From helping you to feel more confident to boosting your critical thinking skills, journaling provides many benefits. This self-care practice can aid you in your pursuit of happiness and growth by giving you a space to self-reflect, troubleshoot, and “brain dump.” Whether you’re looking to improve a particular aspect of your life, such as a relationship with someone, express gratitude, want to track your progress on achieving a specific goal, or you just want a space to be creative, journaling is a great place to start.
This post highlights some of the main benefits of journaling and provides examples of journals you can start keeping along with prompts to help you get started.
What Are the Benefits of Journaling?
There are so many advantages to keeping a journal. Depending on your personal goals and how you use your journal, you may experience the following benefits:
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Improves mental and physical health: Journaling is a great way to practice self-care and can help reduce stress and manage anxiety. Research shows that expressive writing may also help to improve various physical health issues. People have reported experiencing improvements, such as improved immune system functioning, reduced blood pressure, and improved lung function.
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Supports goal achievement: Writing down a goal can make it feel more tangible. You can also use a journal to track your progress.
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Drives creativity: A journal can be a great place to freely write down your ideas and thoughts. You can also doodle as well as use prompts to boost your imagination.
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Heightens communication: By organizing your thoughts, you can become a better communicator.
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Develops writing skills: Journaling is a great way to practice supporting an argument and can help boost your vocabulary.
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Boosts critical thinking skills: Journaling, in particular reflective journaling, can help you become a better problem solver. You can address problems in your journal and think critically about the most effective ways to solve them.
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Drives self-confidence: A journaling can aid you in managing both your schedule and thoughts. This can leave you feeling more in control, and thus more confident in yourself and your abilities.
Journals You Can Start Keeping
Keeping a journal is a very personal experience. There is no right way to do it or no rules you have to adhere to. The visual above from the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences details several types of journal and shares prompts for each to give you a place to potentially start your practice.
