The Significance of JOURNALING

As you might often hear, mostly from some of the most influential and spiritual people, journaling is increasingly becoming one of the most beneficial habits a person can incorporate into their day or daily routines. Something so simple as utilizing a pen and paper for multiple reasons; whether it's a brain dump, growth tracker, planning method, creative outlet whatever it is, you can easily draw out some sort of significance for whatever suits you.

7 reasons why you should start Journaling:

1. A Good Exercise for Mental Health.

Building up a clear and healthy mind is like a breath of fresh air. With all of our countless thoughts and emotions roaming around, they tend to create a lot of mental fog and pollution. Managing our mindsets are not always easy. Therefore adapting mental exercises become extremely helpful and essential. Journaling is a really great form of mental exercise because it can help you release anxiety, stress, and copes with any type of mood. Writing can have that ability to assist you in emptying your mind to problem-solve and problem-sort, rather than problem-store.

2. A Healthy Release of your Thoughts and Emotions.

Although it is important to be aware of your thoughts and emotions, a lot of the time being consumed in your own awareness, feelings or even conspiracies can become very overwhelming. Maybe you even have some of the most brilliant ideas and a huge amount of bliss and gratitude and desperately want to express it all. Sometimes when we bare too much of any of this we do either one of two things: (1) Let it out as a massive overload or (2) Keep everything bottled up to have it only drive us crazy later. How many times have you had a great idea or awesome feeling that you wanted to savor so you could remember and look back on it later, but restricted it internally to only forget about it when the right time came to indulge back into that same idea or feeling? Press it all in a journal.

3. Therapeutic.

Whether you are going through a difficult time or happily content with yourself and where you are in life, journaling can have the ability to bring you a sense of peace. I believe the peacefulness comes because you are having dialogue with yourself that you don't have to holdback or feel the need to explain. You are relieving yourself by sorting through your own ideas/thoughts/feelings/beliefs/reasonings by literally mapping out, drawing, planning, and organizing all that you want to release by being in control of that pen.

4. Restricts yourself from Seeking External Validation on Social Media.

It's only human nature for us to want to feel heard and connected by other people. How many of us know or have seen others create a post(s) on a social media platform that gave a passive aggressive connotation or a post that may have been too personal in terms of things that others didn't necessarily need to know about? Or maybe we are that someone. Perhaps it was through a tweet, an instagram caption, a facebook status, or a snapchat clip. I think journaling acts as a finer option to express your thoughts and feelings because you are restricting everything into one confined little space that is for your eyes and your ears only. It is a space that holds no limitations, a judgmental free zone and in my opinion a space that could help you work on bettering your communication skills. Sometimes when we feel like we have a lot to say, it is better to practice getting a grip of our emotions ourselves before we irrationally project. This way we get a greater since of control for validating ourselves internally. This gives you a chance to focus on your own thoughts hear your own voice.

5. A way of Getting in Touch with Yourself.

Believe it or not most of us have a hard time sitting with ourselves. If you are someone who does not find this difficult kudos to you. You don't have to be someone who gets easily influenced by the crowd for this to apply because these days most of the struggle is the battle between you and yourself. Journaling is not supposed to be perfect. Don't worry about your handwriting, or making things sound perfect. Heck, don't even worry about it making sense. Just free write and let things flow naturally. Journaling gives you the ability to spend quality time with yourself and in the process you just might discover more clarity and realization.

6. Tracks your Growth.

There is no journal entry that you could ever write that would judge your past, present, or what you want for the future. Journaling is a form of documentation that can hold the most precious memories, important moments in your life, valuable life lessons, both positive and negative. The most powerful thing about this tool is that you can always refer back to it to see how much you've transformed and progressed to become a better person, or just a better version of yourself.

7. Can Hold you Accountable.

We all have goals, dreams, and many aspirations that we want to make happen. However, although we get those times where we hit a wall and struggle, deep down we know what the key is; and that my friends is Consistency. Keeping a journal enforces us to practice execution and commitment. There's something powerful about expressing your ideas and your visions by writing them out. That one simple action from moving an idea or a vision from your mind to a written word or written sentence, already makes it present; therefore more likely to happen. A journal holds evidence to past successes, perhaps past failures, progressions, setbacks, and plans of action that can motivate you to keep yourself in check for what you want to come.