Why Journaling is Good and Beneficial for Everyone

Why Journaling is Good and Beneficial for Everyone

• Saturday

A study carried out in New Zealand reveals that 76% of adults who wrote about their worries during consecutive 3 days (20 minutes each day) for two weeks were fully healed 11 days later. This is how powerful journaling is and why it is beneficial for everyone.

And although journaling is very helpful for your mental and emotional health to help deal with anxiety and feelings, it is also crucial to better your physical health, as it increases the chances of fighting a disease. I know starting a journal without being overwhelmed is difficult, but hopefully these next facts help you realize why journaling is good for everyone and how, with only a few minutes of writing a day, it is favorable to you.

1. Relieves stress and calms anxiety

Most of the time stress and anxiety come from not being able to think clearly about a situation and not knowing how to approach it or solve it. And whilst it is possible to organize your thoughts in your mind alone, it is way easier to write them down in a journal in bullet points or steps. Also, when we’re worried about something, we usually avoid thinking about it and procrastinate finding a solution. So, by writing it down in a journal you will have it in front of you and you won’t be able to push your worry away any longer.

Keeping an anxiety journal and writing to relieve stress is surely a great way to assemble your thoughts and tackle them one by one in a healthy way. You’re not forced to write in your journal every single day. As a matter of fact, you can only write when you’re feeling overwhelmed, calm yourself down and see everything on paper with more perspective and then pick it up next time you feel the same.

2. Boosts creativity

Finding your inner creativity is one of the main reasons why journaling is good for you. Being creative is actually more important than you imagine and a way to develop it is by keeping a journal for expressive and imaginary writing. The truth is, everyone can be creative, but most think they can’t or don’t think it is necessary. What if I told you that creative writing is proven to strengthen your immunity, decrease your risk of illness and make you be less affected by trauma.

Doodling, brainstorming and just writing what floats your boat can help you become a better problem solver and more prone to live with uncertainty as your thinking allows flow of the unknown. So, brainstorming, doodling, writing a few words that come to mind, etc., regularly, is a way to boost your creativity and one of the advantages of journaling that can help you in all the areas of your life.

3. Helps achieve goals

If you're still wondering why journaling is good for you, let me tell you that it can help your career and dreams on a greater scale. Writing down something has a stronger effect on you than simply letting it float on your mind. By writing your goals down on your journal you’re letting your brain register ‘this is important’ and making your reticular activating system, a pencil-sized piece of your brain that stores information into the conscious mind, remember it. If your brain retains that goal and remembers it you are then more inclined to work for it long-term and thus, end up accomplishing it.

Another one of the pros of journaling is that it helps with self-discipline, as setting time aside to write each day creates a routine and a habit. And a habit formed in one area of your life has the likelihood to spread to other areas such as work or personal projects. So, if you’re disciplined enough to keep a journal, you’re disciplined enough to work periodically in order to meet your goals.

4. Improves self-confidence

Journaling to enhance your self-confidence and the way you look at yourself is another reason why journaling is good to take as a habit. Writing about positive experiences and achievements will reaffirm your abilities when you’re having a bad day. Furthermore, going through pages and pages of things you’ve done will definitely help you get over a feeling of unworthiness and self-doubt when you feel like you can’t accomplish something.

There’s a thing called the ‘writer’s high’, that explains the feeling of satisfaction and self-worth one feels after writing something. When writing (and when we exercise also), there’s a release of dopamine, a chemical in our brain that reinforces positivity, motivation and helps us believe in ourselves since we’ve already accomplished something.

And that’s exactly how I feel right now, at the end of another long and fulfilling article, thinking ‘yeahh, that felt great’!

Keep reading: 4 things unhappy people do according to science