Are you looking to engage in a daily diary practice that helps you to flush out all the bad within? Have you tried to do so before with limited success thanks to the seemingly relentless flow of distractions that life has a habit of throwing your way?
Well, have no fear, for we look today to enhance your daily diary habit for the better!
Why Start a Daily Dairy?
There are a whole host of reasons why you might start your daily journal, whether or not you use journaling prompts or, indeed, whether you input your information into a digital journal.
The reasons to start a journal will usually be specific to the journaling you are engaging with. After all, there are essentially infinite types of journaling - about as many types of journals as there are people, for all journals should be different.
That being said, in the current climate of mental health awareness, the reason many are choosing to pick up a journal and even set custom email reminders up to keep them in the routine is precisely for this reason. Journals can be a great way to improve mental health, no matter what the specific issue is.
Indeed, studies have shown that journaling of a personal kind can help with:
- reducing stress, whether that be concerted toward the workplace or your own life
- sating or otherwise calming somewhat any anxious or perturbed thoughts you might be experiencing
- relieving depressive thoughts, allowing you to more frequently occupy a place in the present tense and lament less the past or worry for the future
- improving the ability to recall memories and even to absorb information in the first place, coming to terms with the way you think and feel the world around you
- increasing your sense of optimism toward the ways of the world (an altogether grim and unappealing place in a lot of places these days)
- relieving yourself of the bind of old traumas (though extra care should be taken with this as it could potentially reignite their otherwise waning flame)
How to Get Started with Daily Journaling
What follows are a few tips on how to get started with your daily journaling practice to ensure that you keep to it and get the most out of it.
1. Positive Energy
One of the most important parts of using a daily journaling practice is how it feels. It is all well and good to engage with a new notebook daily and use it to write your deepest, darkest thoughts, but if you don't feel positive about the experience then you could be doing no good for yourself.
In this way, it is best to do the work in a place that is comfortable to you and that isn't going to give you added anxiety on top of the pile of it you are already trying to work through.
This comfortable place should be personal to you - it's no use going somewhere that is 'supposed' to be comfortable to others but that isn't comfortable to you. Keep track of your own habits and work out where you are at your most comfortable and then do your journaling practice there, writing with focus every single day, preferably at a specific time.
This space should, though, as a matter of preference be relatively free of distractions. If you are the kind of person to be distracted by silence, then try going somewhere with a little more background noise. And inversely, if you are more often distracted by such background noise, try working in a quieter environment.
It is not all about the physical space, though, and very often it is most important that you come to your journaling practice and prospective collection of diaries in a positive mental space.
2. Regularity & Routine
Another key aspect to establishing a fruitful and worthwhile journaling practice is to ensure that you are engaging with it in terms of a routine. It has been said that doing so will encourage inspiration and trust in the process, allowing you to feel more comfortable with the way things are going and to go with the flow.
For this reason, it is recommended that you work on your journal at least once a day. Even if you don't feel like you have anything particularly to say on a certain day, you will often be surprised at how much starts pouring out of you on even the dryest days. And, even if it doesn't, you cannot be faulted for not trying.
Rather than the actual results of the journaling itself, it is perhaps more useful for there to be a regularity to beckon the mind into a routine of trust. The mind will come to expect the journaling practice each day and will, ideally, open itself up more and more to the idea, slowly revealing more and more of itself to the journal and, thus, to you.
All of this routine building will, above all else, simply encourage you to make more time for journaling, even if only spittle of epiphany comes from the spout at a time.
3. Prompts
Those who are already accustomed to this website will no doubt already know just how many journaling prompts there are and how many different varieties there are that can cater to essentially every type of journaling.
Looking for mental health journaling prompts? What about prompts for mindfulness? How about some prompts for self-esteem? Some spiritual journaling prompts? Some prompts for the morning? Or the night?
Indeed, there are journaling prompts for just about every occasion and, if you are stuck and don't know what to write in your leather journal then you can and should lean on journal prompts for a helping hand.
Though they are great for those only just starting out, there is no shame in relying on them to help you even if you have been working on your journaling practice for a while.
We all have those days where it just feels as though our mind is running on empty or has otherwise been juiced dry. In such instances, though it can be useful to plunder forward and see what happens, it can also be useful to use some prompts to reignite your practice and stop it from going stale.
Those who are into the idea of being interviewed or questioned like some kind of rockstar narcissist will no doubt thrive under the limelight of such prompts that press into the workings of the psyche like so.
4. Time of Day
While it is not altogether necessary, it can still be incredibly fruitful to try and carve out a specific time of day at which you engage with your journaling practice. Much as the regularity of practice will lull the mind into a sense of security and habitude, the act of doing so at the same time of day each day will further this sense of comfort within the self.
Making your own practice strong and resilient to change can take a while, but those who have started by dedicating a specific time (and sometimes place) per day to engage with it are often the ones who are most likely to stick with it in the long run.
Anyone can tell you that things don't always work out as they should. For this reason, it might not always be possible to adhere to the specific time of day that you have outlined for yourself. It is just as important as adhering to this time in such instances as it is to allow yourself some flexibility from time to time if your schedule simply won't allow it.
Another useful tactic to ensure that you keep at your practice in the long term is to specify a length of time which you will try to write for, in addition to the time of day which you use to write. Being as specific as possible you can when you go into it will ensure that you don't find any loopholes for getting out of it.
Lord knows the human mind is one of the greatest procrastinators - we invented the word, after all. Indeed, no one does it better!
Final Words
So, there you have it! Hopefully, you are now feeling ready and able to engage in a daily diary habit and change your own journaling habits for the better.
FAQs Daily Diary
HOW DO YOU WRITE A DAILY DIARY?
The most important part of a daily diary is in the name, the fact that it is a diary kept on a daily basis. Some people opt to keep a more traditional diary, wherein they keep the contents and goings-on of each day as it unfolds in chronological order. Some, though, might opt instead to capture a feel for a day, making note of the things they have felt or thought, the various epiphanies they might have had, etc.
WHAT IS A DAILY DIARY?
A daily diary is a diary that you write in every day. Though this definition might seem a little patronizing - especially for those who think there needs to be some elaborate answer to everything - this simple really is the truth. That being said, it is a damn sight easier to define a daily diary than to actually keep one. Life always has a way of getting amongst things and preventing the regular and proper functioning of routine existence.
HOW DO YOU GET STARTED WITH DAILY JOURNALING?
The most important thing is to make a habit of it, engaging with it each day preferably at a specific time and for a specific amount of time. If you get stuck, don't be afraid to use some journaling prompts to get you where you need to go.
