Journaling has been known to make many benefits.
Productivity tool – Journaling can help people keep track of tasks, events, habits, moods and anything that you want to which will make your life more productive. It is not a typical planner that has fixed styles. You could bullet journal the way you want with the purpose that you want and be as creative as you want.
Well-being management tool – Journaling helps with emotional regulation and is great source of catharsis. Writing intense life experiences helps people express parts of themselves they would usually not be comfortable to share with someone else. By writing out life experiences people are better able to process their thoughts and emotions and give it a new meaning.
Various studies have shown that journaling can reduce overall effects of depression, help people suffering from anxiety lower their stress, it has also been beneficial for students to engage better with content related to studies.
Social psychologist and researcher James Pennebaker put it this way,
“Emotional upheavals touch every part of our lives. You don’t just lose a job, you don’t just get divorced. These things affect all aspects of who we are — our financial situation, our relationships with others, our views of ourselves. … Writing helps us focus and organize the experience.”
Instead of simply letting negative thoughts run rampant in your mind, journaling allows you to engage with your thoughts and determine whether they are true or false.
How can journaling improve your health?
Journaling allows a person to develop what’s called a “coherent narrative” of their life. In other words, it enables a person to take the events they experience and integrate them into their overall perspective on life.
This, in turn, enables a person to think more positively about their life and create a holistic picture of themselves in relation to the rest of the world. It follows that a person with a positive, holistic view of themselves is less prone to things like depression and anxiety, both of which can cause a variety of physical health problems.
Journaling helps deal with traumatic life experiences
It has also been shown that journaling can help a person recover more quickly from traumatic events. Writing things down allows you to process what has occurred and see the good side of life, even when things are difficult. Journaling also allows you to directly confront the things you’ve experienced instead of avoiding them and not taking the time to process them.
If you’ve experienced the death of a loved one, journaling can enable you to effectively grieve in a manner that’s both healthy and healing. As you journal, you can take the necessary time to remember your loved one, process the loss, and begin to move forward.
A 2002 study by researchers Provencher, Gregg, Mead, & Mueser also found that journaling can speed the recovery of those who are struggling with various psychiatric conditions. Psychiatric conditions are often accompanied by repetitive, intrusive thoughts that can be difficult to process. Journaling allows you to get those thoughts down on paper, process them effectively, and finally dispatch with them.
Journaling Improves memory function
Neurologist Judy Willis says:
“The practice of writing can enhance the brain’s intake, processing, retaining, and retrieving of information… it promotes the brain’s attentive focus … boosts long-term memory, illuminates patterns, gives the brain time for reflection, and when well-guided, is a source of conceptual development and stimulus of the brain’s highest cognition.”
When you journal, you are both recording and processing the events of a particular time period. As you do this, you are remembering and reflecting upon the details of the events, which then helps you retain those memories for a significantly longer amount of time.
Additionally, journaling allows you to analyze past events for patterns. As you look at your journal over time, you may begin to see particular patterns emerge, whether in your own behavior or in the behavior of others. Once you spot these patterns, you can respond appropriately.
