Today we’re gonna talk about Journaling. Journaling is a very effective tool during the process of self-improvement. It can be used as a valve, a tool to reflect on yourself and to keep track of your progress.
Pros and Pros of Journaling
• Enhanced Self-Awareness: Journaling allows you to understand patterns and reflect on various situations of your everyday life. Therefore engaging in it regularly makes it easier to recognize your strengths, weaknesses, and values.
• Emotional Release: Journaling can act as a valve. Sometimes we get caught up in negative thoughts; writing can be therapeutic and help process tough emotions.
• Increased Focus and Clarity: Journaling clears your mind. Writing down your thoughts and visualising them on paper creates a form of structure, making it easier to focus on goals and intentions.
• Record of Progress: A journal holds the truths about yourself you learned to overcome over time. It is a written record to look back on and see how much you’ve grown.
How to ‘Effective Journaling’
Consistency: Build a habit by trying to start journaling at around the same time each day at first. To get the best result and helpful feedback on your progress through journaling, you’ll need to be consistent. If you want to learn more about building habits, read our post about it here: >>Click here<<
Honesty: Don’t sugarcoat! You are the only one seeing this, there is no need to be ashamed; lying to yourself is a truly dangerous form. Genuine thoughts are key to self-improvement.
Perfectionism: Again, your journal is just for you. Write without judgment and shame. And if you feel like you can’t do that in front of yourself, that is the first aspect you should focus on on your self-improvement journey.
Overall, you can journal about whatever you want and however you want; truly, there are no restrictions. But, as staying consistent is important, it can sometimes be hard to know how and where to start. So, let’s go over some structure and content ideas for your journal-journey.
Structure Ideas – For Your First Journaling Steps
There are infinite ways you can start journaling. After some time you’ll realise what works best for you. As a newbie, start with structuring your journal into three different entry types: your daily entries, your weekly reflections, and a goal setting section. These could look like the following:
Daily Entries:
• Title: Start with a title if you want to. A title can be anything from ‘Hello Journal’ to just the day of the week.
• Time: Continue with the date and maybe even time. Persistently keeping track of time allows better analysis of your progress.
• Gratitude: Setting aside a section for gratitude forces you to always include something positive. At the top of your entry this allows you to start with positivity, at the end it helps you to end on a good note; find what helps you more.
• Morning Intention: Writing a morning intention is a great way to gather motivation and set you up for a successful day. What do you plan on doing for the day? (Goals, activities, skills, self-care, nothing, etc – no wrong answers here)
• The ‘valve-section’: This is the section where you can freely share any thoughts that are crossing your mind. Don’t think about it too much. Answer a daily prompt, reflect on yourself, or fantasise about nonesense.
• Evening Reflection: Fitting to our morning intention, revisit your journal in the evening to round up the day. Did you accomplish your goal or learned something new today? If you don’t have your journal with you, note down your thoughts somewhere else first (eg post-it, phone, etc) and/or fill your journal in the next morning.
Weekly Reflections:
Set aside a day to review the week’s entries and reflect on progress and challenges.
• Note down what made you happy, what challenged you, and what you want to include more often in the future.
• Track patterns or reoccurring themes in your thoughts, feelings, or behaviour. Try to understand and learn from them to develop further.
Use your weekly reflection to find useful information hidden in ordinary behaviour each week.
Goal-Setting Sections:
• Set aside one or two pages for monthly and/or quarterly goals.
• Split them into areas for structure, such as personal growth, health, work, etc.
• Leave space besides each goal. This way you can track your progress or adjust a goal.
• Try color-coding important goals. If you recognise something in your daily or weekly entries which resonates with that goal, you can highlight it in the same color to easily find it when starting to reflect or analyse your progress.
Content Ideas – What do you want to know about yourself?
We already named some things you can include, such as gratitude and goals. But, there are many more things you can write into you journal.
If you ever feel stuck on what to write about, having a list of prompts can be a useful tool. You can create a separate list with things you want to understand about yourself, or you set aside 2 or 3 pages at the front or back of your journal and note down your questions there.
Here is a list of examples for questions and prompts you can use:
Self-Reflection:
• “What went well today, and why?”
• “What would I change about today, if anything?”
• “What am I proud of, and why?”
Deeper Introspection:
• “What is holding me back from my goals?”
• “What am I avoiding, and why?”
Mindfulness Moments:
• Document times or moments you felt fully present or particularly mindful in.
• Write about emotions and how they manifested physically or mentally.
Growth Tracking:
• Write about a specific habit you want to build and note daily wins/losses.
• Reflect on moments of growth, such as overcoming a fear or learning a new skill.
• Celebrate small victories to stay motivated.
There will be times where you don’t know what to write and none of your prompts appears to be fitting for you in your current state. I want you to understand that this is fine.
Some questions are easy to answer whereas others take a lot of courage and strength, as they are connected to pain. The truth can hurt. If a prompt doesn’t feel right, that’s ok. Just don’t give up.
Some days, we want to write about everything and nothing at once, some days all we want to do is journal about the nonesense that travels through our minds – if that’s the case, do so.
In the end, journaling is a tool supposed to help, not to pressure, grade or judge you – you are doing this for yourself.