What is Journaling and what’s in it for me?

Cross Burst by Billy Alexander (FreeImages.com)

Cross Burst by Billy Alexander (FreeImages.com)

Part 2 in the Journaling toward God series

A journal of any kind is a way of writing about your life as opposed to other things you write: vacation dreams, career plans, business strategies, bucket lists, or health and fitness goals. This book, notebook, or computer folder can enhance your life in remarkable ways.

Journaling is recording the events of your life and what they mean to you. The little blessings and nuisances as well as the thrills and devastations. You write what you want to remember, or solve, or clarify or change or heal while processing it all.

Meanwhile, the act of writing in a journal brings you ten specific benefits. My first journaling was scribbling in the back of my journalism notebooks. I needed these benefits quickly to help me think more clearly, clarify my thoughts about my life challenges, and apply these skills to the situations in the articles I was writing.

To summarize the research Thai Nguyen reported in the Huffington Post, journaling can help you:

1. Bump up your IQ. Because journaling explores language and encourages you to increase your vocabulary, it raises your IQ. Exploring language and vocabulary began during my high school English classes and exploded as I worked in group settings in creative writing classes there and in college. Roget’s Thesaurus became my favorite writing resource before computer grammar programs existed. Now my first pass in journaling is freely writing my thoughts without editing. When looking over my entries, I search these resources for the truest words to express myself authentically.

2. Become happier. Frustrations and anxieties flee when you keep your mind attentive to the present moment. The result is a state of mindfulness that increases your happiness. When you write in your journal, you wave away distractions to stay absorbed on the page. When your life mission is writing, you train yourself to stay “in the moment” of what you are creating, no matter how brief that moment. This skill is invaluable to me when listening to others, whether it’s someone I’m interviewing or one of my children.

3, Realize your dreams. Your brain constructs a detailed psychological blueprint of your ambitions. Writing the details in your journal helps you plan steps to accomplish your aspirations. In college, I journaled about the thrill of becoming a weekly columnist for the newspaper, and after college about my years on the diocesan newspaper. Now I blog stories from my journal that inspire my readers.

4. Enhance your relationships. Journaling helps you manage your emotions and increase your self-awareness. Recording your feelings sorts out your emotions and helps you understand and accept the emotions of others. You develop a “bridge of empathy” where you can meet others and understand what they are going through, cultivating better relationships. Early in my career, this aspect of journaling helped me build bridges of empathy with the local celebrities while interviewing them for the diocesan newspaper. Those good relationships made the stories shine! Developing these bridges of empathy enhances my relationship with my husband, children, and even the strangers who become meaningful in my life.

5. Improve your cognitive recall. Journaling enhances your memory and comprehension as your brain and hand cooperate in composing and re-composing thoughts and ideas. Occasionally, when reporting an event, once or twice my recordings of interviews were faulty. I had to remember the highlights and write the story from scribbled notes. Using the cognitive recall acquired during journaling rescued me. The same perk can happen at the doctor’s office when you are asked about the medical history of your child or yourself. If you have written about struggling to care for a child with frequent asthma attacks or found yourself down with a headache more often than last year, your recall comes easily if you visualize the Journal page and the words you wrote on it.

6. Fortify your self-discipline. By setting aside time to write daily, you exercise your journaling muscle. As it grows strong, it spreads its habit of self-control from the time and spot where you journal to every time and place of your life, making whatever you are doing as joyful as journaling. When I paired journaling with my prayer time, journaling became a discipline of the highest priority.

7. Become a Super Communicator. All your means of communication improve when you journal. Interviewing, public speaking, and self-editing are at the top of my list.

8. Heal. Journaling puts you on a path to emotional, physical, and psychological healing. It improves your immune system, cuts down on stress and frees you from the snarls of traumas your mind replays. As your emotions are released during journaling, stress decreases and you sleep better. This journaling perk is a favorite of mine – especially in the middle of a sleepless night.

9. Jump start your creativity. The practice of writing whatever comes into your stream of consciousness first thing in the morning enables your artistic self to have a fling. Julia Cameron introduced this practice as “Morning Pages” to destroy writer’s block and loosen up the brain to divulge creative ideas. The freedom of “Morning Pages” prepared me to think on my feet during interviews and change directions when needed.

10, Remain confident. Journaling the positive aspects of your life releases endorphins and dopamine in your brain that elevate your self-esteem and mood. I’ve learned that when I close my journal, having written what I’m grateful for makes me smile but writing nothing but each complaint just adds one more burden to the pile.

Ask Yourself: Which of these ten benefits surprises me? Challenges me? Motivates me to journal?

Read the series: Journaling toward God

Next in the Journaling toward God  series: Part 3: Adding the spiritual dimension

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Nancy Ward

Nancy Ward writes about conversion, Christian community, and Catholicism. After earning a journalism degree, she worked for the Diocese of Dallas newspaper and the Archbishop Sheen Center for Evangelization, then began her own editing service. She’s a regular contributor to CatholicMom.com, SpiritualDirection.com, CatholicWritersGuild.com, NewEvangelizers.com and a contributing author to The Catholic Mom’s Prayer Companion. Now, through her Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story: Tools, Tips, and Testimonies workshops, retreats, book, and DVD, she shares her conversion story at Catholic parishes and conferences, equipping others to share their own stories.

You may also like...

%d