One of the main benefits of journaling is the stress relief aspect of it. Journaling doesn’t need to be anything fancy or complex, you don’t need a fancy notebook, just you and your thoughts. That’s the easiest part about it, you just document your feelings. There are a lot of great mental health benefits to journaling, so here are a few to inspire you to start!
Just start with a notebook and a pen. You really don’t even need that, you can even do a paperless journal if you feel like it, anything you can write on works perfectly. I always begin with a few goals in mind, keep it small and realistic. Things like keeping a schedule and trying to journal 2-3 times each week. Many people journal every day, but you can start out small and work your way up to it, to not disappoint yourself. Starting out with journaling can seem nerve-wracking but the whole process is meant to be therapeutic and calming so if that’s not how it feels for you may be re-evaluate your motives and try to come up with a way to suit you and your needs.
From there it’s simple there’s no right or wrong way to journal, there’s nothing specific that you must write in your journal, you don’t even have to have a journal, you can type this out in a word document if you feel like it. The purpose of journaling is to help you understand your feelings and emotions as well as offer a space for you to be fully yourself and even reflect on moments of your life whether they are good or bad. Journaling is so beneficial for your mental health and having somewhere for you to just write the way that you’re feeling the thing is that you’re doing the goals that you have for you to look back on and visually see progress that you’ve made in yourself is incredibly rewarding.
Personally I’ve been journaling since I was maybe 12 years old and it’s always been an on and off thing for me I’ve never consecutively journaled every single day they’ve definitely been periods of time that I have but don’t ever put the pressure on yourself because some days things might be too heavy other days you just might not be feeling like it and some days you just may not have anything to say and that’s perfectly OK as long as you know that there are no limitations on how to journal.
So, let’s get into some of the scientific and proven benefits of journaling for those of you who might need that proof. Journaling is proven to help decrease symptoms of asthma and arthritis. Journaling is also proven to help improve your cognitive functioning and even strengthen your immune system response. According to a very warm mind, journaling can also counteract many of the negative effects of stress as we spoke about previously. Personally, in my opinion I don’t see any negative aspects to starting a journal. Most of the outcomes of journaling, if not all, are incredibly positive and will do nothing but benefit you. And so personally I think everyone should take up journaling including men who find it to be for some reason a feminine practice it is surely not be confined .to one gender because that would be stupid. Taking of journaling is something that you don’t need to share with the world you don’t need to share with the people in your life you can just do for you and that’s one of the greatest things I think of that there is about journaling because you’re not doing it for anyone else but your own self and your own growth and your own mental health.
This article was not meant to force anybody into doing something, it is simply just me expressing my love for something that has helped me through so much. Journaling has been an outlet and an escape for me since I was very young and has helped me in a lot of areas of my life and continues to help me today. Sometimes the best thing that you can do for yourself is quite literally just write down how you were feeling and then come back to it a couple of hours later to see if you still feel that way and to reflect on why you might’ve been feeling that way in the first place. It’s very beneficial, and it is widely popular among so many people. So, I highly suggest that if you are reading this, you should try journaling even if it’s just once and see how you feel.