On The Benefits of Journaling: 7 Reasons To Start

in #life8 years ago (edited)

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I’ve been keeping a journal for at least 10 years.

On the bookshelf near to my bed 12 black leather-bound journals are neatly stacked on one side. I started writing in the oldest one when I first went away for school in 2007. Most of the pages are full of anxieties and worries, but there are also novel insights that I gained and recorded personal histories.

There are several reasons to start journaling. Here I’ll highlight a few of them from my own experience and reading, but this list is certainly not conclusive or in order of importance!

[The images here are commercially licensed stock photography]


1. Become a better writer.

”I have advice for people who want to write. I don’t care whether they’re 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can’t be a writer if you’re not a reader. It’s the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it’s for only half an hour — write, write, write.”
Madeleine L'Engle

The more you write, the better a writer you’ll become. That’s the theory, anyway. They say that practice makes perfect, but I say it depends on if you’re practicing the proper way. Writing for yourself, with no audience to worry about, can have a good effect on your style and voice. You may start to notice little things that make your writing unique, and you’ll increase your vocabulary by searching for better ways of describing things.

If you write consistently over a period of time, you'll likely be times more proficient than the person now putting thoughts to paper for the first time.

2. Meditation / Focus

Sometimes I get anxiety.

I’ve always found that when my mind is racing with worry, it helps to just focus on one thing instead of flying wildly between thoughts making things worse. Especially if you are journaling by hand, the slow and steady formations of the lettering takes more concentration and has the potential to slow the whirring mind.

Plus, it’s an added bonus that you can write our your anxieties and place them one side. It’s very therapeutic.

Cultivate mindfulness by being present with your thoughts rather than trying to ignore them.

3. Personal History

“What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Have you ever thought back on a particular time in your life and wondered “what was I thinking?” Well… if you’d been keeping a journal, you’d know exactly what you were thinking at the time, provided you wrote openly and consistently!

You can use the journal as a way to track a certain activity, or progress in a new hobby or skill. Look back on these things after a few months, years, decades!

4. Family Heirloom or Historical Document

Following on from the Personal History, a journal can become a family heirloom or an historical document that people many years in the future will find captivating.

“For someone like me, it is a very strange habit to write in a diary. Not only that I have never written before, but it strikes me that later neither I, nor anyone else, will care for the outpouring of a thirteen year old schoolgirl.” — Anne Frank, Diary

How wrong she was!

My great-great grandfather kept a journal between 1881 and 1884. How precious those pages are to me! The mundane life of a Victorian era man, it must have been so dull at the time. But he was excited about electricity and the city lit up with street lights! He marvelled at the medicine and science of his day, and recorded his thoughts about the ancient past as well.

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These things are so interesting to us today, and I know that the seemingly mundane aspects and routines of our lives in the 21st century will be fascinating to a 25th century reader. Provided that we don’t destroy ourselves before then!

Give your descendants that gift. How amazing is it to sit and get to ‘know’ the intimate thoughts of your ancestors, as if they were sitting right in front of you. As an historical document, you are preserving the world at a specific point in time with specific points of view.

5. Problem Solving

Writing things out helps you to work things out. When we externalise problems we are more capable of seeing the solution. Looking at things objectively is a good practice for figuring out the next steps that we’d like to take. This is especially true with making lists! I love to make lists, once I made a list of all the reasons to love lists. So meta.

You might be surprised by how new creative solutions to problems just ‘come to you’ when you put them out on paper. Try it some time. If they don’t magically appear, well hey you can’t win ‘em all.

6. Handwriting

When was the last time you wrote a sentence with a pen or pencil?

Call me archaic, but I take pleasure in handwriting. I use a nice fine-nibbed gold plated Cross fountain pen that was given as a gift years ago.

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There’s something meditative about the formations of each letter making up a sentence, making up a paragraph, making up a page. Who knows, handwriting may become a lost art in the years to come, although I very much doubt it. It has already lost popularity in the “modern” world with our tick tick ticking on keyboards all the time.

That’s okay, though. I’m not an old man yelling for kids to get off my yard strewn with empty fountain pen cartridges. If you find it easier and more interesting to write with a computer, have at it.

There are some drawbacks and disadvantages to both, so just choose the medium you are most comfortable with and gives you the most advantages.

7. You can get creative

Journaling doesn’t have to be just words, it can include sketches and photographs, anything you want. I don’t know where the line is between Journaling and Scrapbooking, and I don’t really care. My wife uses a journal without lines so that she can make doodles anywhere and write around them, that works out really well for her. I prefer the structure of lines, I don’t doodle.

There’s a really great book called 1,000 Artist Journal Pages that highlights, well… a thousand artist journal pages! Lots of drawings, sketches, cartoons, comic strips, photographs. It’s fun to look at.

How to get started

Any old notebook will do. But personally I like to have a nice ‘special’ journal, so I got myself the Obsidian Journal from Peter Pauper Press, because it’s just beautiful. There are a few different styles from the same maker, and I’ll probably work my way through a few of them! Before those ones, I used to get a simple black moleskin which works just fine. I use BookDepository for the free international shipping.

I like to write before bed, to decompress after the day. You might find it more appropriate to wake up fresh and then write, and I can see the benefit of that. If you’re a vivid dreamer (which I am) you can record your dreams right after waking. That’s apparently a good way to increase lucid dreaming, which is super duper fun. Write more than once a day, why not!

