how i finally started journaling *and actually enjoying it*

hey guys so today I just wanted to film a little sit down and chat video talking about how I started journaling because believe me or not for the first like okay not like 21 years of my life because I don't think I knew what journaling was when I was literally fresh out of the womb but for a long time in my life as long as I can remember I always wanted to be somebody who journaled because I thought it would be so cool to have a record of my life to look back on but it seems like no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get it to be a habit that stuck until around three months ago and now journaling is one of my favorite activities I have filled up literally like a hundred fifty pages of this journal in the past couple months I've been doing a lot it's been helping me alot mentally and it's something that I think has definitely made me a better person over the past couple of months like you girls still a work in progress but I'm actually like making steps towards kind of like being at peace with my own thoughts and being able to self reflect more and like really think about my priorities in life which was something that I feel like before was lost in like the hustle and bustle of my crazy day-to-day workaholic life so yeah if you guys are like me and you've always wanted to journal but you're just not quite sure how to start or how to get motivated this is the video for you let's let's jump in kiddos alrighty it's me again back in the exact same chair hello it's the same video it's nice to meet you I'm actually so my first and most important tip it's gonna sound very vague and it's a little hard to explain but basically I think it's super important to set your intentions properly the main reason that I really failed to journal in the past was that my heart wasn't really in the right place I used to see journaling as more of this like aesthetic productive aspirational lifestyle type of activity like I didn't actually enjoy the process of thinking deeply about my life and writing it out what I wanted was like the identity of a tumblr girl who has her journal also as an excuse to buy more stationery that was a big reason for me like I mostly just enjoyed buying journals and not actually writing in them journaling is not about the goal of filling up a book it's not about the image of being this like artsy productive person it is about the actual process of journaling so if you don't enjoy that you're not ever gonna get yourself to do it because why would you do something that you don't enjoy for much of my life my priorities were very much just climbing the career ladder as fast as possible and having as much like quote unquote success as possible so I really never ended up prioritizing journaling or any other type of like self-care or self-reflection or self exploration I don't know I just was so focused on school and success in a very traditional sense that anything else seems like a waste of my time when you were younger a lot of us feel like too busy and too self-assured to do that but I think as you grow up you realize there's a lot more like depth to your own your own head and your own complex and your own personality and it becomes very exciting to be able to discover those things so yeah now that I know what I want to get out of journaling it is so much easier to actually sit down and do it because I have a real reason behind I feel like it's genuinely something that benefits me and it's not just this kind of like aesthetic activity I'm trying to force myself into another thing that really helped me get on this journal and kick was basically like the only times I've journals throughout my life earlier were when I was on plane rides and so I probably have like three journal entries before the past three months but a couple months ago I was clearing out my computer and I stumbled across this old journal entry from like 2 years ago and it was just like the most incredible thing to read I had never experienced before like the joy of being able to look back at the thoughts of my past self and this time capsule of what my life was like and even like I was so sassy back then and I just loved it because I was so proud of this old version of me for I don't know like sticking it out for everything that was going on in my life been for still having this like sense of humor about me even though I was very confused and young in college and I still am confused although not in college anymore that experience gave me a taste for the first time of this joy I would feel later on in life when I can go back like three ten a hundred years from now if technology gets that good and read this journal and really just like rejoice in the nostalgia if you are a nostalgic person like me and you're looking for some motivation if you have ever journaled in your life or you had like written a poem you've jotted down some thoughts you made some art in the past go back and look at it because it'll help you realize like what ten years down the line journaling now will do for you and it'll encourage you to like make that investment now I know it's a really special feeling and it's a feeling that I want to be able to repeat in the future and I think that you guys will do so my second tip is to take the pressure off yourself another reason that journaling never clicked with me an earlier age was because I had heard of all of these rules and I was trying to follow them while I journal but it actually made it a much worse experience for myself like I had read a lot about turning things into a habit so you have to do it every single day so I would start a new notebook and I would tell myself Ashley you have to journal every single day for the next year and lo and behold like three days into my years worth of journaling I would fall off the wagon I would forget a day and then I already felt like a failure I figured I already screwed it up so what is the point in continuing and then that journal would just sit at the bottom of my desk or like all of my other journals if routine works for you you can make it work but what I have personally found works best for me is literally just journaling when I feel like it and when I feel the need to to me it's like the difference between having an assignment to read a book in class and reading a book for leisure one of them is much more exciting because if you like when you give yourself an assignment like journal every single day and write X number of pages it becomes a dragon just become something that you do to check off the box rather than really being able to enjoy the process and just do it for yourself some weeks when I'm like in panic mode where I have a lot going on I'm writing every single day because I feel like I have these thoughts that I have to process and then some weeks I'm just chilling I'm working I'm in my groove I feel content with life and I might journal a little less often because my head is less hectic and I feel the need to less another thing I wish I knew is that there are no rules when it comes to journaling whatsoever in terms of what you have to write I used to think a main purpose of journaling was to have an incredibly detailed record of my life so that I could look back at it in 10 years and essentially read a biography of myself there are some days where I do enjoy we're counting the activities that occurred but more often than not when I'm listing out every single thing that I did in a day it's not