If you're in quarantine, and the weather is
getting colder, and your opportunities to see real life people are quickly dwindling, why not
try journaling? Journaling is a free way to act as if you are talking to a friend, when really,
it's just you. By yourself. All alone... All jokes aside, journaling has helped me so much throughout
my life, and especially during this weird and unprecedented year. While there is no wrong
way to journal, there were definitely mistakes that I made in the beginning that prevented
me from developing a good journaling habit, but once I fixed those mistakes, I really got
going and I have since filled up this entire big box of journals. Quick, though, before we start,
if you want some motivation and accountability, next week I'll be doing a daily journaling
challenge over on Instagram Stories. I'll also be journaling live with you so go follow me
@theblissbean, there's details in the description, it starts on Monday, okay, thank you. If you
currently don't have a journaling practice at all, I would start with something super super simple.
You just want to build that habit. So step one: obtain notebook. Step two: write in notebook
regularly. For the best chances at success, try to do this at the same time each day, so after
you wake up in the morning or before you go to bed both work really well because then journaling
is just less likely to get pushed aside by the rest of the day's busyness. Do whatever it takes
to remind yourself, so you can set a reminder on your phone, you can leave your notebook on your
bedside table so that you can journal as soon as you wake up. Once you've established the habit
and you've learned to really enjoy journaling, then you might not need as much structure, because
you'll find yourself just kind of naturally drifting over to your journal. But it does really
help in the beginning. Speaking of notebooks, I think a nice notebook really helps, it doesn't
have to be expensive, just something that you wouldn't normally use for school or for work.
That way, you get a little bit of enjoyment and you feel ~expensive~ whenever you sit down
with your journal, and your brain will start to connect that particular special notebook with the
habit of journaling, so whenever you see it, your brain will think "time to journal". This is the
journal I currently use, this is from Lavendaire's pastel notebook series, so this is the yellow
one in lined. It's up to you whether you want to bring your journal along with you, if you want to
journal on the go. It depends on what you write in there, so personally, I would not feel comfortable
bringing my journal out of my house, but if it is more of just like a daily log, and there's
nothing super private or sensitive in there, then you might enjoy having it with you throughout
the day so that you can write whenever the mood strikes, or you can keep it in a safe under lock
and key if you have like, state secrets, in there. Another thing Iwould recommend when you're just
starting out is to start small and have low expectations. When you're developing some sort of
a new habit, it can help to stop yourself before you feel like you're done. So what i mean by that
is, for example, when you start meditating, maybe you feel like you could meditate for five minutes,
but stop yourself at three minutes so that you're kind of left wanting for more, you know? You don't
completely use up all of that initial enthusiasm, and you save some of it up for the next
day. So, similarly, if you've just started a journaling habit, try to stop before you feel
like you've gotten all of your thoughts out. This might feel kind of counter-intuitive, but that way
you'll have a loose thread to pick back up on the next time that you journal, and you'll feel more
excited to start writing the next day, because you didn't quite finish the day before. You also don't
need to record everything in your journal, so my biggest stumbling block when I tried to start
journaling when I was younger was that I tried to write a minute by minute narration of all of my
daily actions and feelings. It just started to feel like a chore, I started to hate it so much
because I felt like if I missed anything I was failing at journaling somehow, I was just losing
all of these memories that actually were super boring anyways. So what I've learned now after
many years of journaling is that if you don't feel like writing about an event, don't. There are
probably big events that I've hardly written about in my journals because I just didn't feel like
writing about them, and that's okay. I didn't feel the need to relive them or to process them and
so I didn't need to write about them. Because I didn't force myself to do that, because I only
wrote what I actually WANTED to write about, I was able to make journaling a habit. I feel
like another common thing that trips people up when they first start journaling is that they feel
like they're doing it wrong if they're not writing like super deep, insightful, straight from the
soul, emotional, raw passages. You're not writing a book here, no one's going to quote your journal.
This is purely just for you. I think journaling is kind of like a muscle, just like meditation, so
the more you do it the better at it you become, but also in meditation, the goal isn't
really to attain a perfectly clear mind. Likewise, it's not the goal with journaling to
always be writing really insightful stuff, it's the process that matters. So in the beginning,
if you're just starting out, try just writing a couple of sentences about what you did that day,
just to build that habit and to kind of become more aware of what you're doing and what your
thoughts are, and then deeper more introspective writing will come naturally if you give yourself
the time and you give yourself the practice. So then after you've laid the foundations
of the habit, let's move on to extra credit, advanced options for you overachievers out there.
