I journaled for 30 days

  

At the start of every year people around the world make a new year’s resolution. you know exactly what you want in life,  maybe you want to eat health or read more or maybe you finally want to learn a new language but if you’re anything like me then you set goals like this each year with the best of intensions and maybe even start off great but eventually you loose rhythm of whatever it is that you’re doing and fail within a few months.

The whole taking one step forward and two steps backward pattern is getting old.

You’ve been telling yourself “today is the day!” only to fail a few weeks later.

When there is a gap between who you are and who you intend to be, ur unhappy, exhausted and regretful. You feel like a fraud to yourself, and probably to the people around you too.

Most people live their lives on other people’s terms. Their days are spent achieving other people’s goals and submitting to other people’s agendas.

We have grown comfortable with reacting when it comes to our life. We relentlessly react at everything life throws at us instead of commanding every walking and sleeping moment of our life.

We need to be able to able to remember the goals we set for ourselves, take control of every action instead of just reacting to what life throws at you.

But how…….

 

“If you asked me what’s the one most important skill I could share with someone seeking to live a more intentional life, my answer would definitely be how to start journaling.”

- I honestly don’t remember

(but I’m glad I came across it)

According to PsychCentral,

keeping a journal can help you Clarify your thoughts and feelings, reduce stress, resolve disagreements with others solve problems more effectively and most importantly, you get to know yourself better. It’s a habit that will empower you to live true to yourself, teach you to make more intentional choices, ground you when you feel overwhelmed or out of control.

C’mon ….I know I’m a sceptic but even you must think that achieving all this by scribbling in a diary once a day sounds no less than the possibility of me seeing a grown man flying in the sky tomorrow.

But is it ??? …..

 

I've heard people talk about the benefits of journaling every day it's helped them improve clarity focus it's helped them keep track of their goals and get all of their thoughts down onto the page so I thought why not try it out for 30 days and see if I could see those benefits as well but if I'm being completely honest I couldn't help but think that it was complete waste of time and it was until it wasn't.

 

There are many different types of journal(yes I checked..). You could have a dream journal to keep a track of the things that happen during your sleep, a food journal to keep a track of everything you put in your body , a workout journal to track your fitness progress and a bullet journal to track your task habits and prioritise your work throughout your day.

Basically it’s a way to chart your progress and hopefully notice some growth.

It is true that we easily get knocked off course from our goals not intentionally but just because we loose track of the idea or motivation that made us start in the first place.

 

So to find out for myself I took on the challenge to journal for 30 days and track my overall progress in productivity and to confront things I otherwise wouldn’t and hopefully to understand and get a clear idea of my own thought patterns.

So my thought process was if I could do it for 30 days then it might be long enough to see the benefits

 

 

 

So I started writing each day, set aside 10 mins to fill up a few pages. I mostly wrote about all the tasks I did during the day, this was the first month that I had prepared a new routine for myself to follow through the whole day so a bullet journal proved very useful as I got to track how good the routine I made for myself was actually working for me. I hoped to compare the final results with the goals that I set for myself at the start of the month.

 

I felt more and more like this was something that I had to do and not like something I wanted to do. I kept forgetting, saving it for the last minute.

The small benefit I saw early on was that it helped with my perfectionism .As a chronic over thinker , it was therapeutic in a way to just write what was on my mind without having the chance to edit later like I would do if I were writing a mail to someone.

 

As time progressed, this journal became more than what I intended for it.

It became a private place for all my thoughts, a place to keep track of all your ideas, looking back most pages that I filled were just utter vomit, nothing useful but I know that at least it was something true. Something that I would probably never share with another human or even me for that matter under different circumstances.

 

 

Let me share a page from my journal,

So this was April 20^th , I just came back from my college and I write” I’m really hoping that after a good night’s rest. Ill wake up feeling like myself again. I don’t feel like getting back to work or to talk to anyone. My mind and body feel completely unsettled. There’s a tension, a nervousness, anxiety. I hate this feeling. I just want to feel completely normal again. Feel like I have something in control again.” I know I must sound like every other person right now but when you feel like this, its all you can think about. Simply writing this down didn’t fix my anxiety. It didn’t make anything better but it helped me to accept how I was feeling. It stopped me from running away from the thoughts I was having or pretending like they didn’t exist.

I continued to journal for the next few weeks as I recovered and gave myself the time and space to get back on my feet. I had my ups and downs. Things got so much better. I went from feeling sick, dizzy and having zero motivation to rebuilding my routine, my fitness and getting back to work.

 

Writing this post now after about 4 months, my anxiety has reduced. It pops up every now and again but it’s not getting in the way of my life . also I have picked up a new hobby, a passion I guess I always had but never the courage to purse before . I’m hoping this hobby will serve as an anker or a reminder that “you can always get back up” for me. I will tell you more about this later. But now lets get back to journaling

 Among other things journaling has been a helpful tool for me to gain clarity when my mental health was at its worst.

So as I said its been 4 months since then and I’m still writing, all I can say is that Journaling is a life-changing habit that:

empowers you to live true to yourself

teaches you to make more intentional choices

grounds you when you feel overwhelmed or out of control

… and so much more! Without a doubt, creating a journaling habit is one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself and it’s a powerful tool for simple and intentional living.

 

 

For some people, it’s about colourful pens, and for others, it’s a way of recording your daily activities (“Dear Diary” style)—but ultimately, no matter how you format it, journaling is about self-awareness.

 

You should start journaling because, When we’re busy, we’re consumed by our daily tasks and it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important.

 

Journaling helps combat this short-sightedness by encouraging us to step back and consider the big picture. It's good to sit down and take a minute to reflect on how things are going.

 

Think of it like carrying out a research project about yourself; you’re observing your actions and your feelings so you can get to know yourself better. Ultimately, this self-awareness is the key to getting off the treadmill and living an intentional, meaningful life.

 

“TO DEFINE WHAT MATTERS”

“TO UNRAVEL YOUR FEELINGS”

“TO EXPLORE + EXPERIMENT