1. It clears your mind.
This is the biggest gift of regular journaling. By placing your thoughts and feelings on the page, you can leave it there instead of letting it to take up valuable space in your mind and spirit. It’s like talking to a trusted friend where you feel lighter after unloading all the heaviness inside.
2. It gives you surprising insights.
Journaling with prompts has exposed new thoughts about myself and my life. When I wrote to intuition on day 2 of during this month’s 31-day challenge, I wasn’t sure what I was going to write. I certainly wasn’t feeling in a very intuitive mood. My attitude was even “let’s just get this over with.”
Surprisingly, this is what appeared on the page:
Just keep on keeping on. Don’t give up. Dream big…truly. There’s so much you can do with your gifts and strengths. You’re truly amazing, truly a winner. And whatever you had set your mind and heart towards, you have accomplished. But what’s different now is the mindfulness, the maturity, the whole-hearted purpose towards what you want. What you desire is inevitable. Just step by step—consistently, lovingly—and you will get what you so desire. Trust me…even that beach house.
3. It calms you down.
This analog practice, this 30 minutes for myself is all the meditation I need to relax after a busy and anxious day. Even just writing the five things I’m grateful for can shift my mood from pissed to positive as it shows me how much good there is in my life.
4. It rekindles good memories and allows you to relive your life.
I can look back at the excitement of being pregnant with my daughter, the joy of getting engaged, the exhilaration of promotions and salary increases, the novelty of new places, getting lost and finding my way home again, the little moments that make up my day. My journal is like a written scrapbook where I can step back in time and notice how special my life is.
5. It shows you patterns.
Reading old journals is illuminating. It reveals the patterns in my life. I notice how I keep making the same mistakes until I finally decide, stop, I’ve had enough. I identify the decisions that are keeping me from evolving and growing. I can then make a choice of whether the comfort of these patterns is still worth it or if it’s time to change.
6. It helps you plan.
I have a new retreat in the works but was struggling how to promote it so that people will get it. I decided to write in my journal instead of my planner. I’m not sure if it’s the intuitive space that happens when I journal or if it’s just a different writing environment but the words suddenly started flowing. I understood why women would want to attend this new retreat. I could better explain what we were offering. My retreat landing page practically wrote itself.
