Journaling: How it Changed My Life and can Transform Yours too

Last week, for the long weekend, we decided to step out of town and go to the beach. Three days: disconnected from everything and everyone. We packed up a nice, small bag, beach clothing and tons of sunscreen. That’s all we needed to have a wonderful couple of days. Well, almost! Because I also had a nice bag full of my journals. Yes, journals!

We have, so far, talked about various ingredients for building a wonderful Life Résumé. In the last week, we talked about habits. Habits, which are truly crucial for building your mind-blowing Life Résumé. And one of the habits that we talked about was Journaling. Today, we are going to drill a little deeper into this habit that has so many merits that it is recommended widely by many personal development coaches and gurus. And this is not a new trend. A lot of the great thinkers that came before us, also swore by the practise of journaling.

One of the greatest visionaries of our time, Sir Richard Branson, once said

“I can’t tell you where I’d be if I hadn’t had a pen on hand to write down my ideas”

Sir Richard Branson

So, does that mean that journaling should only be used to pen ideas and thoughts? Or can you use this tool more widely and improve not just your day to day life but also create a system that helps you document your journey? And why is it important to document your journey? Through this post, I intend to explore all of these questions. Here is what we are going to talk about today:

• What is Journaling
• Why to Journal
• How to Journal
• What do I do?

What is Journaling

Meriam-Webster defines a journal as ‘a record of experiences, ideas, or reflections kept regularly for private use’. But journaling should not necessarily be restricted to just this. It can be writing your thoughts, your musings, your fears and conflicts at an emotional level. It can be writing your journey, gratitude, quotes that inspire you at a spiritual level. It can also be writing down your expenses, your debts, the books you have read and the movies you have seen, the record of your workouts or your body measurements over time at a more practical level. It can be writing down any new business ideas, ideas for side hustles, meeting notes as well as your to-do list at a professional level.

Journaling should be anything you want it to be. You wanna wake up everyday and look at yourself in the mirror and write down how you look, go ahead (Unleash the narcissist in you!). You wanna take your dog for a walk and maintain a record of how his poop looks like for his vet, go ahead and write it down (You can do this for yourself too! I won’t judge, I promise.). You wanna see how much you actually end up spending at a salon, go ahead and write that down too! (This one will blow your mind 😊)

According to me, journaling is keeping a record of things that are important to you on a regular basis. It doesn’t need to be daily, but it needs to be something that you keep going back to. It is a tool that can be used very extensively for self-assessment.

Why to Journal

Now that we have got a hang of what is journaling, let us dive into the ‘why’ of journaling. If you go to google and search for the benefits of journaling, you will find tons of results. Some of the benefits that we discussed in the last post are improved mental health, reducing stress, improved emotional response and better analytical thinking. And these are just great!

But I want to explore two more aspects of journaling, something that most people do not talk about.

• The Meditative Aspect
• The Life Résumé Support

If you are new to the blog and are wondering what Life Résumé is, you can find the answer here.

The Meditative Aspect

Let me now talk about the meditative aspect of journaling. In any form of meditation, a lot of importance is given on paying attention to repetitive actions like your breath. The point is to give a specific direction to your mind. When you are journaling, this whole process automatically takes place. You are concentrating on one repetitive action: your pen writing on the paper. And, depending on what you are journaling about, you already have a specific direction in which your thoughts are turned.

So, if you’re writing in your gratitude journal, you are very introspective and attuned and open to all the factors in your life that you are grateful for. If you’re maintaining a journal to improve your mental health, you are scrupulously exploring your state of mind and are trying to reach those inner depths of your thoughts that help you find answers to some of your emotional issues. And this whole process makes the act of journaling outstandingly meditative.

