Self-care is any activity that improves your life and general well being. There are so many self-care practices but one very effective activity that I have adopted in my purse of self-improvement and personal development is self-care journaling.
Self-care journaling is the type of journaling focused on improving your life. If you have been on this space for a while you’ll know the importance and impact journaling has played in me getting my life back on track, finding my voice, standing in my power, unraveling my purpose, constantly discovering who I am and investing in myself.
Self-care journaling isn’t very different from organizational journaling. The difference is that instead of organizing your activities, you’re organizing your thoughts.
Self-care journaling is a deliberate activity that if not properly planned can be really hard to keep up especially when you have so much activity on your plate. It entails recording your emotional activities in a journal or freely expressing your thoughts in writing. Simply put, it is untangling your thoughts, emotions and concerns on paper and this practice is extremely powerful!
The benefit of self-care journaling is tremendous. It helps you to be in control of your thoughts and to lighten your mind.
I’ve been keeping a self-care journal for years now and it has been very beneficial to my emotional and psychological health. It has helped me to decrease all forms of anxiety and stress. This means that you get to always feel liberated and weightless. Some of its other benefits are;
- It helps you unplug: Journaling is a great way to unplug from stressful social activities and the internet especially. Sometimes, paying attention to the several distractions and talks we get on our survival journal can be toxic for the mind. The best thing to do is to take a little break no matter how short to help reprogram your mind. This is one of the things self-care journaling does. It takes you away from the toxicity to the real world to fix your mind.
- It reduces anxiety.
- It boosts your level of creativity as a result of its artistic nature.
- Strengthens and improves your memory.
- It opens up your mind.
Asides from the health benefits, it is a perfect go-to place or serves as the perfect future reference. When you’re passing through some stressful situations it’s easier because you’ve previously conquered such challenge and have prerecorded the events which led to you overcoming it. This means you get to track your thoughts (both positive and negative) and fix the negativity.
How do you effectively use your self-care journal? I’ll be sharing some tips on journal self-care. Specifically how you can journal for self-love, practice self-care routine, practice journaling for mental health benefit by utilizing mental health planners, keeping a self-care planner, and a wellness planner.
1. Get A Journal With Enough Room And Pages To Write
Use journals that have enough room to write notes. You can make use of your planning journal if it can accommodate your thoughts. You can also use bullet self-care planners if you’re not the type that writes much.
You can as well make use of guided journals that will help you reset, refocus and restart. Through my journey of discovering my identity and my strengths, I purchased a lot of Guided journals and workbooks which enabled me understand myself and grow stronger.
I have written a detailed guide here on the effective steps you need to take in order to start journaling as well as the best journals you can get that will soothe your style and simplify the process of journaling for you.
There are a lot of guided journals that are minimalistic and contain a lot of self-discovery exercises, prompts and questions that will spur you into up-leveling your life.
For example my very own Life Compass Guided Journal. The Life Compass Journal is a therapeutic tool that will enable you track your progress in life and identity what’s not working for proper change to be effected.
2. Use Your Journal As Mind Examiner
You should express exactly how you feel without sugarcoating anything. It’s your journal so it’s personal.
Your mind is a very complicated space. This is why you are not fully aware of your emotional state at a particular time. Most times when you have mixed feelings, it is because you haven’t examined your mind to find out the exact way you feel.
One easy way to do this is outlying your thoughts no matter how embarrassing or light the thought may appear, it is important to keep a record of it in your journal.
Once you are able to do this, you will notice that you are more mindful of your actions and reactions. Most of your actions and decisions will be calculated according to the state of your mind at that particular time.
An angry person who indulges in self-care journaling will realize the extent of their anger as well as the several triggers. Hence, would avoid making drastic or hasty decisions that will cost them in the future and know the proper steps to avoid and manage such over flooding emotion.
3. Use It To Increase Self-Acceptance
How are you self-choosing? What does your journey of acceptance feels like?
You are valuable and your worth should never be weighed, you don’t have to shrink to show up for others, choosing to love yourself, find yourself and accept yourself is finding your power.
This is the path to self-love and self-care, you need to know yourself more and accept yourself the way you are for self-growth and self-development to take place. Once you have been able to discover yourself, it is easy to accept yourself.
Journaling for self-acceptance entails recording down your thoughts (good or bad) and accepting that you are not perfect but at the same time you are working on how to make yourself better.
This means that after you get to know yourself deeper from your self-care journaling content, you should groom your mind to embrace your strengths and weaknesses because you can’t fix your flaws except you accept that you have shortcomings.
4. Make It A Daily Routine
Self-care journaling is a deliberate activity. It is something that should be done at a stipulated time preferably this is why you need self-care journaling prompts. This is because once you are not consistent; you fall out of the habit. The trick is to check through your daily activities and fix a “me-time”.
A part of that me-time should be dedicated to self-care journaling. It can be as soon as you wake up or before you go to bed. Once you get used to implementing this as a routine, you hardly miss out on emptying your thoughts at least once a day or as often as you decide to do it.
5. Track Your Accomplishments
Self-care journaling involves keeping track of your successes and wins. Whenever you feel impressed with your decisions and actions no matter how small, make sure you acknowledge it in your journal.
Most times, people are reluctant to acknowledge how much they have achieved because they think it is small or unnecessary. The benefit of tracking your accomplishment is gotten during your downtimes. It is a source of encouragement, a wall of positivity as I’ll love to call it and a reminder that you are an achiever. This reduces anxiety and boosts your self-confidence.
