My head often hurts with the number of thoughts I have, plans, goals, dreams, things I need to do, things I want to write about, lists of lists that need to get done. I’m addicted to making and updating lists which comes with its own problems.
Even after clearing my schedule and reducing my commitments significantly over the past few years, I still have a very overactive mind.
During challenging times, this goes into overdrive.
There are lots of things I do to quieten my mind, writing, reading, journalling, exercise, meditation, watching Netflix, the list goes on.
Five years ago I started a new habit that quietens my mind by moving my thoughts out of my head onto paper.
This habit is daily journalling.
As mentioned in my previous blog post The Art of Journalling, I’ve been journaling for over four decades. I have always wanted to journal daily yet it was something that always eluded me, I just couldn’t stick to it consistently.
Here’s the thing, I was using the wrong tool, I was trying to daily journal in my regular journal. There doesn’t seem much wrong with that, a journal is a journal right?
Apparently not!
To daily journal we need the right tool, a daily journal.
It sounds so obvious now!
For Christmas 2020, I received the most beautiful Paulo Coelho daily journal from a dear friend of mine. I didn’t know it then, yet receiving this beautiful gift was to be the start of five years (and counting) of consistent daily journaling. For Christmas 2021 I received yet another beautiful daily journal (my favourite Moleskine) from another dear friend of mine which helped me further embed my daily journalling habit ❤️
This practice of daily journalling has taken my journaling and my life to another level.
To say this daily habit has transformed my life is an understatement, nothing else I do comes close to how powerful daily journaling is.
Daily journalling gives me a place to acknowledge, make sense of and learn from painful experiences yet it has also gives me a catalogue of gratitude for all the positive and joyful parts of my life.
Daily journaling takes discipline, it’s not an easy habit to embed yet it is absolutely worth the effort. Here’s some things to consider if you want to move to daily journalling,
✅ 1. Get the right tool which is a daily journal.
This can be a fancy journal or just a daily diary. It doesn’t really matter what you use from once it has space for each day to write in. I prefer the page a day journals and my favourite type of journal is Moleskine.
✅ 2. Explore why you want to daily journal and what you hope to achieve from it.
I knew daily journalling could help me clear my busy mind and give me a greater understanding of my life. It has done exactly that, my busy mind gets cleared by transferring thoughts to paper and the more I daily journal, the more I understand my life and myself.
The more challenging my life is the more I rely on my daily journal to understand these challenges and the pain they were causing me. This helped me learn from the challenges and turn pain into positive change.
✅ 3. Decide on the best time of the day for you to journal and take this time for yourself.
Setting time aside to think, reflect and journal is critical to embed the daily habit. I prefer to journal in the evening when the day is over, I find this time to be the best for reflection. Daily journalling is a lovely way to end the day, no matter what type of day you’ve had, it’s a positive way to close the day out
✅ 4. Decide what you will journal about.
This is something that will evolve over time as you deepen your daily journaling practice.
Having a starting point is really helpful yet I find when you create the time and space to write, what’s meant to be written presents itself naturally.
Maybe you want to journal about what happened in your day, maybe you want to journal about gratitude, maybe you want to journal about joy or pain. It doesn’t really matter what you start daily journaling about, the important thing is that you start.
✅ 5. Enjoy the process.
Journaling and daily journaling is a process, it’s two steps forward and one step back, a learning curve at all times. Like any journey, enjoyment is more important that the habit itself.
Enjoy the time you give to yourself, enjoy everything you learn about your life, enjoy the clarity journalling brings you, enjoy the art of writing, enjoy the process of building a new habit., enjoy clearing and quietening your mind.
✍️ Do you daily journal?
✍️ Could daily journaling support you to clear your busy mind?
✍️ Could daily journalling support you during challenging times?
✍️ Could daily journalling highlight the joyful moments you live every day?
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Thanks for reading,
Siobhain
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