This Two-Minute Journal Routine Fixed My Biggest Mindset Problem

My old daily journal was filled with complaints — and I never felt like doing it.

Photo taken by author and edited in Canva.

I’d love to say that I’m one of those people who effortlessly journals 20 minutes a day. I’d love to claim that my daily diary habit fills me with gratitude, the opportunity to reflect, and a chance to become self-aware.

But that isn’t true. Rarely in my life have I been a regular journaler, and the few times I have, it didn’t bring the tremendous benefits it’s supposed to. I would write about all the things that went wrong or that annoyed me instead of reflecting and growing as a person.

Then, weeks, months, or even years later, I’d look back on my journal and read all these petty little problems that I’d completely forgotten about. Why on earth did I want to record that for posterity? I’d ask myself after reading how a coworker slighted me at the office kitchen in 2015.

I was only inspired to write when I was not in a positive mindset. This caused me to associate journaling with unhappiness, which naturally made it both hard to continue and hard to find benefits in doing so.

Both these problems — my inability to stick to journaling, and my lack of benefits from journaling — made me want to look for…