Journaling is a wonderful way to bring you better peace of mind.

You probably know this scenario well…Your eyes slowly open, you drift into consciousness and you reach over to check your phone, realizing you never set the alarm clock! That sinking feeling of waking up, realizing you’re running late, and knowing that you’ll be spinning your wheels the entire day trying to catch up. It’s enough to make you want to cry.

At times like this, anxiety explodes inside me, forcing my mind to race ahead, and yet my feet haven’t even touched the ground.

As I traipse off down the passage to get my coffee, my mind is in overdrive… What do I need to still do, who I need to email, what meetings are happening today and what am I feeding my kids for dinner?

I have found that on days like this, as counter productive as it seems, I just need to find 10-15 minutes to sit down and get these anxieties down on paper. It’s my type of therapy. This helps me sift through the clutter and the noise of what’s coming and what I am feeling.

Types of journaling

Journaling doesn’t have to be something that stretches on for hours. It can be as simple as monitoring your mood, the weather, and what your 3 key to-dos are for the day.

Journals come in many guises – from the romanticized, leather-bound journal written in delicately with a fountain pen to the one-pager, bullet journal to an Excel spreadsheet.

In The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, she suggests you free-write three pages of anything that pops into your mind along with following certain prompts, over a period of weeks to help unblock yourself. While this is a wonderful tool and approach to use, but sometimes we may require something more simple like a minimalist’s journaling system, that acts in an agile way to capture your mood, goals, habits, and events in your life.

I recommend any type of journal that you can do consistently over a period of weeks, that is enjoyable and helps you stay more conscious of your mood, your surroundings and your thoughts.

The 10 benefits of journaling daily

The benefits of quick journaling are :

1. It’s a form of self-care – you get to spend alone time working through what you’re feeling and what you’re thinking.
2. It’s a great way to self-organize – Too many to-dos and tasks floating around in your mind driving you crazy? Get these tasks out onto paper and start organizing them into logical groups or tasks you could then delegate. This will give you immediate peace of mind.
3. It provides perspective – when we have too many ideas and feelings floating around in our heads, they need an outlet. I know that I need to get things down on paper to find the perspective to see the bigger picture and how these ideas could connect to each other.
4. It’s affirming – when you start to write down positive affirmations about yourself, it immediately lowers stress levels as you start to feel the affirmation you’ve written down. That’s where the magic lies, in the feeling part, not the writing down part. Anyone can say something positive about themselves, but when they give themselves over to actually feeling it, it becomes so much more powerful. Take 2 minutes out to do this.
5. It can increase happiness. When you note what you have or what you get to do in your upcoming day, something shifts in your mind. No longer do you feel the victim of your circumstance (my alarm clock didn’t go off so I overslept) and you start to focus on what you get to experience and how you want to shape your day. “I get to work for a brilliant company who values my contribution”, “I get to spend time with my kids this evening bonding with them”, “I get to connect with interesting people today”, I get to breathe in the fresh air and enjoy the sun streaming in through my window”. It’s that simple.
6. It shows you what you value – When you regularly connect with your values, I believe you live a life of congruence. Things just work for you and you get greater satisfaction from your life when you are living from a place of your values. “I value my freedom” might spur you on to find a space in your day to assert that freedom. Get outside, talk to a friend or watch something great on TV later. “I value my health” means that you can find a way to focus on your health through exercise or eating properly during the day.
7. It allows you to connect with peace – If you could journal in a quiet space, light a candle or just sit in the sunshine away from noise and disturbance, it does wonders for keeping your anxiety levels down. Throw in a positive quote to reflect on or a photo of your kids or dog and it certainly helps to lower blood pressure.
8. Stay on top of your goals and dreams – this is the time and space to check in with your goals and dreams. What are you trying to achieve? Pay off your debt or lose 20kg? Well by just reminding yourself daily of your goals will allow you to make positive choices during your day as you stay reminded of what’s important to you.
9. Capture your memories – you don’t have to write reams of pages, but through short bits of writing you could flip back through your journals and be reminded of where you were and how far you’ve come.
10. It creates more self-awareness. When you capture how you feel, compose your thoughts or work through difficult things, there is no way you come out of that without a higher form of self-awareness. And that’s probably the biggest benefit of all which helps you and everyone around you.

Keeping up the habit of journaling will really help as a form of therapy if you allow it to stay positive and affirming. It has to help you bring down your anxiety levels. If you find yourself journaling really dark, anxious, and negative thoughts, maybe reach out to a friend or mental health professional.

It’s easy to just rush headlong into a stressful day and neglect this essential habit. So I urge you to connect with yourself daily and check in to how you’re feeling and where you are with your goals and habits. Purposefully carve out time for yourself, you won’t be sorry.

Whatever allows you to get your thoughts down on paper and your anxiety soothed is a winner. The beauty of journaling is in the consistency of doing it. If you see these 15 minutes as a form of self-care, dedicate 21 days to it so that it becomes a habit, it truly can transform your life.

Enjoy this liberating process as you drive down anxiety, open up to your creativity and even learn to make plans for your dreams to come true.