6. Record Your Dreams
By dreams, I don’t necessarily mean your goals. I mean the night visions you get when you sleep. This is important because sometimes, your dreams are a reflection of reality or your thoughts. This is why some of your thoughts or daily activities are reflected in your dream world.
It is important to record them because it has a lot to do with your mental health. A change in your dream shows that there has been a change in your thought process either positively or negatively.
For those who have nightmares especially, it is important to record and track your dreams. You’ll know when it started, the situation that surrounded that period, how worse or better it has gotten over time, how often you get it, what it is mostly about, and the slight changes that occur if it does.
7. Use It To Record Your Goals
Nothing beats writing down your goals (both long and short term) on paper. This will help put your mind in the best position to work towards it and activate your consciousness that you have a task you need to carry out.
Writing your goals down, means you’re acknowledging them and ensuring that you’ll work on them. It keeps your goals as top on your priority. Nevertheless, write down realistic and achievable goals and take the vital actionable steps in bringing those goals to manifestations.
8. Use It To Plan Personal And Fun Activities For Yourself
Sometimes, we are extra occupied with so many activities that we forget self-care ideas. While self-care journaling, I always include an activity or something I love to do and I always find the time to do it.
It doesn’t have to be time-consuming. It can be as small as satisfying a chocolate cake craving. It’s what you want, so find time on your to-do list to squeeze it in. It can also be a long term event or activity like a picnic. You can pen it down, plan how you want it to go and put it away until you get the opportunity to carry it out. These things help increase happiness.
In The Life Compass Journal, there are monthly wellness calendars that can help you plan even the most little activities in taking care of yourself, investing in your inner stability and taking full control of your mind.
9. Write Out The Things You’re Grateful For
In my journal, I include one thing I’m grateful for daily. This has helped me to realize that I have every reason to be happy. Sometimes, what I’m grateful for can just be the being able to complete an assignment or the really great burger I had for lunch.
Once you start gratitude journaling, you’ll realize that no matter how hard you’re pushing, they’ll always be something that’ll make you smile and motivate you to keep going. It could be a person, thing or activity. As long as you’re grateful for it, your attitude will change and you’ll find yourself grateful for at least one thing every day.
Little things like;
I am grateful for joy and laughter.
I am grateful to be alive.
I am grateful for the love in my life.
I am thankful for the saneness of my mind.
I am thankful for the space to create.
10. Always Have Your Journal Handy
As much as I don’t carry my self-care journal with me everywhere, I always make sure it’s easily accessible to me. Leave it somewhere you’ll always find it and it’s very easy to reach. This is one reason why it is advisable to use a different journal for self-care and organizational planning. It’s easier not to forget to use your journal when it’s always handy.
11. You Can Write Letters Addressing Yourself Or Someone In It
It feels insane writing letters without sending them but this practice is very effective and highly therapeutic.
If someone hurts you in the past and you still carry all the pain and hurt around with you, you can vent on the letter and genuinely feel better. I did this a lot I sent letters to my past self, hurting self, growing self, confused self, inner self and so on and as the words lay down on the sheets there was a great relive within me.
It can also help you forgive yourself. For example, if you hurt someone in the past and haven’t had the opportunity to apologize, you can draft an apology letter to lighten the burden and help you forgive yourself.
12. Compliment Yourself
The best compliment you can ever receive is the one that comes from you. You can make this a routine practice in your self-care journaling practice. Once you can write at least one thing you like and appreciate about yourself, you boost your self-confidence.
You can compliment yourself with these positive words;
You are valuable, don’t let anyone trick you into believing otherwise- even yourself.
You’ve always been enough.
You deserve so much more than what you’re settling for.
13. Write Your Favorite Inspirational Quotes
Everyone has a source of inspiration which serves as a drive to keep them pushing. You can include certain inspirational quotes that you love and this can go a long way in improving your general performance. So if you’re stuck or confused about how to start your self-care journal, you can start with this.
14. Write Down New Ideas
Ideas come at different points in time and sometimes when you fail to record it at that point, you forget about it and may never get it back. Drawing out a mind map can go a long way in helping you get your ideas flowing. This is very handy when you have a project you’re working on.
Your little bits of ideas can blossom into something big and this can be your ticket to success. Pen your ideas down on your self-care journal.
15. The Highlight Of Your Day
Each day, no matter how bad, do not forget to outline how your day went or the best part that gets you a bit excited or at least more satisfied and interested than the other parts.
Even when it feels like there’s nothing going on, there is always an ‘aha!’ moment every day. It may be getting to go to eat lunch or dinner at your favorite restaurant, reading your emails, chatting or spending time with your partner, watching a YouTube video, or taking a walk with your dog.
There’s always a story that’s worth telling every day. That story is the highlight of your day and you ought to record it in your self-care journal. Self-care journaling increases your attitude of gratitude towards everything.
ACTIVITY PLAN:
Flip through the pages of The Life Compass Workbook and start putting these tips to work! Don’t have the journal? Click here to get yours now!
BEFORE YOU GO:
I want you to remember that self-care journaling is an antidote. Once you’re consistent with it, you’ll improve your overall life. The benefit is always visible in your personal life as a result of the happiness and satisfaction you get from it. Your workplace or career productivity is also positively affected because a healthy mind is an active mind.
Share this resource!
