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The Power of Journaling
t h e P O W E R O F journaling BY: LESLIE VIZCARRA-TIERNEY LEAD PATIENT NAVIGATOR
One of the best things about journaling is that you do not have to be a good writer to receive the benefits. There are several styles of journaling and you can utilize any of them depending on how you feel at the moment. Journaling has power behind it and there are several benefits to practicing this self-help skill. Four of the benefits you can receive are:
1. Provide Clarity By creating a journal it allows you to track patterns, trends, and make self-improvements over time. Purging your thoughts out of your mind onto physical paper through writing, helps to release stress and provide mental room to make better decisions.
2. Reduce Anxiety When you can take time to reflect on your feelings and emotions it will help you sort through the emotional stress you carry. Giving yourself a tool to manage stress will aid in reducing the pressure, ultimately leading you to reduced anxiety levels. Through journaling, you can identify emotional scars allowing you to reduce your anxiety by healing your negative thoughts.
3. Improve Problem-Solving When you reflect by reading past journal entries, it helps improve your problem-solving skills. Your reflection on different experiences can help you recognize which previous actions were successful and which were not. Perhaps in a past entry, you wrote about how much you enjoyed a brisk walk with a friend. This can prompt you to reach out and set up another walk date. Or perhaps you come across an entry where you were feeling low. Coming back to that entry reminds you of that time and your desire not to return to the emotional turmoil you once felt.
4. Strengthen Coping Skills We all have different experiences in life and how we react to situations determines their outcome. How we choose to cope with a problem can be helpful or harmful and build up to be a bigger issue. Everything does not always go according to plan. Targeting positive coping skills will guide you to make better decisions. Journaling can help sort out the experience and provide your thoughts with a coping skill to recover from a difficult situation.
How do you get started? If you have never tried journaling it can seem like a meaningless task. Or perhaps you have given it a try and have been meaning to give it another go. To start receiving the benefits, you have to give it some effort. Start by simply taking the time to just write. Journaling does not have to take long at all. You can start a routine and write three to five times a week for roughly 15 minutes. You will be surprised how these few moments can help improve your mental health. There are several styles you can utilize in a journal.
• Use a good old fashion notebook and pen and start writing. Do not worry about penmanship,
grammar, and punctuation. Just let your thoughts go and write down your feelings. If you are having trouble knowing what to write about, use these topics as prompts:
• Write about something or someone important to you. • Write about things you are grateful for and explain why. • Write about the advice you would give your younger self.
• Write about a current struggle or challenge and come up with possible solutions. • Write about the top 10 things you want other people to know about you. • Write about things you are proud of and things to look forward to in the future.
• Try scribble journaling. Sometimes we have a lot of emotions all at one time. It can be therapeutic to your mental health to just purge out your feelings.
Scribbling can feel like an emotional release of pent-up feelings and negative energy that was once stuck. How to get started: • Sit in a comfortable place and scribble-write your thoughts out on the paper.
The words should not be legible. But you should scribble-write to release and let go of your experience. • Once you feel you have finished scribble-writing take all the pieces of paper and tear them all up. Rip the paper to let go of the emotional baggage. • Set time aside to safely and responsibly burn the paper.
You can wait to burn your scribble journal entries at one time. You can collect them and burn them when you have a campfire or when you light your fireplace. But this step is an important part. Make sure you burn them to signify a release of the past emotion that no longer serves a purpose. *Safety Disclaimer:
You need to be responsible during this step. Make sure you burn in a properly well-ventilated location that is safe from allowing the fire to spread. • Bullet journaling is a helpful way to journal and organize your thoughts. This style is like combining parts of a day planner, diary, and written meditation.
If you like making lists this style might be a great one to try. It can help to coordinate and streamline your thoughts and life to be more productive, by visualizing and setting intentions of your personal and professional goals.
Start by using the sample of the bullet journaling page in this issue. The actual power of journaling is all up to you. If you allow yourself to create and practice self-help tools like journaling, you are unleashing the power within yourself to make improvements. These small adjustments in life can all add up to something much more significant. Taking time to journal is a way for you to discover that you do have the power to make a change. Journaling can help you prioritize your thoughts and release negativity that no longer serves a purpose. This can lead you to find mental clarity by releasing any worries. You are important and worthy of a life that has many wonderful possibilities. Discovering and understanding your desires will help you prioritize and set obtainable goals. Try it for yourself and experience the possibilities. Open yourself up to the benefits that the power of journaling can offer you.
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