Journaling – the practice of expressing your thoughts and feelings in writing – is a common habit for many. Journaling can be used to help improve your daily life through tracking habits, nutrition, fitness, finances, and dreams. Some people write in a journal just to express their emotions and frustrations in daily life. This form of journaling helps reduce stress and improves mental health.
How to Keep a Journal Consistently
Keeping a journal consistently helps with both health and stress. To see these benefits, it’s important to write often. Here are some tips to start writing consistently:
- Keep a reminder on your phone.
It’s easy to forget when trying to integrate a new habit into your lifestyle. If you forget to even start, it is harder to create a habit. Adding a reminder on your phone to write in your journal allows it to become easier to not only remember to journal, but also to journal more consistently. It becomes further easier to remember once the habit begins to stick.
- Don’t pressure yourself to write a specific amount.
Putting pressure on yourself only makes it more difficult for the habit to stick. Journaling shouldn’t cause you more stress, as the habit is to help reduce it. Don’t put pressure on yourself to reach a certain word count goal! Whether it be a few words or several pages, the most important part of journaling is writing.
- Don’t pressure yourself to write every single day.
Life gets busy, which makes it more difficult to stick to daily habits. Sometimes you might not have time to actually sit down and write about your emotions and frustrations. Again, journaling is supposed to help reduce stress. Forcing yourself to do it will only add stress. Instead, journaling should be something you look forward to doing, to unwind after a stressful day. It should never become a habit to dread.
The Benefits of Journaling
Keeping a journal has several benefits. Not only do you get to have a detailed record of your life, but journaling also offers many health benefits – both physical and mental. The most obvious benefit is the improvement of mental health. According to the University of Rochester, journaling helps with managing anxiety and coping with depression. It also helps with problem solving and learning how to voice concerns and fears, which again helps people who struggle with anxiety and depression. Journaling also helps you to identify negative thoughts and behaviors, which in turn allows you to better cope with them.
The mental health benefits of journaling lead to improved physical health once the habit becomes more consistent. According to a study by the University of Cambridge, journaling as a long term habit leads to improvements in physical health long-term. This includes improved lung and liver function, as well as an improved immune system. This is because those who journal report less overall stress.
Journaling is an important habit to help improve physical and mental health and reduce stress. Once you begin to write in a journal consistently, you’ll see these benefits in your own life.
