How To Journal For Mental Wellness

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A journal can be whatever you want it to be. For some people, it’s a record of each day. For others, it’s a creative outlet. For others, it’s a way to manage their mental wellness. Journaling for mental wellness has gained a lot of focus over recent years (especially since the pandemic). If you’re thinking of trying it, here are three points to consider.

Journal on paper

You can journal electronically if you really want to. It is, however, a good idea at least to try paper journaling. Many people find it a very different experience from journaling electronically and a better one for mental wellness.  

Apart from anything else, journaling on paper, by definition, takes you away from screens. It can also help to force you to slow down. Even if you’re a slow typist, using a keyboard is still often much quicker than writing. That’s fine if you just need to get a job done but sometimes there’s a case for going slowly and mindfully.

Journaling on paper also provides a high degree of privacy and security compared to journaling electronically. You don’t have to deal with tech fails or cybersecurity issues. There’s also less danger of you accidentally publishing something you meant to keep private.

Balance structure with freedom

Even though the names are similar, bullet journaling and regular journaling are different. You can, however, draw inspiration from bullet journaling. In particular, you could look at its balance of structure and flexibility as a guide for your journaling. For example, you might want to include prompts and trackers alongside blank space for you to use as you wish.

You can also keep a “temporary” journal as well as a proper one. Your temporary journal can essentially be your “catch-all” for whatever thoughts you want to record. This can literally mean anything from basic to-dos to your thoughts on the Yelp extortion issue. You would then distill these down into your proper journal.

This approach is particularly useful when you’re still figuring out what you want from your journal. Even once you do have an established journaling process, it can still be handy to have an “overflow” notebook.

Push your creative boundaries

As previously mentioned, your journal can and should be whatever you want it to be. If, however, you’re journaling for mental wellness, then you may find it very helpful to push your creative boundaries. At the very least, it’s worth trying and seeing how you feel about it.

Pushing your creative boundaries will mean different things to different people. Basically, it will depend on where your starting point is. If you’ve never considered yourself to be creative then you might want to start with the likes of stickers and stamps and doodles. If you are more artistic, then use your journal to try out new techniques.

Regardless of your previous artistic experience (if any), you might want to try exploring neurographics. This is a technique for drawing out your inner feelings and expressing them on paper where you can address them. Many people find it very soothing and relaxing.

Journey to Find Life's Purpose - Part 3

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FINDING YOUR PURPOSE THROUGH WRITING

Most of us don’t enjoy writing. A lot of people would much rather ponder things, but writing can be a very powerful tool. Clearly, if you have read my blog, you know I am not of that persuasion.  I have written posts on why I think everyone should have a journal, how to motivate yourself to journal daily,  and how to nurture your creative mind with journaling.  

How to Become More Organized With a Bullet Journal

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How to Become More Organized With a Bullet Journal

You already know that a bullet journal can help you make lists for the future, build your business, manage your finances, and relieve your stress. But perhaps one of the greatest benefits to this type of journal is that it can help organize your entire life.

Bullet Journalling: The Parenting Savior No One Tells You About

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Even if you don’t realize that you need a bullet journal in your life, you were drawn to this post for a reason. And, that reason is that journaling in this way could be your parenting savior.

Reasons to Keep a Journal When You’re a Creative Person or NOT!

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Whether you’re a writer, graphic designer or artist, maintaining your creativity can sometimes prove to be a real challenge. So, what can you do if your creativity starts to falter?   Really though who cares if you characterize yourself as a "creative"?  We all need help sparking our creative juices sometimes.

A journal is an excellent tool you can use to keep your creativity alive. This isn’t the type of journal you use to write your innermost thoughts and feelings (though you could use it for that purpose if it helps). Instead, a creativity journal focuses on helping you to solve problems, brainstorm ideas and practice creativity.

Here, you’ll discover just some of the reasons to keep a journal when you’re a creative person.

Helping you to practice and refine your skills

One of the best reasons to keep a creative journal is because it helps you to practice and refine your skills. Creativity doesn’t always come naturally. In fact, it often takes a lot of practicing to maintain it.

There’s always something new to learn and existing skills need to be maintained. By writing your ideas down, or practicing your drawing technique in the journal, you’ll continue to develop your skills.   

They have multiple uses

Creative journals tend to be disorganized in comparison to standard journals. This means they can be used in many different ways. 

You can turn it into a sketchbook, notebook, scrapbook or day planner. Whatever function you need it to meet you can use it for that purpose. 

Ideal for brainstorming ideas

One problem you’ve no doubt faced many times is coming up with new ideas. 

For example, a writer often struggles with “writer’s block”, finding it hard to know what to write. In this instance, a journal could be used to write down ideas, in no particular order. Free-writing can really help to get the creative juices flowing and help you to overcome that mental block.

You can use the journal to draw your ideas. You may find after doodling your ideas down, it all starts to come together. 

Silencing your inner critic

If you tend to be a perfectionist when it comes to your creativity, it could really be holding you back. That inner critic can literally kill creativity, with everything you create seeming to turn out wrong. 

A journal can help silence that inner critic. There’s absolutely no rules as to what you can and should put into it. There’s no wrong thing to write, plan or draw. It’s a safe space where your creativity can flow without being judged.


These are just some of the reasons to keep a journal when you’re a creative person. They really can help you to not just maintain your creativity, but nurture it too.   

Nurture Your Creative Mind Through Journaling

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Nurture Your Creative Mind Through Journaling

Journaling can really help you to nurture your creative mind.  Whether you’re a photographer, artist or writer, your creativity is crucial to your ability to carry out your job.  Therefore, it consistently needs to be nurtured. So, how can journaling help with this? Below you’ll discover how to nurture your creative mind through journaling.

First things first – Choosing the right journal

If you want to get the most out of your creative journal, you’re going to need to make sure you actually enjoy using it.  As silly as it may sound, the first step to this is to ensure you like the look of the journal.  You will notice I mention this in almost every post.  I can't tell you how many journals I've stopped using because I didn't like the paper or pens bled through all of the time or it had lines.  Whatever.  #papersnob - what can I say?

How the journal is presented can make a surprising difference on how inspired and motivated you feel to use it. So, take your time to browse through the various journals on the market and choose one which speaks to you.

The benefits of a dream journal

There’s a lot of ways you can use the journal to inspire creativity. However, one you may not have considered using is dream journaling.  Many authors, artists, and musicians have discovered dream journals can help nurture their creativity. Dreams take on many different forms and can, therefore, be used to inspire creative ideas.

The lead singer of the band “Train”, famously opened up in an interview that the smash hit “Drops of Jupiter” was written after he had a dream.  So, if you are stuck for ideas, recording your dreams can be a great way to unlock your creativity once again.

Learning to trust the authority in your voice

When you start to keep a creative journal, it trains you to trust the authority in your voice. So, what does this mean? Well, it basically means you learn to stop double guessing and questioning your creativity.  A creative journal doesn’t have rules. Instead, it encourages you to write or draw freely. There are no corrections made to anything and nothing you put in the journal is ever wrong. So,  you’ll start to trust your creativity, rather than question it.

Growing your thoughts and insights

Creativity often stems from thoughts and insights. After you’ve jotted your thoughts down into the journal, you can go back to them another day and expand upon what you wrote.  Look at the ideas you’ve written down and see how they can be expanded. Often, it’s just the initial ideas which are the hard part. Once they’re written down, you should find it easier to expand upon them.

As you can see, nurturing your creativity is pretty simple if you follow the above ideas. The key is to use the journal every single day. You may need to force yourself to use it some days, but the effort you put in will definitely be worth it.