by Tauri Kerr
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” – William Wordsworth
Journaling has become a part of my daily schedule, mainly because I am currently creating a visual journal for my journalism degree, but it has helped me realise how healing journaling can be.
Journaling provides a safe environment that enables you to face your thoughts. Remarkable healing flows when you face your thoughts, particularly if they are traumatic or anxious thoughts. By writing down your thoughts and experiences, it can help you make sense of your concerns. This will help you create order out of any chaos.
Sometimes, people are hesitant to start a journal because they are unsure of what to write about. Truth be told, you can write absolutely anything but if you need guidance then here are a few tips for people who are new to journaling:
1. Explore your strengths and weaknesses
You can explore the qualities that you consider weaknesses of yours and it could be helpful to explore how these weaknesses could be moulded into strengths. Once you have established these, it could be helpful to write about how you would like to use your qualities positively in the future.
2. Dive into your emotional state
Write about a moment in time when you felt a particular emotion. You can reflect on how you felt physically – for example, was your heart racing? You can reflect on how you experienced the physical environment around you when feeling this emotion. By expressing your emotional state through your physical experience, you are able to look into the heart of this particular emotion.
Alternatively, you can simply write about your current emotional state. You can answer these questions: What emotions are you experiencing right now? What is your body’s physical response?
3. Define your intentions
When thinking about yourself, what is the first word that comes to your mind? You can write this word down and then expand on it. This will allow you to do some authentic self-reflection. You can talk about which qualities of yourself that you like but you can also look at the qualities which you do not entirely love. By defining yourself and what you stand for, you can set your intentions for the type of person that you would like to become in the future.
4. Discover your safe place
If you are looking for a more creative side of journaling, you can create an imaginary place. This place is a place that allows you to feel safe and at peace. You can write a detailed description of your place, or you could even draw it. I have found that I really enjoy using different mediums. For example, finding photos from magazines or words from newspapers to incorporate into my journal.
5. Practice gratitude
I have made it my goal to write three things that I am grateful for every day. These three things could be people, experiences, places, material things etc. and this has helped me become more grateful for the life that I live. It could help to start your journal every day with a list of things that you are grateful for, and this may inspire you to carry on writing your journal entry.
Keeping a journal should not be a secretive thing. I have realised that many people won’t fess up to owning a journal because they don’t want others to know this side of them. Feelings are messy and it makes sense that we need help to organise them in order to be able to deal with them properly. I am proud of the fact that my journal has helped me through some tumultuous times, and it has also helped me unlock a creative side that I never knew I had. In a similar sense, this is why adult colouring books are so popular. It allows you the downtime to get creative and think about what is going on in your life.
I could not encourage everyone enough to start getting creative. It is incredible what emotions you are able to process when you are allowing yourself to be creative. It doesn’t matter what form of creativity you adopt. You can colour in, write, collage, scrapbook, journal and the list carries on. Allow yourself to get creative!