand and accept other people better, especially when they make mistakes.

Keeping a journal is just another way to self-reflect. You write down your experiences and reflect on your thoughts and feelings.

Enhances the Memory and Problem-Solving Skills

If you let your thoughts and feeling build up, they will soon accumulate and clutter your mind. Your mind becomes cluttered, which makes it less efficient.

With your mind occupied with worries and thoughts, you will have a more difficult time recalling old memories and retaining new information. Writing in your thoughts and feelings in a journal helps clean up the clutter in your mind. With your mind clear, you can concentrate and remember things better.

Writing things down also allows you to see things clearer, especially when you’re facing a problem. It helps you separate yourself from the situation and understand the problem. You are then able to think of ways to solve your problem.

Record Your Progress

Most people don’t have a good grasp of how much they can grow in the future. People often judge their future self and situation without taking into account the changes that will happen to them, so they lose hope and become narrow-minded.

Keeping a journal will not immediately improve your ability to anticipate your future, but it will show you how far you’ve gone through the years. Maybe you didn’t become a multimillionaire or a best-selling author since the time you started your journal, but it helps to know that you’ve made progress.

Every time you read your journal, you will be reminded that everything you’ve done and gone through has not been all for naught. You’ve grown and made progress with yourself.

Final Thoughts

You may think that your life is not interesting enough to write about, but keeping a personal journal is not just about recording everything that has happened in your life. Writing a journal is also a way to process your memories, thoughts, feelings, and ideas.

Putting everything into words and venting your fears and anxieties help you destress and declutter your mind, so you’re able to focus and recall things better. This allows you to see your situation better and figure out how to solve your problems.

Journal writing also helps you get to know yourself better. You become more self-aware, so you can face your flaws and gain more confidence in yourself.

Posted by:Cris Antonio

Cris Antonio is a content wizard, responsible for coming up with fresh and unique article ideas. Aside from writing, Cris also enjoys painting, collecting toys, and reading German novels.

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