Journaling is a popular term in the wellness community. If we have to put a date on it, we’d say that it became a “trend” during the pandemic in 2020. After remote work, we’re glad we kept journaling.
For a lot of us, being indoors took a toll on our mental health, so we sought ways to process those thoughts that crowded our minds—we wrote in a book. Similar to what we used to call a diary, almost so.
You’ve probably bought some cute notebooks and pens before to start journaling, but if you’re anything like we are, you dumped them after two tries. We did just that when we first started because we didn’t know what we were meant to do. Here’s a guide to help you know how to journal.
Find a time that works for you. Write in your journal whenever you can. Even though we prefer to write in the mornings or at the end of the day, we find ourselves journaling at our lunch breaks or on our way to our next location. You don’t have to write in a book; you can write on whatever is available to you—your laptop, phone, or even a napkin.
Write the first thought that comes to your mind. Sometimes we have multiple thoughts going through our minds, and we wonder which one is worthy of putting on paper. Well, they all are, but you can ease into it by writing the first thought down. Then go from there.
If you need more direction, then you should find out what style of journaling you want, for starters. Then search for prompts that would help you kick off your conversation. For example, a prompt like “How do you feel today?” is great for your personal or diary journaling. The NayLiving journal give us the perfect prompts to start out our writing, asking us the questions we probably need to ask ourselves. Thankfully, the ‘shop’ category on this site is filled with cute “Let’s Unpack” and NayLiving gratitude journals.
Be honest with yourself. Journaling is a good way of understanding your thoughts and putting things into perspective. It’s also a really good form of release. It’s like having the realest conversation with yourself. What would you say if you had no fear of someone else finding your books?
Start short and simple. Journaling is not a task. You should enjoy doing it. We’ve put pressure on ourselves in the past to cover two to five pages at a time just because everyone else does it. But you can go ahead and write those five sentences if that’s all you have to say at that moment.
Journaling is a great outlet to relieve stress. It helps to block out the noise and keep it quiet for a bit. We hope you get to enjoy it just as much as we do. And make sure to keep those notes away from the nosy people!
Also, tag us when you get your NayLiving journal. Let’s twin!
