Five Ways to Journal

Journaling can help create clarity around experiences and can also help keep actions on track towards consistency in accomplishing meaningful outcomes.   There are many different types of journals.  There aren’t any formal rules around journaling so you could, if you desired, keep different sections within the same journal to cover focuses.  For example, maybe you’d like to track the dreams you have when you sleep or you might be interested in emotional growth and start a journal for self-reflection.  If you’re new to journaling or even if you’re experienced, best practices can help you get the biggest benefit on your time investment.   

1. Self-Aware

Self-awareness forms the foundation of content for documenting experiences.  One benefit from having a life coach is gaining awareness of experiences and outcomes to better assess challenges and opportunities for accomplishment.  However, even without a life coach, journaling experiences can help create clarity by needing to be specific about what is being experienced.

Being aware can also start to reveal patterns of outcomes or themes of achievement.  It can take time for enough experiences to be documented in order to step back and see what the patterns are consistent with journaling can be an important factor. 

2. Compassionate

Compassion is a powerful thing. It can help you empathize more easily with other people. When you’re compassionate, you look out for other people rather than stagnate into selfishness. Showing kindness to others can open you up to new experiences like learning about other people, as well as, their history and culture. Self-reflection can help you see your faults and learn from your mistakes. When you desire to grow from those mistakes, you will likely be more compassionate to others that you interact with on a daily basis.

3. Thankful

Starting a thankfulness journal can truly open your eyes to embrace everything you have in life. When you are grateful for the things you have been blessed with, that can help you to change your focus in a more positive direction. Try writing three things each day that you’re thankful for. Some days, that will be easy. Other days, it may take time to think of things. However, getting into the habit of being thankful can help develop outcome awareness for events that may otherwise go unrecognized.

A great time of day to write in a thankfulness journal is late evening and can be combined with reviewing your calendar of activities for subsequent days.  Combining these activities can help create an awareness of the accomplishments towards outcomes that may be every bit as important as the final outcome itself. 

4. Mindful

When you’re mindful, you can focus on embracing each moment. That allows you to stay centered on the positive things in life and not focus on the negativity. Practicing mindfulness takes diligent effort and writing in a journal can be a pivotal factor in becoming more mindful.  A good time of day to journal this type of focus is at the start of your day.   By beginning with what’s important, you may notice more meaningful details and events that you otherwise might have.   And by noticing events, you may be able to take advantage of situations and circumstances that you otherwise may have simply passed by. 

5. Perspective

Your perspective can influence your life in positive ways. When you have a positive perspective, that can motivate you to overcome obstacles you face in your journey toward accomplishing your goals by being open to more options through greater resourcefulness.   Journaling can become instrumental in helping you to cultivate a positive perspective in your life.

To take advantage of the principle, you could review your journal each week and score the perspective for each week or for a particular challenge.  Be open to measuring your accomplishments in terms of resourcefulness in relation to specific outcomes you see.

Personal growth and self-development take time and effort. You’ll need to genuinely self-reflect if you want to grow.  Begin your journey of self-discovery by starting to journal. You can benefit by becoming more self-aware, compassionate, thankful, mindful, and having a more positive perspective.