What I Learned From 1 Year of Daily Journaling
So I have been journaling in a dedicated notebook every day for over a year now. Prior to that, my exposure was minimal. My earliest memory of some form of journaling was after graduating high school. For instance, I remember I jotted small notes about the actions I made that day, and I rated my overall productivity. Or, I created small checklists of goals I wanted to achieve, and assessed my ability to accomplish them at the end of the day. My journal entries were largely experimental and varied; some entries were characterized by musings of the previous day, whereas others included fictional short stories or mediocre poetry. At this time, journaling — or writing in general — was enjoyed as a leisurely activity, and while I realized how it could be beneficial for me, I did not take it seriously enough to make it a consistent practice.
As I grew older, graduated college, took on more responsibilities, and experienced unexpected life events, it started to unleash waves of emotions and sentiments that I couldn’t adequately cope with. Journaling therefore eventually became a lifestyle and a practiced habit rather than an intermittent pastime. Over time, I evolved my journaling in a way that benefitted my mental health and minimized stress the most, and it encapsulates four main ingredients: 1) assessing my feelings in the present moment, 2) writing down negative or irrational beliefs and thoughts, 3) expressing gratitude, and 4) recording daily wins.
1. Assessing my feelings in the present moment
This exercise simply begins by writing “I feel” followed by the feeling you are feeling strongly about in the present moment. It’s important to note the the present moment because it allows you to process the feeling consciously. If it is processed consciously, then you can assess it logically, often by asking questions such as why do I feel this way? When have I felt this way before? Is it okay to feel this way? And am I okay with letting go of this feeling by just 1%? How about 5%? Or 10%? Taking these moments to decompose the feeling ultimately results in an adequate release of it and an elevated sense of awareness of that feeling.
I remember when I first performed this exercise, I often felt apathetic. I realized that I had been ignoring my feelings for the majority of my life. I was tactful at brushing off any strong feeling I felt and I medicated them instead with distractions, work, or vices. But through multiple repetitions of the feelings exercise, it was like peeling back the layers of an onion. The first layer was a particularly thick, hard-to-peel, and expired layer of apathy, which masked the layers of loneliness, stress, self-doubt, and anxiety beneath — the true feelings I’d been running away from for years.
2. Write down negative or irrational beliefs and thoughts
According to Researchers at Queen’s University in Canada, it is estimated that we have 6,200 thoughts daily, and of those, per the National Science Foundation, 80% are negative. By these metrics, negative thinking has become a disease. Most are automatic and have been instilled in us through years of bad neural programming, a majority of which occurred during our prepubescence years. If our thoughts dictate everything we do, and these thoughts are about feeling inadequate, lonely, stupid, or worried about the past or anxious about the future — can you imagine how it can significantly hold us back from living life in the way we want to?
Hence, the purpose of writing down a negative thought is twofold: 1) you are aware that it exists, and 2) in realizing it exists, you can exert some level of control over that thought so it becomes less automatic. You start to notice that you have full authority over your thoughts. You can begin to ask yourself — what benefits do I gain from thinking in this way? How could it be untrue? What if I can replace this negative thought with a new, positive one? How would it make me feel? Really analyze its validity. Break it down and spend time with it. With enough consistency and practice, you will overwrite your most dejecting thoughts with more uplifting ones.
3. Expressing gratitude
With the advent of the internet and social media, I see all the latest and greatest technology that will be released in the coming months; I see my friends and family on Instagram and FaceBook getting married, having kids, purchasing a new car, or traveling. Personally, this has made it easy for me to get lost in the lives of other people, and I often fixate on the things and experiences I don’t have. But, writing a couple of things I am grateful for as a daily habit has forced me to focus on the things I do have that I’ve taken for granted, to be more appreciative of them, and this in turn has grounded me and given me greater happiness for the daily and overlooked simple pleasures of life — the hot showers, the small talks with family, the warm meal on a cold day.
Gratitude becomes even more powerful when you can be appreciative of the bad events that have happened to you. This also helps with reframing negative thoughts to positive thoughts. Instead of expressing negativity for a bad event, be grateful that it happened to you. Be grateful of the insights you gained from it, and recognize that it could’ve been a lot worse. In short, showing gratitude enables us to see the good in everything, no matter how dire the circumstance was.
4. Recording daily wins
At the end of the day, I like to jot down the wins I had. It can be small, like going to the gym when I didn’t want to, or something bigger like receiving a promotion at work. No matter what it is, I have to end my day on a good note; I cannot end it feeling like I’ve lost. Acknowledging your wins forces you to find something from the day you can be proud of. Even if you’ve felt like there was nothing to be satisfied about, think again. There is always something. It can be simple; don’t overthink or doubt yourself. Ultimately, committing to this practice primes us for the next day, instills a mindset of victorious thinking, and builds self confidence.
In conclusion, journaling while incorporating these four elements has given me a healthy outlet for self expression and has helped me to consolidate, control and cope with my negative feelings, beliefs, and thoughts. Most importantly, I’ve become much more self-aware and I’ve learned a lot about myself— I made insights as to why I feel the way I do, I’ve tracked the source of unpleasant thought patterns, I’ve identified my most persistent, reoccurring beliefs, and because of these discoveries, I’ve made efforts to remediate them. My mindset, which was once characterized by nihilism, pessimism, and anguish, is slowly dissolving into a better identity defined by hopefulness, optimism, and content. It feels like there’s a new, long overdue software update that is being installed into my neural pathways, and journaling is the speedy modem that aids the completion of that installation.
