The pursuit of Inner Happiness
Happiness starts from within us. It is not something that just happens, we must pursue it. Journaling is a great method to find our inner happiness.
People around the world are looking forward to an end to this pandemic and hoping for a normal life. Whether it will all end or not, life has to move on. It is not only the physical health that matters but the mental health too. Fear, worry, and stress are normal responses at times when we are faced with uncertainty. What we need to think about is how we will survive this difficult situation, how we can remain happy and experience inner peace. We have to adapt certain measures for our survival. We have to think positively just like Anne Frank.
“Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.” — Anne Frank
Anne Frank was a German-Dutch diarist of Jewish heritage. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, Netherlands, having moved there with her family at the age of four and a half when the Nazis gained control over Germany. On 6 July 1942, Franks went into hiding in some concealed rooms behind a bookcase in the building where Anne’s father, Otto Frank, worked. From then until the family’s arrest in August 1944, she kept a diary she had received as a present on her 13th birthday and wrote in it regularly. The Jewish teenager wrote her World War II experiences in the diary that later became one of the most widely read books in the world.
“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” — Anne Frank
Journaling has changed Anne’s way of thinking. It helped her relieve stress, as she was able to open up with the diary, which she called ‘Kitty’. Anne wrote, “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.” Just as she hoped, the diary became her best companion who helped her to stay positive amidst the heightening tensions.
We can compare Anne Frank’s forced confinement to our corona confinement and try to adapt her survival method during her hiding, which is ‘Journaling’. There is inner happiness within everyone, but layers of negative thoughts, fears, worries, and anxieties cover it. Inner happiness is an inseparable part of our inner being, but we often allow our worries and stress to hide it. Left unchecked, anxiety can lead to mental illness. One way journaling can relieve stress is by helping you work through anxious feelings. Writing about your concerns and feelings can help the brain overcome emotional issues and help you feel happier. Some of the roots of your anxiety can be minimized through a bit of focused examination. So write down freely what is in your mind. Research also suggests it might be helping our health and immune systems, the very things many of us are worried about.
Start by journaling for 5 to 15 minutes. Write about whatever is in your mind or is bothering you. Try to keep going until you feel you have written what needs to be said but haven’t delved into a mode of rumination. Expressing yourself can make you feel more aware. Writing about your feelings can help the brain overcome emotional issues and help you feel happier, says research from the University of California in Los Angeles. The psychologists who discovered this phenomenon called it the “Bridget Jones effect”, after the diary-keeping heroine of the film series - Bridget Jones Diary. Their research showed that when people wrote about their feelings, medical scans showed that their brain activity matched the activity seen in volunteers who were consciously trying to control their emotions. The mere act of journaling just made them calmer and happier.
Once you have decided to keep a journal, you should next decide the medium use for it. If you love the feeling of physically writing down your thoughts, a paper notebook may be the best option for you. If you just cannot separate yourself from your phone or laptop, there are plenty of apps that promise privacy and security as well as a great writing environment. Daybook is one such app, which is totally free and also works offline. Daybook even provides voice-assisted writing if you are super busy or feeling ultra-lazy to journal. It has more features to suit your needs if you take Premium membership.
Download the app now and start pursuing your inner happiness.
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