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Today’s mini-episode is the first in a three-part series that I’m sharing as a Bonus Track for Episode 26. Since I found that journaling was one of the most important self-help crash test dummy experiments I conducted in the past six months, I wanted to share with you why you should be journaling too. Today, we’ll talk about the benefits of journaling; in the next two parts of this Bonus Track, we’ll discuss how not to journal, and tools to help you succeed at journaling.
So What are the Benefits of Journaling?
First and foremost, journaling has been shown to both increase your happiness, and help you have a more positive outlook. Isn’t that reason enough to get on board with journaling? In case you need more reasons, how about these five:
Journaling reduces stress. Journaling helps you sort through the mental clutter! It can also provide details on why you do what you do and feel what you feel. Having the chance to examine your thoughts and behaviors can help you calm down, and deal with stressful situations more effectively.
Journaling strengthens immunity. Psychologist and researcher James Pennebaker contends that regular journaling strengthens immune cells. He believes that writing about stressful events helps you come to terms with them, thus reducing the impact of these stressors on your physical health.
Journaling boosts memory. There’s a unique relationship between our hands and our brain. As our hands are writing the words, our mind sees the memory or thought, and the connections of the memory is strengthened. This can make it easier to recall details of a situation in the future.
Journaling facilitates mindfulness through focus on the present. Journaling facilitates mindfulness because thoughts of the future and past fade away when you start writing. You can focus your wandering mind on the present, jotting down how you feel right now – not ruminating or forecasting (and we’ll see why that’s so important in the next episode when we talk about ways journaling can be potentially harmful).
Journaling creates a psychological blueprint for finding opportunities. Journaling tells your brain to look out for positive opportunities. By journaling, like when list your three daily gratitudes (new and unique everyday), you train your brain to look for opportunities to be grateful.
