Let's start with the basics: I hated journaling since a kid. I was starting every year with a bright new colorful journal, with a lot of ideas about documenting my day, unleash my creativity, write my own short stories, etc. but usually my longest streak was around 5 days or when I was reaaaally inspired around 7-8 days.
Last year, in a period that I was facing huge anxiety, work-related stress and a massive downfall of my self-esteem, I started journaling periodically either to prepare for hard conversations or to let out all of my negativity and bad feelings. After this, my mind connected journaling with negative feelings and I didn't even want to start thinking about journaling again.
After a long period of reflection and some significant changes in my life, I found myself with plenty of free time and a big determination to change my daily habits. I didn't have journaling in my list of habits-that-I-should-practice-to-become-a-better person but, (well, as you can guess from the title), is the only habit that I practicing every day without missing a single day for the last 5 months.
I took the inspiration when my dad gave me the book of Tony Robbins - Notes from a friend and I reach the chapter about the power of questions. It had some really simple morning & night empowering questions that I could use for sure for a quick reflection of my day & a dynamic start of it. From then and after I shaped my questions that fit my goals and needs at this specific time, I can say that it has been a life-changing experience, without exaggeration.
For those who are not familiar with the concept, or for people like I used to be that find it useless, let's recap with some scientific benefits of daily journaling:
Reduces Stress
Improves Immune Function
Keeps Memory Sharp
Boosts Mood and Self Confidence
Strengthens Emotional Functions
Improves your writing
Boosts your productivity
Improves your self-awareness
...and many many more.
From my experience so far, I found out that keeping a journal has changed me and help me to become better in a lot of different areas which I was quite struggling with before or I didn't even think that I need them in my life.
Express myself better: To start with the most obvious thing: If I was not practicing journaling, I would have never started this blog. Writing down my feelings and thoughts every day has improved the way that I am expressing myself on a personal and professional level. Also, as a non-native English speaker, journaling in English improved my language skills, helped me thinking and expressing myself in a foreign language and gives me more confidence when speaking.
Faced my fears: I guess it happens to you, sometimes we cannot even express our fears to ourselves. The journal gives me a safe space to express my fears, concerns and all the feelings that I don't want to discuss with others and you know what? Sometimes when I read them, they seem so ridiculous!
Became more observant: Observation is a huge part of every learning process. By writing down my observations, defining what I should observe to master a topic and what should I expect to get from observing, my mind is now faster on grasping things that before were not getting my attention. Also, this helped to observe myself, how I talk and how I react to specific situations. To make these observations useful, I debrief with these simple questions:
-Why I reacted/ behave like this?
-What does this say about me?
-How do I want to change it or improve it?
Improved my memory: I am accountable for my journal. Every night I want to share everything that I have learned during the day. As you know, writing has a proven effect on our brains when it comes to retaining information and doing this every day will improve your capacity to remember faster.
Practice faster what I've learned: One of the things that I developed the most is that now I take less time to practice something new and most of the time it turns out even better than I thought! I set everyday one simple action step to practice something that I've learned the previous day and at the end reflect on the results. This way I feel more confident about trying new things or different approaches to things that I was doing the same way since 2003. Also, gives me practical experience on what I have learned - this way embrace the new knowledge faster.
Learned more things (from different sources): I always loved learning new things but I never thought to create a mechanism to track this to achieve greater results. I monitor the content that I am feeding myself (books, articles, podcasts, movies, etc) and I write my realizations & learnings from it. You can not imagine how many things you are learning when taking some time to feed your curiosity by writing down things that you observed and take some time to search about it & even share them with your friends.
I am still at the beginning of the journey, so for sure the next months I will be experimenting a lot with how I can boost even more my learning.
Here are some practices I am planning to try the following months:
-Journal in Russian (or other languages that I am trying to master): Follows the same logic with the process that I described above about expressing in English. I have listened to some polyglots practicing the same and finding it successful, so I will give it a try starting with some simple sentences and building up.
-Studying journal: The current situation with online classes and uncertainty of when my exams will take place requires adapting my studying routine. I am planning to start a journal process focused only on my studies to keep better tracking of what I am studying, my assignments and of course of how I comprehend and retaining all the information from notes & lectures. I will share with you when I find the proper questions that will produce some results.
-"Mastering a skill" journal: Usually, when I start learning something from scratch I get super excited in the beginning witch usually lead me to two ways: either I am going all-in with learning and soon getting so overwhelmed by all the information that I am receiving and slow down or even stop after a point of time or something else gets my attention at the same time and I am changing my focus, completely forgetting about what I have started (there is a post coming out on this, I hope I am not the only one trapped in this vicious cycle!)
In my next posts, I am going to share with you my Morning and Night Journal Questions for giving you some inspiration, ideas, and tips of I am doing this process. I hope it will help you as many other blog posts helped me to start!
Share with us, are you journaling? What have you gained through the journaling process?
Do you have an amazing journaling tip that works for you? Share it with us too!
I would love to hear your comments, thoughts, suggestions on this topic!
Also don't forget to follow our Instagram account @learnactreflect_ to see inspiring quotes, learnings, and practices from other people! We are waiting for you :D
Till next time, keep learning,
Daphne
Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash
Comments