The Life Résumé Support

Now let me get to the second aspect of journaling that I want to discuss today. I have a granddad who is in his early nineties. Born somewhere in the 1920s, he served in the pre and post-independent Indian Air Force. He has led a fascinating life where he has travelled for work throughout the country and has had experiences that you and I can only dream of. He has lived through a World War, the Indian Independence movement, the economic roller-coaster and the political and communal unrest in the country. And most of those experiences are locked up with him. He probably does not even remember some of it. And, sooner or later, those experiences will be lost in oblivion. And I, as his granddaughter, would have loved to gain an insight into what really shaped the man I know as my granddad today.

And this is not just true with my granddad. It is true with each and every one of us. We do not know how much time we have on this beautiful planet and one of the ways that we can leave a legacy behind is by maintaining a record of our experiences and our hobbies and our achievements and those tiny little things in our everyday life that make us happy or unhappy, that make us want to dance or howl. Because at the end of the day, that’s all that will remain of who we are. To journal, is to create a record of your life in terms of your emotions, experiences, thoughts and everything else that life entails.

How to Journal

There is no one specific way which I can point out and say, “This is how you should journal”. There are tons of resources available online that you can explore and experience. Like most things in life, this is something that you are going to have to do and then decide what works for you.  

If you need a place to start, there are certain journals available online that come with prepopulated prompts, there are certain Q&A journals that have questions which you can answer every day, and then there are certain types of journaling techniques like the Bullet Journal and the Filofax journaling system.

Whatever the technique that you decide to use for journaling, just make sure it is something that works for you and something that resonates with who you are as a person. Always remember, there is no right or wrong way. All that matters is that you set aside some time regularly and see for yourself the benefits of journaling.

 What do I do?

I think I have mentioned this enough times already, but I am a religious follower of journaling. Here, I am going to talk to you about the different journals that I maintain regularly. I think a lot of you are going to go like “Shalvika, you a crazy woman!”

So, here goes my list:

Emotion Journal

This is a journal in which I write my day-to-day challenges, things that bother me and things that are sometimes too overwhelming to process just in your mind. It can be something as simple as a good yoga session I had or as complicated as dealing with the ups and downs of relationships.

Bullet Journal

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As the name suggests, I maintain a Bullet Journal and have done so since 2016. The various things that I track in my bullet journal are:

1. Gratitude Log
2. Monthly Habit Tracker
3. Monthly Memories
4. Weekly Goals
5. Monthly Goals
6. Yearly Goals
7. Workout Log

There are so many other things that you could track in this type of journal. The beauty of the bullet journal method is the flexibility it offers you to customise your spreads. And you can make it as fancy or as simple as you want.

Blog Book

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Believe it or not, I actually have a journal for my blog. This is a space where I brainstorm for post ideas, where I plan the schedule of my blog posts and also define the structures of the posts. I also have a section where I write about what additions I need to make to my blog in order to give you all a better experience.

Read Books Journal

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This is a simple book where I track the books I have read, the authors of those books and the date I finished reading a book. It is fun for me to go back and see how my taste in books has evolved over the years. And also gives me an easier way to figure out how many books I have read so far!

Seen Movies Journal

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Much like the Read Books Journal, this one also helps me keep a track of what I have seen and how my choices have developed (or not) through the years.

Travel Journal

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This is a journal where I maintain a log of all the places I have visited when I travel, any unique experiences or insights that I have had on those, any places I would recommend people to definitely try and the expenses (Yes, I am that freak who maintains a log of expenses while travelling!)

I know this is a lot of journals. But what can I say, I love, not just journaling, but documenting what I do, experience, read and watch. At the end of every year, I love sitting and going through how my journey has been so far. Journaling, for me, is a means for emotional exploration, retrospection and a place where I can be unashamedly myself, without judgement, without conditions and without fear of retaliation of any sorts. It is the one place that is my sanctum.

So, this is all I have to say today about journaling and the amazing ways in which it can transform your life. It can give you a direction that you had never thought such a simple practice could. So, go ahead and let me know what journaling practices do you follow. Also, what kind of unique benefits have you garnered from this. Until then, keep working, keep growing!

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Photo by Dany Fly on Unsplash
Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash