Everything about Journaling

And I said to my body softly, “I want to be your friend.” It took a long breath and replied: “ I have been waiting my whole life for this.” And what’s better than journaling for both your body and soul! This article contains everything you need to know about journaling. Keep reading!

Contents of the Article:

• Introduction to journaling
• The best application for journaling
• How journaling helps an individual
• How to maintain a journal?
• Tips and tricks for journaling
• Different types of journals
• FAMOUS WRITERS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF KEEPING JOURNALS
• How journaling improves writing skills?
• Conclusion

Introduction to journaling:

Ever watched any vampire series? The Vampire Diaries, The Originals or The Twilight Saga… Those fascinating, immortal species… They all have one thing in common, well, to be honest, they have lots of things in common but that one thing which fascinated me the most was keeping a journal. The thousand-year-old vampires had a journal for each year and would go through them if they wanted to relive an era or some particular memory. Though it’s obvious that neither you nor me are going to live that long but doesn’t it sound exciting to maintain a record of your life, capturing all your emotions and feelings, and even those moments of grief when it felt like everything was over, and then stepping out of them as a triumphant. And of course, those precious little memories that make you feel amazing.

I was always fascinated by journals since I was a child and I’ve been maintaining one myself for the past 10 years. Now when I read it, I literally feel the old times when I was writing, the untidy handwriting, those silly grammar mistakes, grieving over petty little things, my teenage years, and I can actually trace myself growing up in those journals and I am so thankful to have done a little extra effort and traced my somewhat roller coaster of a life. My journal is very precious to me but there is always a threat that I might lose it or accidentally set it on fire. Even something as simple as a spilled glass of water can literally wash away my endeavor of years and thousands of precious memories in a fraction of seconds. I cannot change the journals I maintained in the past and the only thing I can do is to keep them safe. But for the present and the future, I prefer to rely on this journaling app, Journal X — Diary with Lock.

Journal X — Diary with Lock is an application available on the app store for IOS devices for Digital Journaling. Make notes about your feelings, your day, your future plans and, add pictures to every entry you make. The app allows you to add up to 20 photos for each entry in your journal. Search journal entries by text. Express yourself by adding up to 9 stickers with each entry. There is a list of stickers based on your mood, current weather and daily activities. You can even lock your diary with a password! Having no worries about anyone reading your private thoughts lets you write freely. And data synching eliminates the threat of losing any data ever! I find all these features just amazing. This app has also made journaling quite effortless for me. I can literally write while preparing for sleep with the lights turned off.

The download link to the app is given below.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/journal-x-diary-with-lock/id1360257373

How journaling helps an individual?

Journaling can be effective for many different reasons and help you reach a wide range of goals. It can help you clear your head, make important connections between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and even reduce the effects of mental illness!

Studies have shown that people who journal are far more successful and happy than those who don’t. When you are feeling down and you feel like nobody cares about you, and you feel like you have nothing going for you, journaling will help you. Your journal, when used properly, is like a therapist and a best friend. Writing down your thoughts in a structured way will force you to articulate your feelings in a way that you didn’t even think about before. You can use your journal as a reference book for your life.

What does the research say?

Dr. James Pennebaker of the University of Texas, psychologist and author of Opening Up By Writing It Down, describes how taking a few minutes to write personal experiences or problems can help you

Overall, journaling has been found to:

• Boost your overall mood;
• Help in creating a sense of responsibility, consistency and self-discipline in an individual;
• Improve writing skills and promote creativity in its writer;
• Enhance your sense of well-being;
• Eliminate the risk of depression and anxiety before an important event (like an exam or a job interview);
• Improve your working memory (Baikie & Wilhelm, 2005);
• Studies have also shown that the emotional release from journaling lowers anxiety, stress, and induces better sleep;
• Journaling improves communication skills as “Writing has critical connections to speaking” according to a Stanford report.

How to maintain a journal?

Journaling doesn’t have to be like keeping a diary. It could just be tracking your mood or feelings, symptoms or just bullet points of things that you did that day. The first thing that we must understand that there is no hard and fast rule for journaling. It is just a relationship between you, a pen and paper. Allow yourself to explore various methods of journaling until you find the methods that work for you. This should be a moment of creative exploration, not frustration!

So now that we know that journaling is not the same as writing a diary, this is not just a place to vent, but it’s a place to strategize, to find weak spots and to chart a course for your life.

Some TIPS AND TRICKS for journaling;

• Try writing your journal in the morning. I know it can be a little difficult to write right in the morning but think of it as taking a shower for your brain. Once you get all the gunk out, you’ll have more room to breathe.
• Write down the five things you are frustrated by. Be spontaneous and write down whatever comes to your mind at the thought of frustration. Don’t judge yourself for any of the thoughts. You can write anything like “I don’t have good clothes”, or “I don’t like my friends”, or “I don’t have someone who loves me”, etc. Making this list every day will make you feel calmer.
• Write down five things you’re grateful for. Gratitude is the one emotion you can use to hack your way into a successful mindset. Just be grateful for whatever you have in your life. It doesn’t have to be profound or life-changing. It can be simple things. For example, five things I could be grateful are:
  1) that delicious chocolate cake
  2) my cozy room
  3) the smell of my shampoo
  4) the things I bought with my own money
  5) the Internet.
• After writing all this, you can write down whatever you want. Remember that your journal is unique. As I said earlier, there is no hard and fast rule for journaling. It is a space where you can show all your creativity without any fear of being judged. When writing this part, I also recommend you to write that one thing you can do today to improve your life in a particular area. Like exercising for weight loss.
• Write down all the tasks that are important and will take you closer to your goals. It’ll be like a roadmap for the rest of your day.

Types of journals:

Here are different types of journals that you can start today! Journaling does not have to be boring or cliche. To me, journaling is like the voyage to the interior. You can journal just for fun, or to ease the anxiety or depression.

Daily journal: This is the Dear Diary type of journal. You can write about your life experiences, feelings , values and life lessons. This type of journal is like a one-sided conversation with an inanimate object. You can relate your story and special memories. It’ll be fun to read your daily journal after years and leave behind the story of your life for the generations to come.

Morning pages: When you wake up in the morning you may be disoriented or you may be like “Oh God, It’s today again!” or you may even be like “Oh my God, It’s today, yess!” whatever feeling you have right in the morning, just write it out in the morning pages. Don’t worry about what you are writing in, don’t worry about the grammar just let your mind flow with thoughts, feelings and just write whatever comes to your mind, whatever you are feeling at the moment.

Bullet journaling: this is a very trendy sort of journaling. It consists of you designing your journal for your life with colors, shapes, lists. A personal bullet journal is a quick and flexible system that helps you track short and long term goals. You set up your journal into sections by month, week, and year. From there, you track what needs to get done. You also track significant events and milestones. So if you are very artistic and have a lot of time, then bullet journaling may be great for you.

Travel Journal: In a travel journal you can document your adventures, road trips, places that you have visited, and discoveries that you made along the way.

Gratitude Journal: Write down a list of good things in your life, whatever you are grateful for. Studies have shown that keeping a gratitude journal gives you better sleep, reduces stress and makes you happier.

Food Journal: A food journal keeps a log of all your daily meals. It monitors the time they are eaten, the quantities of the foods and the balanced nature of the diet.

Prayer journal: If you are religious or spiritual, write out your prayer or make a note about the connection you have with god. This may really be helpful. So instead of verbally saying your prayers, try to write them out.

Dream Journal: This is an interesting one. Dreams can come in fragments, some times you might remember them sometimes you just don’t. Maybe you had an extraordinary dream, better than any of the movies you ever saw but when you are trying to remember what it was in the middle of the day, you have no clue. That is where dream journals come in. If you write whatever you remember of your dream right in the morning, maybe later you can make a movie out of it, who knows!

You can maintain any of these journals in an eco-friendly manner with Journal X — Diary with Lock, the best application available for journaling.

Journal X — Diary with Lock is a Digital Journaling application available on the App Store for IOS devices. Note about your feelings, your day, your future plans and add pictures to every entry.

FAMOUS WRITERS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF KEEPING JOURNALS!

“This diary is my kief, hashish, and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice. Instead of writing a novel, I lie back with this book and a pen, and dream, and indulge in reflections and refractions… I must relive my life in the dream. The dream is my only life.” — Anaïs Nin from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume

“The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather — in many cases — offers an alternative to it.”— Susan Sontag, from Reborn

“A good journal entry — like a good song, or sketch, or photograph — ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world.”— Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See

“These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page.”— Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

“The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.”— Virginia Woolf, author of Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, A Writer’s Diary, and many more

How journaling improves writing skills?

“ Practice makes a man perfect”, the saying is relatable with all the fields, be it singing, dancing, painting, anything and being a writer is no different. The more you write, the better your writing becomes. If you are aspiring to be a writer or just concentrating on improving your writing skills, writing should not be a habit or an effort, or an obligation; it should become a necessity. One can not be innovative and creative each day and create poems, essays or articles for the purpose of writing even if they are top-notch writers but writing about one’s day, the feelings and the emotions is comparatively easy and can be exercised every day.

What is a painter without paints and what is a writer without journals? Okay that was a little too much, but journaling has phenomenal advantages in improving writing skills. Let us take a look at some of the advantages:

• Most of the writers today are writing under pressure to be accepted and applauded by the readers and to meet their publisher’s' guidelines. These restrictions take away a writer’s fundamental right i.e. creativity. A journal lets a writer practice their art without any hesitation and burden to stand up to someone’s guidelines or compete.
• Journaling clears up your mind as you lay out all the thoughts in your mind on paper. Freeing up of the mind makes space for other tasks and projects.
• In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says that to be an expert at something, you must invest at least 10,000 hours in practice. The hours you spend journaling count. Start logging pen time today.
• For the writers who are not native English speakers, journaling can be of tremendous help in improving their English writing skills. As the more they write, the more they are clear with the concepts of the language.
• When you journal, whether you are writing about your feelings or a dream you saw, or about a special moment or about your grief, you are the main character in your writings, the protagonist. This experience lets you have knowledge about your own character, and once you are aware of yourself, you are capable of creating absolutely amazing characters into whatever writings you do next.

Conclusion

A Journal is your personal space, just like your bedroom. You can do anything with it. We already know the absolutely amazing advantages that journaling can bring us, and we must not abstain from practicing it. Writing in a journal each day allows you to direct your focus to what you’re grateful and what you are committed to doing better tomorrow. Thus, you more deeply enjoy your journey each day.

And again, digital journaling is the new trend and moving with time is the real key to success. Here I exclusively present to my readers the best iPhone application for journaling - Journal X — Diary with Lock

Journal X — Diary with Lock is an application available on the app store for IOS devices for Digital Journaling. Make notes about your feelings, your day, your future plans and, add pictures to every entry you make. The app allows you to add up to 20 photos for each entry in your journal. Search journal entries by text. Express yourself by adding up to 9 stickers with each entry. There is a list of stickers based on your mood, current weather and daily activities. You can even lock your diary with a password! Having no worries about anyone reading your private thoughts lets you write freely. And data synching eliminates the threat of losing any data ever! I find all these features just amazing. This app has also made journaling quite effortless for me. I can literally write while preparing for sleep with the lights turned off.

The download link to the app is given below.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/journal-x-diary-with-lock/id1360257373

So Happy Journaling folks!