What I Learned by Journaling
Tags: Journalling, What, Journal, I Love You, 30 Days

Ever since I got interested in self-development couple years ago I’ve heard people talk about the benefits of journaling every day it’s helped them improve clarity and focus.

It’s helped them keep track of their goals and get all of their thoughts down onto the page so I thought why not try it out for 30 days and see if I could see those benefits as well.

If I’m being completely honest I couldn’t help but think that it was complete bs And it was until there are a ton of different kinds of journaling methods. You could have a dream journal to track the things that happen while you sleep, the food journal to track everything that you eat, a workout Journal to track your gains and a bullet journal to track your tasks habits and prioritise your work.

The key word across all these methods is “track” by tracking what we do charting our progress were able to see growth where it might not be evident day to day progress is elusive and as we easily get knocked off course journaling is supposedly a powerful way to get a bird’s-eye view of our lives for 30 days I’m gonna be committing to writing free form for 10 minutes a day to track my overall state of mind to possibly confront things.

Hopefully to understand and get clear on my own thought patterns either great secrets could be unlocked through the power of journaling or it’ll be a complete waste of time.

This is not my first time journaling these are six journals that I’ve kept over the past eight to ten years and I have failed at journaling in the past for two main reasons one I just found it so difficult to fill up a journal and then the other thing is if you look through these journals you’ll see that there was just no consistency at all I would sometimes miss weeks sometimes months and then get back to it.

Then I’m like apologising for myself for not keeping up with the journal but that was the glimmering hope that I had for these 30 days was that the act of doing it everyday would tip the scale because with every other habit that I’ve built in the past whether it was going to the gym, reading every day these habits helped and really made it when I built them three four five days a week. So the thought process was if I could do this for 30 days straight it might be long enough to see the benefits instead of using one of these large moleskin journals I decided to use a small pocket-sized journal by Baron fig because minimalism but really I didn’t want to feel like I had to fill up every page and I wanted to only write a little bit each day

I wanted a journal I could just throw in my pocket and take with me anywhere so I started writing each day I set aside ten minutes to fill up a few pages.

I wrote about my work the things I’m grateful for our travel plans the big move we had planned for the end of the month anything that came to my mind in the moment I write down until I got bored and the boredom usually came pretty quick as the days went on into this challenge I felt more and more like this was something that I had to do and not something that I wanted to do .

I kept forgetting saving it to the last minute I’d be in bed at 10 p.m. journaling out a few thoughts and that was probably the biggest hurdle was just finding the time and also enjoying the process because it did feel like an obligation something I had to do the one small benefit I did see early on was that it helped with my perfectionism as a chronic over-thinker it was therapeutic in a way to just write what was on my mind without the chance to edit later when you’re working on the computer everything is editable which is a place of Solace for a perfectionist like me. when I’m writing I feel like I have full control I can screw up make mistakes change my mind about an edit and start all over but you don’t have that same opportunity with journaling I wrote early on.

I still hope to get something more out of this whole journaling thing.Things were going so well for me I have a great relationship I have great family and friends my work is fulfilling I’m really passionate about it financially I feel stable so the journal felt like boasting it was just like brag like yeah things are going really good right now it just felt silly it felt counterproductive like what am I doing here I don’t really have any any struggles to write about until I did as net and I wrapped up a trip overseas and we moved apartments two days after returning I faced some of the worst anxiety I’ve had in my life it caught me off guard it was like nothing I’d experienced before it was likely caused by a combination of factors the travel the move the pressure I put on myself but right at a moment when I thought everything was going so well I was forced off track

This May 20th 2019 net and I just moved into our new apartment and I write I’m really hoping that after a good night’s rest I’ll wake up feeling like myself again I don’t feel like cleaning the apartment unpacking or getting back to my work my mind and body feel completely unsettled there’s a tension a nervousness anxiety I hate this feeling I just want to feel comfortable again I just hope that I wake up feeling better again I know I must sound like a broken record but when you feel like this it’s all you can think about simply writing this down didn’t fix my anxiety it didn’t make everything better but it helped me to accept how I was feeling it stopped me from running away from the thoughts I was having or pretending like they didn’t exist I continued to journal for the next few weeks as I recovered and gave myself the time and space to get back on my feet I had ups and downs in aggregate things got much better I went from feeling sick dizzy and having zero motivation to rebuilding my routines my health and getting back to work now recording this a month since we moved my anxiety has reduced to a light hum it pops up every now and again but it’s not getting in the way of my life among many other things journaling has been a helpful tool for me to gain clarity when my mental health was at its worst

The moment of truth after 30 days of journaling would I recommend it yeah I’d recommend it I’d recommend you try it I think it’s definitely it was a worthwhile pursuit while I did have some breakthroughs and it did help me during some of my low points it wasn’t I just didn’t like the process enough to keep up with it I like the idea of journaling more than I actually liked it in practice again and again it kept feeling like a chore it’s something that I will likely come back to when I face struggles and I have certain things that I’m trying to work through but as a daily practice I just don’t think it’s something that’s worthwhile for me to continue to keep up

do you have a journal ?