This really isn't that advanced, but I think another fun thing to do in your journaling is
to add some structure to it, so personally in my journal, I like to make a lot of lists. I'll tell
you about my lists and then you can tailor them to your preferences. So in the morning, I like to
write down three things that I'm excited for that day. Today I was excited to film this video and
put together some beautiful content for my blog, listen to a podcast during breakfast, and go
to a dance class with my mom in the evening, and then when I'm journaling before bed I write
down three things that I accomplished that day, three wins, for example yesterday I wrote that
I went on an outdoor run, in the RAIN, mind you. I took care of this accounting spreadsheet that
was a big hairy task that I was putting off for a long time, and I ate healthfully. Finally, I
make a list of three things I was grateful for. Yesterday, my new Kindle arrived, I had
some exciting opportunities in my email, and a friend sent me a funny meme. So as you can
see, even if yesterday was stressful in some ways (and it was), by focusing on all of the good
things that happen, I'm almost like editing the snapshot of the day that I have in my brain
to be a positive one. And I just think it's a really nice way to start the day and end the day.
You can also have some sort of a daily question that you answer based on whatever it is that
you're working on in your life at the moment, so for me this month, I was focusing on
feeling better and working on my mental health, and trying to achieve that by making small good
decisions that gave me momentum, but also didn't make me feel overwhelmed. So I already put away
my journal, but I forgot I need to do this part. Each morning I have been writing - "what are three
good decisions that I can make today?" and then before I go to bed I review that list and I check
off everything that I actually did. So today, this morning, I wrote: I can wash the dishes and
start the laundry, meditate after lunch, and work on reading our book club book, at Blissful Book
Club, if you're not a member yet, which you should be (SORRY THE BOOK CLUB IS NO LONGER RUNNING). So
maybe you decide to do a self-care focused month and every morning you write "what is something
that I can do for myself today?" maybe you want to focus on some specific relationship in your life,
so you start each day by writing "what is one thing i can do today to improve my relationship
with this person?" - send them an encouraging message, make a meal for them, schedule a call
with them. You might find it helpful to separate a daily journal from more of like a "deep thinking"
journal. So I did this because I have my daily journal for mornings and evenings and my daily
questions, and this journal is, quite frankly, filled with lots of repetitive, mundane rambling,
because that's just what my everyday life is like, okay? So I wanted to create this separate special
journal that is for special journaling occasions only. I started this after a couple of therapy
sessions and I decided that I wanted a dedicated place where I could write more in depth about
the stuff that I discussed with my therapist. I also think a journal like this could be a
good place to write in if you have some big decision to make. I don't have any to make at the
moment but i-it could do that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ So just like how we talked about a fancy notebook
can encourage you to sit down and journal, I think that if you have a separate notebook for
those deeper thoughts, then it can inspire you to think deeper when you're writing in it. Something
else you can do is write letters in your journal. This is definitely a bit more time intensive,
but it can reveal some very interesting insights and make you more empathetic and understanding.
You can write a letter to your past self, like, how can you view your past differently now that
you have more knowledge and more self-awareness? You can write a letter to your future self and
write about what you plan to accomplish by the time you get there. You can even write a letter
to someone you know and you never have to send it, maybe it's a letter of appreciation, maybe it's
a letter of anger that helps you to release some pent-up feelings and understand the
situation better. Whatever you need to get off your chest. Finally, a fun thing to do
that I did recently is to make a journaling jar. You can find so, so many journaling prompts out
there, and I think it's really good to collect ones that you especially like all in one place
for the times when you're needing inspiration. So I had been collecting some journaling ideas
in a document and I thought making a journaling jar out of it would be a fun way to make it kind
of more tangible. I also think it pushes you to write more about different topics, because
if you just, like, scan a list of prompts, you'll probably drift to ones that feel kind of
safe and comfortable to you, whereas if you draw one at random, it's a little more spontaneous
and maybe a little bit more of a challenge. So I hope these tips helped you. I think aside
from checking in with yourself on a daily basis and clearing your thoughts, having this sort
of sustained conversation with yourself can be really helpful in kind of, focusing your overall
life efforts. But when you're just starting out, you don't have to think super long term big
picture like that, just focus on developing that habit and see where it takes you. I'm super
excited about this journaling challenge, make sure to follow me @theblissbean on Instagram. I'll be
posting daily journaling prompts on Stories and you can use the hashtag #blissbeanjournaling so
that I can see what you post. I hope to have you writing with us and let me know in the comments if
you plan on joining! I also have a free worksheet that you can download with 70 journaling prompts,
I put the link to that in the description. You can also cut that up and make a journaling jar out
of it. I feel like I've talked so much, thank you for watching this video, and have an amazing
rest of your week. I will see you next week, bye!
