Benefits of habit “Journaling”
✓ Reduces stress and anxiety;
✓ Helps to gain perspective on your thoughts and feelings;
✓ Allows to remember events and thoughts;
✓ Helps with recovering after traumatic experience and PTSD;
✓ May increase your sense of well-being.
First step:
1 sentence each day
Progress:
1. Start by writing 1 sentence each day. Write like that for 1 week.
2. Next week, increase writing to two sentences per day.
3. Keep increasing the number of sentences, until each day you end the journal entry with nothing else to say.
Helpful tips to make it a habit:
✓ Same time goal. Every habit needs routine, so journaling on the same time every day can help make it habitual behavior. Try putting down events of the day in the evening, before getting ready for bed.
✓ Trigger your memory. Put your notebook you use at your bedside or somewhere visible that you wouldn’t be able to miss it.
✓ Let the app help. You can use the reminder feature in this app to signal the time for journaling.
✓ Make it a challenge. Use the app to openly challenge your friends to develop same habit OR make your own goal public with consequences in case of failure. ✓ Make up your own consequences, something that you wouldn’t want to do no matter what.
✓ Reward yourself. In short term, after every time you consciously chose this habit, pat yourself on the back and tell yourself how awesome you just did. In long term, once you achieved a month of productive journaling, reward yourself by getting a new, better notebook, or a pen, or anything you would like as a reward. Most importantly remember, that you’re doing well and motivate yourself to keep up.
Tips for beginners:
✓ Find a routine. Think of your daily routine and chose a habit you already have that journaling can follow naturally. For example, each night after dinner, have your journal and pen ready in visible location so you can get right to it after your meal.
✓ There are many reasons to keep a journal. Some do it to simply remember things, to unleash the bottled-up thoughts or to simply get a better picture of their own lives. Whatever your reasons to start journaling, the key thing is to develop a daily habit and dedicate time for it.
✓ Make it special. It is also beneficial to have a journal that you would like writing in: it can be a more expensive notebook or have something special about it. The pen or pencil you’re writing in can also be special and be used just for that occasion.