What I Learned After 360 Days of Journaling
By: Jess Tam
Tags: Creativity, Journaling, Self Love, Self Improvement, Writing

Journaling Helps Build Positive Habits With Ease

“Depending on what they are, our habits will either make us or break us. We become what we repeatedly do.” ―Sean Covey

Journaling every day is a habit that you build. It does not come as easy as you may think. It is time-consuming, and some days, it feels harder to pick up that pen and paper.

Like building any habit, it takes effort, patience, and consistency.

Once I started to build journaling as a habit, it actually helped me develop other positive habits with much more ease.

I became used to being patient with myself. I was putting the effort and mindfulness towards working at building that habit every day.

I’ve found myself working out more consistently. I’ve begun to see patterns in my behaviors over the last few months and making a conscious change from the parts of me that were toxic.

I managed to write each day — how much I wrote and finding what time works best.

Set Yourself Up for Success

I started small — writing one sentence for a week. My initial goal was only to sum up, my day in one sentence.

Starting small and working your way up to sets you up for success. When starting anything new, it’ll become overwhelming when you dive right into the deep end. You don’t want to let yourself drown.

As time went on, I started to have the urge to write more. So, I took the training wheels off from limiting myself to only one sentence and took off writing as much as I felt like. (Although to continue building muscle, I made sure that I had a minimum of writing at least one to three sentences)

It was hard finding the time of day to journal at first. At first, I typically wrote as soon as I woke up, as they resembled Morning Pages. However, some mornings I would wake up later and not have time for work, so I’d write before bed.

For a few months, I ended up buying a second journal to test out writing one for the mornings and one before bed. However, that did not work for me, it just took up too much time, and I had to label these journals to make sure I write in them at the right time.

I then tried to write my entries in many different ways. At first, I treated it like my therapist. Letting everything thought out — the good and the bad. It felt like a long-overdue release.

Then, for a few weeks, I focused on gratitude. I began to write more about what I was grateful for in my life. I would write it with as much clear visualization as possible. Like being grateful for the sun and ocean, I would write how I felt the breeze brush my face with kisses, reminding me that I was alive. Or how the sounds of the ocean were reminding me that I am strong, that everything in life reflects the rise and fall of the waves.

Building this habit, I didn’t set too many limits and boundaries to ease into journaling consistently. The first three months were trial and error. Eventually, you’ll start to gain momentum and find ways that work.

Results

After four months, I began to find a consistent time that worked best with my schedule. It was better for me to write as soon as I woke up. It gave me the time to process events and thought from the previous day. While also being able to incorporate what I've dreamt the night as well.

It’s helped me keep one journal so that my thoughts are consecutive and together in one place. It makes it a lot easier when I want to go back and read the past months to reflect further.

Sometimes, when I think I don’t have much to say, it has helped me create themes or focus on entries. There are weeks where I want to feel more grateful, so I write as a reminder for what I’m grateful for. There are weeks where I begin to feel stagnant or really struggling. So I started writing letters to the universe asking for strength or visualizing letters writing as my future self, thanking the universe for bringing me what I’ve always dreamed of. I write in specific detail, tapping into all of my senses, realizing that I could get there — I will get there.

As I kept writing, I kept building the amount that I wrote each week. By the 3rd month, I was able to write one full page without stopping.

Now, I can write more than one page, as if I’ve just written one sentence.

What You Can Do to Start Your Journaling Practice