Did you know that writing is one of the best wellness tools out there? Yes, you read this right. Writing is powerful, and if you have ever suffered from stress to the point that your mind got overloaded with thoughts and emotions, and you wrote them down, you must have felt so much better.
This is also where the importance of writing a journal comes in. It wouldn’t be wrong to state that journaling is all about being mindful in motion. With the help of journaling, you can shine a light on valuable things that you weren’t aware of before.
Here are some of the essential benefits of journaling.
Decrease Stress
We cannot deny that life is without stress. We all experience stress every day. It can be minor stress but also major stress. Now, when it comes to journaling, it provides you with a platform to jot down your thoughts and feelings without feeling overwhelmed.
This way, you can use journaling as a way to give voice to your thoughts and feelings that might be contributing towards increasing your stress. If you suppress your feelings or keep them inside, you aren’t doing yourself any favor – in fact – you are only contributing to your stress level.
So, here is how you will want to use journaling as a way to decrease your stress level:
- Write three things every day that you are grateful for
- Write down five wishes
- Write down the highlight of the day
Many people who took up journaling for the first time reported they saw a positive shift in their lives. So, you can also use writing as a coping mechanism to handle your stress. Who knows, you might get inspired to work on your life story and write a memoir to share with your ideal readers who might go through similar life challenges.
Suppose you are really interested in writing a book and sharing your experience with others. In that case, you might want to download and use one of the best writing apps so that you can stay on track with your writing project and you can ensure that you don’t procrastinate but complete the first draft on time.
Nonetheless, when it comes to journaling as a way to overcome stress, it definitely helps as you get to give a voice to your suppressed emotions, which in turn gives you perspective and enables you to see life through a better and clearer lens.
Improve Your Mental Health
Numerous studies have proven that journaling can also help improve mental health. You might want to try it out yourself and get a notebook to write down your deepest thoughts that might be weighing you down.
Once you get into the flow of writing, you will start to notice the following changes in your physical and mental health:
- Fewer stress
- Fewer visits to the doctor’s office
- Improvement in your mood
- Better sense of wellbeing
- Fewer distress
Also, if you make it a habit, you will soon start seeing positive changes in your life, including greater resilience and control in life.
Positive Approach to Life
By writing in a diary and letting your thoughts out, you streamline your thought process, which will also give you a healthy escape from your negative thoughts. Here is what happens: when negative thoughts arise in your mind, you increase your chances of getting caught up in negative and toxic situations.
However, if you were to leverage the power of writing down your thoughts, you can create a distance between yourself and the negative thoughts in your mind. As a matter of fact, by writing down your thoughts, you get to take a mental step back and objectively review your thoughts instead of connecting with them and making rash decisions that you might regret later.
This sort of distancing is also known as “cognitive defusion,” which also helps you understand that you are not your thoughts and the emotions that you are feeling. This aspect will also help you understand that instead of letting emotions control you or your behavior, you are the one who is controlling your mind and directing your thoughts.
You might have negative thoughts, but instead of dwelling on them, you can write them down and thus create a distance, enabling you to analyze the context in which the thoughts were formed.
Also, you get to realize when and when not your thoughts are serving you. In case your thoughts aren’t serving you, you can use journaling as a way to separate yourself from your thoughts. You can start journaling with the phrase “I am thinking about …,” and whatever the thoughts are. This way, you will be able to distance yourself from your thoughts and understand the simple concept that you are not your thoughts, as thoughts can come and go. This also indicates that it is perfectly okay to let go of thoughts that don’t serve you in the long run.
Cathartic Impact of Journaling
Another benefit of journaling and how it can improve life is that it is the best way to process difficult emotions. Humans are emotional beings, which means that they process thousands of thoughts and loads of emotions in a day. That said, there are positive and negative emotions, and while you might succeed at pushing some of the negative emotions down, the problem is that they might still keep popping up.
This is where the importance of journaling comes in. Your diary can work as your private shrink, where you can let it all out and enjoy the cathartic effect of getting it all off your chest. Your diary is your ultimate safe space where you can jot down everything and process your emotions without the fear of judgment. Once you have it all out on paper, you will feel like a huge weight has been lifted off your chest, and the thoughts that were pushing you down before will become more manageable. You will feel relieved and in a better mental and emotional state to figure out your next steps.
