This article explores what journalling is, how it might help and where you might start. Journalling isn’t always right or helpful for everyone, especially if your mood is low or it creates more anxiety; do what’s right for you. If things are difficult right now, these links might help.

What is Journalling?

The purpose of keeping a journal is to learn to be truthful with yourself and to recognise your true voice.

Robert Holden, quoting his friend Avanti, in Higher Purpose.

You’ve probably seen the benefits of journalling promoted, to maintain and sustain mental health and well-being.

This is because journalling can be a useful way of getting what’s in your head out in the open (or at least on to paper). For some people, this gives them a sense of clarity and helps them decide what inspired action steps to take next.

We don’t always have to use a journal for our mood though (although mood trackers are common, see below) – you can also use it for things like monitoring your water intake or on a bigger scale, to create a vision for the future.

Here’s some ideas for where to start.

Different Types of Journalling

There are many reasons someone might start a journal and keep one in different ways. For example:

• Monitoring wellness: eg, exercise, water intake or mood. This can be useful to notice things like if or how your diet affects how you feel. For example, some people notice, through keeping track, that their mood or energy slumps early afternoon and this may be because of high sugar content products they’ve consumed at lunch. You might start to notice you get a headache if you don’t drink enough water. Monitoring of this nature should be useful – not unhealthy – so if you find it’s become a consuming ritual, then speak to a doctor or healthcare professional who can help.
• Following a loss or bereavement. Some people find writing a journal helps them process their feelings meaningfully, after things like a break up or the death of a loved one. One of the things I talk about in Answers In The Dark is that grief doesn’t just belong to death; we can grieve for anything that mattered to us that’s no longer there. Journalling can help with this in mind to explore how loss is showing up for us and what might help.
• As a memory book. You might decide to use your journal as a “scrap book” and keep souvenirs like concert tickets, magazine articles or other mementos to treasure for posterity. This may work well alongside navigating loss, as described above.
• Practising gratitude. It might be useful to write a list every day of things you’re glad about. This could be anything from the socks you wear to keep your feet warm in winter, to the job you do, the food in your fridge or the friends you have. The intention of this is to help you smile and boost your mood, not to imply you’re ungrateful for anything.
• Keeping a meditation record. Some people find it helpful, especially in the early days of learning about mindfulness and meditation, to record their experiences. There’s an longer article with more detail here.
• Reflective Questioning. This can be particularly helpful if you’re considering a big change or exploring your life purpose. Questions might include asking what you want to achieve, why and how you plan to get it. For example, you could ask yourself: “What am I doing when I’m at my happiest; who am I with?” “What will my life look like if I keep doing what I’m doing now?” “What small change could I make that will enhance my well-being?” This can also work nicely alongside therapy; you might ask your counsellor to give you some more tips.
• Goal setting, mind-mapping and creating plans. Some might keep a journal to help them focus on their long-term plan, or they may break it down day by day (like a to-do list). You could start at the front of your journal with a two-page mind map of where you’d like to be in a year’s time, in alignment with your values, and then the following pages broken down by quarter, or month by month – each page after that offering an action plan for the goals you have. This can be used alongside the reflection questions above. You could also use the pillars of wellness as described here to help you prioritise. For example you could “rate” on a scale of 1-10 where you feel you are, and where you’d like to be, in your spiritual or social well-being.

You could also use your journal as a way of keeping a dream diary. I explain in Answers In The Dark this can be a helpful way of spotting patterns in your dreaming, to help you understand why you dream what you do, and when.

What You Might Need

There are a number of different journalling products available now, including ready-made notebooks with bullet points (“bullet journalling” options can range from dot pages, blank or lined) but you could also use an ordinary notebook and draw/design each page to suit your needs. Some people enjoy choosing different coloured pens or washi tapes to mark different pages, create borders and headings for each different topic you want to explore.

There are some journalling apps if you’d rather not use paper and pen, or you could create a word document or voice note on your laptop or phone. One main difference between using technology versus paper and pen, is that you can password protect the former, though padlocked journals are also available.

Ways to Journal

There’s a number of reasons listed above about why you might keep a journal, but there’s also different ways you can record the things that are important.

For example, you might use check boxes (eg. one for every day) to monitor exercise, or water drops to both motivate drinking more water, or just ticking off what you’ve achieved.

In the same way, mood might be recorded by symbols of the weather (sunshine for up, rain for down), or different colours depicting how you feel. Because we are all so different you pick which colours resonate with you.

You could also set your goal or word for the day, three things you want to achieve or do a self-care check-in each morning like the one I talk about this in Answers In The Dark; there’s a video on this below.

You could also use your journal to write something at the end of the day, like another self-care check-in, or what you’re grateful for and three things you feel went well. Some people may find it more helpful to draw, so leave space for that where words are less easy to come by.

Journalling doesn’t have to be daily, especially if time is a premium, so you could do this weekly if you prefer. You might also decide to set a time limit on your writing, if that helps like a maximum of 10 minutes a day. There is an example template here that might give you some more ideas.

Keep your journal somewhere safe and accessible so that you can record observations as and when it’s helpful. You might also find it useful to get into a routine, for example setting particular time(s) of day that you’ll use it.

You can really tailor your journalling to suit your needs, so it’s important to be clear about why you want from this activity.

Most of all, don’t use your journal as another way to beat yourself up. Show yourself compassion, remain non-judgemental towards your writing or journal entries and use it as a powerful tool to help you move towards the life you want to live.

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Delphi is the author of Answers In The Dark: Grief, Sleep and How Dreams Can Help You Heal, out now on Amazon and Hive.  You might also like Monday Mojo™. The Helping You Sparkle™ magazine is part of the Helping You Sparkle™ portfolio.

© Delphi Ellis 2023