The summer after freshman year of college I worked as a camp counselor in Woodstock, New York. It was the loneliest summer of my life. I’d been writing in my journal for two weeks about how alone I felt, how I didn’t fit in with my fellow counselors, and the wild energy of our three- to four-year-old campers overwhelmed me.
Still, this dead-inside, I-can’t-bear-life feeling seemed to hit me out of nowhere. As I reread page upon page of angsty lamentations, I searched for clues. One fact suddenly stood out — I’d recently begun taking antihistamines for hay fever.
Thanks to my journaling, solving the mystery became a quick and easy experiment. I stopped the allergy meds and my life force returned. Sure, there were happy days and sad days and everything in between, but overall, I felt a zest for life again. And, I’d realized in those two weeks how much the journaling supported me throughout.
Journaling got me through romantic explorations in college and the stress of three more years at MIT. My journals helped me derive meaning from my experiences, understand myself better, and wrestle with life’s inevitable challenges, making me more playful and free. Journaling created a record of my experiences and also generated much of my creative work.
Years later, journaling would me heal from a chronic illness, leave a burnout career, write my first book, come to terms with childhood trauma and stumble into an entrepreneurial career that would sustain and provide fulfillment for decades.
Do you journal? Are you contemplating a return to journaling after a hiatus? It’s easy to receive these seven benefits journaling has to offer with a few simple prompts to get you started.
1. Uplift You
Many studies show a link between journaling and lifting your mood. Consider starting your day with journaling and see what it does for the quality of your day. You might even experiment by rating three days of not journaling, then rate the next three days while you journal. See if there’s a difference in your mood.
How to: Listing everything you’re grateful for in your journal is one way to enhance your mood, but research shows that writing about trauma can also uplift. Try both!
2. Generate Ideas and Solve Problems
Many of my writing projects began with inspiration from a journal entry. Real life events, people, and relationships can become fodder for books, poems, blog posts, essays, a screenplay or other creative projects. Plus, the act of journaling can prompt innovative ways of seeing things. When you share these innovations, your readers can receive the same kind of benefits you received from your journal.
How to: Write down a challenge, question or goal. List different ways to look at it and explore what you learn. Or list different ideas, actions or solutions and explore.
3. Vet Ideas In A Safe Space
Journaling provides a way to explore the ideas that come to you and to work with them before fully committing to a project.
How to: Explore a new idea for a week or two in your journal. See how much it engages you (or doesn’t). Do you still feel excited about it one week later? One month? Does it feel right and true to turn this into a full-fledged project after playing around with it in your journal?
4. Record Travel and Other Experiences for Future Projects
My mother-in-law once told me how freeing it is to burn one’s journals. I threw a heap of journals from college and my travels to Japan and West Africa in the trash. Do I regret it? YES. However, I still have all my journals from teaching book-writing workshops in Bangkok, Thailand and I hope to one day turn those rough journals into a book. Without those journals, I would not remember enough of the details to bring my experience to life for my readers. Those journals are gold for a writer.
How to: Keep notes of travels and experiences. Add photos or mementos. Or sketch or paint the scenes you encounter. When you return home, tap these notes and sketches for creative endeavors such as an art project, screenplay, short story, family memento or comedy routine!
5. Overcome Creative Blocks and Free Your Creative Energy
Most people feel blocked at times. These blocks are like the genie in a bottle. When the energy is locked up in a bottle, we can’t access our magic. When we let that energy out of the bottle, it frees us to create. How do you let out your genie without wreaking havoc? Journaling offers a safe space to explore the thoughts, beliefs and experiences that have kept you from your full creative power.
How to: One particularly effective way to get unblocked is to dialogue with the block in a journal: Ask a question of it. Then answer as if you were the block itself. Keep delving, yet relax and don’t force the writing. You may be surprised to see a block transform from genie or scary monster into a powerful ally.
6. Mine The Gold From Your Nighttime Dreams For Creative Abundance and Transformation
Since my future husband introduced me to dream work close to thirty years ago, I’ve recorded my dreams on and off in dozens of dream journals. Some dreams have brought deep healing. In one dream a swarm of bees stung all around my heart. I’d been suffering from chronic fatigue and that dream brought some relief along the way — physically, psychically and metaphorically!
Sometimes a dream offers an interesting metaphor for a poem. Other times, the mood of a dream will inspire the voice for a piece of writing or prompt an idea for a book.
How to: Try to remember your dream before you fully wake or move. Recall it in your mind and then open your eyes to write (have pen and paper nearby!) Write the dream in the present tense as if it’s happening right now. Explore possible meanings of dream symbols. Also try dialoguing with a dream character or dream symbol. The dialogue work can be especially enlightening and/or healing.
7. Developing and Supporting A Creative Habit
Journaling helped me develop a consistent writing habit. I love to journal and usually write first thing in the morning. All that journaling gave me lots of practice in writing and the consistency made it easy to move from a journaling flow state to working on a writing project in flow state. This can work for other creative endeavors as well.
How to: Have journal and pen (or supplies for another creative project) by your bedside so it’s easy to grab without getting out of bed. Journal first thing in the morning. Write whatever comes to mind without critiquing. After you develop a consistent habit, perhaps have notes nearby on a writing (or other) project you’d like to work on. Time your journaling practice for ten or twenty minutes or more. Once your timer rings, or you’ve established flow, segue into the other project. See how the journaling creates ease in other creative endeavors.
Lisa Tener is an award winning book writing and publishing coach. Her clients have secured 5- and 6-figure book deals, and won numerous book awards. She is the author of Breathe. Write. Breathe.: 18 Energizing Practices to Spark Your Writing and Free Your Voice, which has won 14 book awards, including the GOLD Nautilus Book Award.
Find holistic Writing Resources in the Spirit of Change online Alternative Health Directory.
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