How to attain mindfulness (of emotions) through journaling
By: Swathi Kantharaja
Tags: Daily Thoughts, Journaling, Emotional Wellbeing, Mindfulness, Emotions

Have you ever realized, how many times in a day you sit down and wake up from a chair? How many times you pick your mobile up and turn it on to check for a notification? It seems hard to even notice such trivial elements, isn’t it? That’s because we are not mindful of those actions, they happen in the background of our subconscious mind. You think you don’t need to keep count on such elements in life. But when it comes to our feelings and emotions, when having a conversation with people, when working, being in a meeting, when talking to oneself, when listening, while eating & working out and so on these elements require us to be mindful for our emotional well-being.

Okay, what does mindfulness mean?

Mindfulness is being aware of our thoughts and feelings as they happen moment by moment in our lives. It’s knowing what is happening within our mind, body and our surroundings.

Why be mindful at all?

We are in the 21st century with loads of distraction, our lives are moving at a much faster pace than compared to people who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. We are juggling plenty of things at once. We want to work, be more ambitious, yet spend time with family and socialize with friends. We forget to stop and notice what’s happening to our minds in this heavy traffic of information overload.

By being mindful, we can refrain from anxiety, feel the stress and try our best to come out of it and overcome the obsession of overthinking which has the dangers of leading into depression.

You can attain mindfulness through various modes such as yoga, tai-chi, meditation, but here I’m going to share my experience of practicing mindfulness through daily journaling habit.

My journey in catching those mindfulness mice 🐁

When I started journaling I had no idea about what mindfulness even meant. I was in 6th grade, I had picked up my dad’s old diary and started writing about my thoughts about studies and school on that particular day. Slowly, I started enjoying writing as I knew nobody would judge me for my writing or my thoughts. Fast forward to 2010s one day I realized that I had completely stopped writing in my journal because of my busy life. In the digital era, I thought I will give it a try using a mobile app. So I downloaded Day One app, which is too good by the way if you want to inculcate journaling habit into your lives.

I started capturing some of my minds monkeys (thoughts) into my daily journal. Did you know, our brain thinks between 60K to 80K thoughts per day. Among those, we will have a blend of negative thoughts and positive ones. Some will be creative ideas, which get lost in the sea of other distractions. Imagine capturing all of them and storing in hard drive and replaying as and when we want it.

I started writing into my journal whenever I felt low, whenever I felt happy, whenever I felt irritated, whenever I felt inspired, whenever I felt like I had to capture my minds thoughts.

One day, I and my husband had a small argument and we both went silent for some time, to fill that silence I just started narrating the story of how we ended up into an argument into my journal. It made sense to me that neither of us were right or wrong after reading what I had just written, the reason was the lack of communication. But I suddenly had an epiphany at that point in time. I could feel my emotions passing by. I could clearly see in my mind's eye how my thoughts were forming. How my emotions were formed.

By journaling every single day for nearly 5 years; now I am able to notice and feel my emotions. I am able to understand why a certain type of emotion has filled my mind at a point in time. This has helped me to look at events in a more logical way by keeping emotions aside.

It’s a lifelong journey, we can’t expect to keep our teeth clean by brushing once, isn’t it? We have to do it every single day. It’s the same with journaling too.

So, why don’t you pick up a book or an app and start jotting down your thoughts?