Keep your journals secure. Not only don’t you want prying eyes reading your intimate thoughts, but you also don’t want those words to be lost. There’s no back up! That’s one of the major downsides to ‘traditional’ journaling, but it also is what makes them so precious if they survive. Keep your journals off the ground away from the damp, even better if you keep them in watertight containers stored away so that nothing can eat them and they won’t be destroyed in case of a flood!

That’s just about it. Make it a daily habit to write in your journal about the things that happened during the day, your thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears. Write about the past, present and future. If you like, write letters to your future self, or your children or grandchildren or great grandchildren. I guarantee, they will appreciate it one day, and so will you.

Do you journal?

What other benefits are there to journaling?


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I love this, It also helps you reflect on the things you may not be doing correctly in life. So you can make those changes quickly. I have been keeping a journal on and off for the last 10 years. When I don't keep a journal, I find myself more stressed. It's important that people keep track of their life, IT's easy to forget or replace memories with what you "think happened"

The only thing I don't like about journals is they start to pile up quickly. The stack gets bigger and it can sometimes become an annoyance. That is why to a certain degree I like what We have avalibale online. So Online journals can be popular. But then again nothing is more satisfying than holding a beautiful leather book in your hand and practicing the art of writing.
"Slamming your fingers on the keys, Has no feeling And everyone letters look the same"

Great post!

Totally agree with you.

I've tried the online journaling, very briefly, but it wasn't for me. I really like hand writing my journal, even if I can't get my thoughts out as fast as I can when typing... Advantages and disadvantages of both, but I like the physical journals.

I use a document with a password. I've been at it since 2003. Typing gets me into the flo , as it were.

Always a solid post and this time appreciate the lesson to boot! Have the books recommended from my other post ordered, and again.... Very much appreciate your honest feedback.

Nice post @jamtaylor, journaling is a beautiful way of keeping moments alive, whilst providing useful reference points for deeper perspectives to come in to view.

It's also an excellent way to practice contemplation and introspection, so you get to know yourself better.

That indeed it is!

Thank you very much. I will show your article to my wife. We were discussing this very afternoon how important and beneficial it is to write a journal. The discussion started when she said that she is sorry she has never begun to write one.

My suggestion was: "It is never too late, my dear!"

Absolutely!

I journaled all the time as a child, but stopped through higher education. However, I recently started bullet journaling and am in love! It's great to have that reminder of what was important to you at that point in your life (and also a to do list to try to somewhat get things done!)

I've kept a journal since 2003, I was fourteen when I started. I talk about everything, personal life, politics, triumphs, failures. It's pouring your soul out on paper, or in my case, into a laptop.
Mine is intended to be read once I die. That way I can be brutally honest about everything because I'm not writing for anyone currently alive. Unless I die early.
This is a great post and journaling is a great habbit to start!

I love your reasons for journaling. I have been journaling for most of my life. But a strange thing happened recently. I am moving from one country to another and as I have been cleaning clutter, I found myself reading journals going back forty years.. What mostly struck me was how despondent most of the writing was. It dawned on me that this is not what I wanted my children to find after I'm gone, so, I had a little trashing ceremony and tore out a few pages here and there, so as to have a timeline to aid in memory, and have since then taken a new and different approach to journaling. I also agree with you that there is something very therapeutic, almost meditative about handwriting versus typing. And as yourself, I prefer a good fountain pen and nicely lined pages work best for me. Julia Cameron in her book, the Artists Way, suggests the "morning pages" as a way to get the creative juices flowing. But, as you say, just write write write.. Any time the muse strikes is good. Thank you for your well crafted suggestions, and here's to journaling!

This was very helpful! I was just talking about going into a writing internship and having doubts about it. But reading this just might help me. Thank you!

What a damn fine post, @jamtaylor! Journaling has always been a part of my life. As a child, we were made to keep various journals in school. There are perhaps no greater mementos of childhood than my journals. Looking back on them, I made valuable comments on current events, girls, and family. Moreover, reading them now truly allows me to understand how I thought as a child. The aspirations and desiresI had then inspire me to continue achieving goals. The journals that I kept in high school, college, and into my adult years tell a similar story. I had so many worries in those days, all of which seemed like a big deal. However, with few exceptions, I hardly remember them nowadays.

I don't like blogging about deeply personal things. I tried that. I love Moleskin notebooks for writing detailed thoughts and poetry. I have really gotten into writing in Field Notes notebooks. While they are small, I am never without one.

That's really fantastic, aren't you glad they made you do that as a kid? I wish I'd done that. I'd love to have those memories. There's a Question a day 5 year joural which I gave to a friend's teenage son. I hope he writes in it. It's very simple and doesn't give a lot of room, but it's better than nothing and it can spark the journalling. It's a nice inexpensive and potentially incredibly valuable gift.

My wife has journals from the time she was 8 years old!! We have them put away. It was her influence that got me writing.

@jamtaylor, thanks for the great article "If you’re a vivid dreamer (which I am) you can record your dreams right after waking. That’s apparently a good way to increase lucid dreaming, which is super duper fun"
It happened so many times when I woke up with some crazy dreams that I can clearly recall the whole dream, but soon after it just fainted way completely, I will try to write them down from now no. @miacats

When you write them down or in the very least tell somebody as soon as you wake up you're more likely to remember them. There are dreams I had years ago that I wrote down that I still can remember. It's really good practice, and yeah - it helps with the lucid dreaming stuff.

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