How Journaling Can Improve Your Mental Health

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Have you been thinking about starting a journal? If you’re thinking about it, you may be wondering how beneficial it will be. Journaling is one of the best habits you can develop if you want to improve your mental health. 

There are a lot of benefits to getting your thoughts out of your head and writing them down.

This is why journaling is so beneficial for mental health. Take a look at these tips for getting the most out of your journaling experience.

Start With the Basics

The easiest way to start journaling is to write about your day-to-day life. Begin by writing out all your thoughts and any feelings that you may have had throughout the day. Make sure that you write down both your positive and negative thoughts. 

However, you don’t want to box yourself in so just go with the flow and hopefully, it will be a mixture of both the good and bad things that happened. Always make sure that you think about how each thing that happened throughout the day made you feel. 

Over time as you write in your journal and see trends in how certain situations or even people make you feel, you will begin to notice patterns. When you begin to identify patterns you can see how it is affecting your mental health and make changes.

Embrace Gratitude

One of the best things you can do for yourself is to embrace gratitude. Embracing gratitude allows you to think about all the positives that are happening to you instead of focusing on the negatives. 

As you begin to write down the things that you are grateful for every day you will begin to see more and more all the good things that are happening in your life. You will then be able to put any negatives into perspective. This will improve your outlook on life and can drastically improve your mental health.

Sometimes your day may be rough and it may be difficult for you to find even one thing that you are grateful for. Whatever you are grateful for, write it down, it doesn’t have to be big. 

It can be something small that makes you feel good about your day. You don’t always have to think big when you are trying to find things to be grateful for.

How Are You Coping?

Everybody has a way of coping with whatever life throws at them. By journaling, you’ll begin to understand how you cope with various life situations. You’ll be able to evaluate whether your coping mechanisms are working or not. 

Always write down the things that are affecting your life and how you plan to cope with them or how you are currently coping with them. Over time you begin to see whether or not your coping mechanisms are hurting your mental health. 

If they are, you can then begin to make changes that will positively affect your life. You will also begin to see which coping mechanisms are working and you can begin to use them more when you are faced with various situations.

Write Down Your Goals

Writing down your goals in a journal is a great way to keep track of them. Over time you will be able to see how much you have been able to accomplish and how much you still have to do. 

Once you write down your goals you can start tracking your process. By tracking your progress you’ll be able to see how far you have come. 

This is going to be a great motivator especially on those days when you’re feeling down. You can go back and read your journals to see exactly how much progress you have made. You may be surprised by just how much you have been able to accomplish.

Read Future Messages to Yourself

Bad days are going to come and there is nothing you can do about that. However, one strategy that you may want to try is to write letters in your journal that you can refer back to whenever you have a bad day. 

Write encouraging words to your future self, so that when you are feeling emotionally lost on any given day you can go back and read these letters to yourself. Tell yourself how far you have come, and try to make positive affirmations.

Talk about the fact that you are unique and special. Write about the fact that you deserve the very best that life has to offer. 

By talking to your future self in this positive way and then going back to take a look at it when you are not feeling your best, you will find that you are your own best friend and your greatest support system.

Make It Easy to Write

Making it easy to write down your thoughts and ideas in your journal is a great way to ensure that you make it a habit. You may want to make sure that your journal is not too big, so that you can keep it with you at all times and jot down little things as your day goes by. 

You may also want to try using a journaling app. Using an app will make it a lot easier for you to keep your journal with you all the time. It will also be more private and secure because no one will be able to access it but you. 

Whichever method you choose, making sure that your journal is easily accessible is a great way to ensure that you keep journaling and improving your mental health.

Take Care of Your Mental Health

Taking care of your mental health is something that you need to prioritize. When you start making your mental health a priority you will see a remarkable difference in not only how your day’s go but your entire life as well. 

Journaling will help you to identify issues you may be having. It will also help you to put things into perspective. It’s a great way to enhance your life, so start journaling today.