What I Love About Journaling (Maybe You Should Too!)

Journaling is a wonderful way to clear your mind, capture powerful thoughts, and come to some amazing realizations.

In light of such positive perks, it’s disheartening that more don’t make an effort to journal!  Many leaders, professionals, and entrepreneurs would benefit greatly by carving out space to journal. No doubt, that investment of time improves their ability to make wise decisions, maintain healthy relationships, and their well-being.

Perhaps taking the time to jot down your thoughts and feelings feels more like a chore. If that’s the case, I encourage you to expand the way you view journaling! In fact, why not do journaling your way?

What if journaling was…

• Simply doodling your thoughts and feelings?
• Audio journaling – speaking your thoughts and recording them? Check out Thoughts – Voice Journal
• Using an app like Day One, Diarium, or Dabble Me which has the added bonus of reminders and/or prompts?
• Making lists in a dot journal?
• An artistic adventure that combined collage, drawing, painting, etc.?
• A photograph that captured your thoughts or feelings?

Unique Spins!

Just about everyone has their unique spin on journaling. Consider some of these unusual ways of journaling…

• Oprah outlines her goals, aspirations, expresses gratitude, and gains perspective by journaling.
• Arianna Huffington uses her “Thrive Journal” for auditing her life, setting goals, and finding gratitude in each day.
• John Piper, founder and teacher of Desiring God stated that “Journaling, for me is part of a constant quest to see Christ and know Christ and enjoy Christ and be like Christ.” He referred to it as his “occasional thought” notebook. He confesses that “he can’t get clarity in my mind without writing.”
• John Wesley, the European cleric and theologian, documented in detail the events of his day to help him sort through his thoughts.

Other individuals who embraced the habit of journaling: Stephen R. Covey, Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), Andrew Carnegie, Ben Franklin, Lady Gaga, Emma Watson, Warren Buffett, and many others!

Knowing that successful people journal might not persuade you to try it. That’s fair! If that’s not enough to motivate you to put pen to paper, perhaps these journaling benefits will.

Did you know that journaling…

1. Increases Your Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is an important when leading, yet all too often it’s lacking. Trying to live and lead without being connected to your feelings, motives, and desires puts you at a disadvantage. It may be impacting your decisions and responses negatively while undermining your confidence and creativity too! You don’t want that!

2. Accelerates Progress Towards Your Goals

Writing your goals down increases the odds of successfully achieving them. Journaling is an ideal way to record your goals, break them down into steps, prioritize, and even explore what makes that goal worth pursuing for you. But don’t stop there – take time periodically to reflect and evaluate your progress and explore what adjustments are needed to ensure that you reach your goals.

3. Creates Space to Reflect and Process

The demands of leadership never end. Many of the situations you face are ones that you don’t have the freedom to discuss with others. Journaling is a convenient way to reflect and consider how you are feeling and and problem solve. You’d be surprised how journaling even 15 minutes a day ultimately saves you time!

4. Clears Emotions

The life of a leader is riddled with ups and downs. It’s often an emotional ride! Journaling provides you with a safe outlet for those emotions, both positive and negative, and allows you a place to re-frame and see life and work from different perspectives.

5. Reinforces Learning

Jotting down observations, discoveries – even summing up what you learned in a meeting, webinar, or at the last conference reinforces learning!

6. Improves Your Writing Skills

Journaling also allows you find your unique voice. You don’t have to try to be perfect with punctuation or grammar to improve as a writer. Simply taking the time express yourself, choose words that convey what you mean, and practice enhances your writing skills. How you communicate in writing makes a difference!

7. Increases Your Creativity

Creativity isn’t limited to a select few, everyone is creative. Journaling is a safe place get your creative juices flowing. Plus, if you write by hand, it allows you to be considerably more creative than anything written using a keyboard.

8. Reduces Stress

Stress is a clash of your expectations and reality. Journaling allows you to take stock of your expectations, evaluate how realistic they are, and revamp them. The act of simply getting it out of your head and down on paper has stress relieving effect!

9. Develops Focus

People, deadlines, goals, and more are simultaneously vying for your attention, making it tough to focus. Journaling is a handy way to block everything else out and practice focusing. And if you get in the habit of journaling at the same time every day, the people around you learn to give you space to do that especially if you ask them to!

10. Helps You Organize

The process of journaling naturally helps you organize your thoughts, ideas, information, and feelings. A journal keeps it all organized in one place where you are able to happily refer back to when needed!

11. Frees Up Head Space

Keeping everything stored in your head takes up valuable head space and limits your capacity for what’s truly important. Journaling provides the opportunity to do a brain dump to clear your head.

12. Generates Ideas

Journaling is an excellent place to brainstorm, mind map, make lists, doodle, etc. – all activities that inspire and generate ideas!

13. Allows You to Prioritize

I see it all the time – leaders being sucked in by the urgent rather than taking the time to prioritize. In the process, what would ultimately enable them to get ahead often gets overlooked. Journaling offers a way to systematically ensure that you are investing your energy into what’s most important.

14. Gives You a Refreshing Screen Break

Depending on your roles and responsibilities, you may be spending the bulk of your time gazing into the eyes of your computer! Writing in a physical journal is a refreshing screen break!

15. Boosts Your Performance

While you might be skeptical and feel you don’t have time to journal, I’m confident that journaling regularly will ultimately increase your productivity and your performance! I dare you to give it a try and see for yourself!

My Three Journals

I love journaling so much that I actually have multiple journals! Each serves a very different purpose for me.

My Prayer Journal

It’s rare day when I miss writing in my “prayer journal.” It’s how I start and end my time with God each and every morning.  For more than 30 years I’ve poured out my heart to God – the ways I need His help, sharing the needs of others, and praising Him.

I also list at least five things I am grateful for, at least one example of how God helped me the previous day, and what I’m feeling in that moment. These prompts help me to zero in on my blessings and tap into how I’m doing.

In addition to being therapeutic, another perk to documenting all of the above is being able look back and witness not only how far I’ve come, but how faithful and creative God’s been.

It’s worth noting the significant role journaling played in my recovery from Lyme disease. You would be amazed at the role your emotions play when it comes to your health! Journaling provides a handy way to explore your feelings and how they are affecting your body.

My Work Journal

My work journal is nothing fancy – just a regular college rule spiral notebook. I don’t write it in daily like I do my prayer journal. It’s a place for me to keep work related information in one central place. What do I fill my work journal with? It contains…

• My goals
• My once-a-month reflections on my progress around my goals – what’s working, what’s not working, and what needs to change?
• Blog-storming…ideas for future blogs, notes, quotes, and more.
• Brainstorming ideas for webinars, updates to my website, etc.
• Webinar/podcast notes – a central place to keep notes for the various webinars I attend
• Evaluating how a workshop, webinar, or marketing effort went.

For me, writing by hand is gratifying. I appreciate the way words look on paper. My work journal however, is far from a thing of beauty! It’s a tool; a resource! I don’t worry about my penmanship or anything else. It is truly a place to think, reflect, and get it all out!

To make it easier to navigate and more useful, I do take great care to write a “title” at the top of the page to help me quickly identify the what’s on each page and the date.

My Personal Journal

I journal in this one when the whim strikes me. When I have important thoughts, grand ideas, or big feelings. It’s quite useful for looking back and seeing what I was thinking and whether or not I’ve implemented the ideas or resolved the feelings.

No matter how you end up journaling, it’s sure to benefit you both personally and professionally!

I’d love to hear from you! How has journaling made a difference for you?

© Can Stock Photo / mast3r