exciting and I literally get bored writing and that is something you want to avoid like the plague because it's an activity for you and you should only write things that you feel like are revealing or exciting to write about or feel say reputed to write about so you don't need to freaking like write what you had for lunch that's not what's gonna matter to you ten years from now I think what really matters is talking about events and like little vignettes in your life that are important you literally don't even have to talk about your day at all you can just like stream of conscious write about your feelings or your emotions or like one moment that happened is the day also your writing does not have to be well worded or beautiful or cohesive you don't have to have transitions between your paragraphs as a three writing concentration in school this was a pressure that I felt for a while because I do take pride in like the craft of writing but you have to let go of that perfectionist tendency and realize that you're not writing for anybody but yourself you're not writing a school essay where you need your main idea and a thesis statement and then like evidence to support it like there is no format there are no rules the only person who's gonna be reading it is maybe you ten years from now and there's absolutely no pressure to write in any specific style granted I do like kind of throwing in jokes here in there just for like future me to read like my journal I would say is 75% free-flowing thoughts from my current brain and then like 25% me just like talking to older me and trying to be a little bit entertaining for myself there is a balance to be struck an important choice when it comes to journaling is do you want to do it digitally or physically digitally obviously has its advantages of being much faster because you can type faster than you can write it is easier to read if you want to look back on it and it's also very easily searchable and editable so I have thought like oh what if I want to search like this one boy's name I went out for like per week it would be so hard to find in this but it would be much easier to find in a digital document however I do really prefer drilling in a physical notebook I feel like it is a much more meditative experience and something feels really good about like the physical process of getting your thoughts out with your hand I don't know it's something so different than typing and my favorite thing is that it gives me an opportunity to get out my thoughts without feeling the pressure go back and edit them especially because I always always write in pen so once it's out there it's out there once at the sentence I'm flowing with it of course here and there I'm gonna go back and cross out a word or two but if you like generally look at a page like this has one word crossed out on it and it's an entire two-page spread I feel like if I'm typing on a computer it's just so easy to go back and edit something that I'm going to after I write like a paragraph I'm like oh this sentence could be better structured let me go back and edit it to me that detracts from the actual exercise of journaling which is to just get your thoughts out there and not worry about the technicalities also I don't know if it's just me but a blank document with the little blinking line is intimidating to me but a blank page in a journal is incredibly inviting like this is something I'm excited to fill up and I think that just results from years and years of writing essays in school that I felt unprepared to write and then this is the exciting part in the video where we get to talk about stationery which is like my favorite thing in the world and this is also gonna be the easiest tip for you guys to like physically follow which is to get yourself the right journal I am a strong believer that both the places and things in our lives carry sentiments with them if that makes sense over time we develop associations with certain spaces certain objects and they can make us feel a certain way like in my office because I do a lot of work there I feel productive in my bedroom I feel really cozy and safe and intimate just like I like to separate my office and where I sleep I think it is so important to separate your planner from your journal I used to try to journal in the back of my planner like in the last couple pages there's normally notes pages and sometimes I would write a paragraph or two but it never got me that far because a planner feels like a place to be productive it doesn't feel like the right place to just like unleash your inner thoughts because this reminds me of the stress of school and work and this is just a nice little space for me to express my thoughts and nothing else my journal is an expanded classic hardcover plain page moleskin that is a mouthful but I will also link it below if you guys want to buy my exact journal and I use a g2 gel pen in 0.38 this is the only pen that I written with for like five years it is so smooth it's really fine it just it looks beautiful on the page I would also highly recommend these and I will link them down below if you so far has been so deprived that you have not written with one of these because they are glorious but obviously everybody has different preferences when it comes to their stationery you know what they feel comfortable writing in so I came up with some qualifiers for you guys to think about when you're finding your perfect journal the first one is the number of pages in your journal I got this expanded moleskin which I believe is around 400 pages it's like twice the size of a regular moleskin and for me that made a huge difference because when my notebook is too small I feel like every page is too valuable and I feel intimidated to actually write out like four pages of my thoughts because I realized that I'm using up so much of my notebook so I want there to be enough pages so I don't feel guilty for using them up I also know for some people this might be an incredibly intimidating number of pages to fill up and when you see this many blank pages you just think how the hell am I ever gonna do that it becomes intimidating you don't even want to start so it's all about finding that perfect balance another thing to think about is your notebook size first of all from a practical standpoint you've got to think about the size of your notebook in relation to the size of your purse or your briefcase or your backpack especially if your journaling while traveling or on the commute to work you want something that you can easily carry around with you this is around 8 by 5 inches which is a pretty standard journal size and my favorite size because as you're writing I think I can fit about like two paragraphs here so it's about 10 sentences on a page which honestly fills up pretty quickly and makes me feel like I'm making progress as I'm writing that's the reason I never revived with really big journals or I could never finish up a composition book because they're just too large and as I'm writing I've been writing for like ten minutes and I still haven't filled a page up then I feel like I'm not even making any progress so there's definitely something nice to being able to like flip the pages as you journal and feel like you're filling something up this one's pretty obvious but nice feeling paper and something that won't bleed through to the other side when you press when you press hard with your pen of choice I also much prefer a notebook that is traditionally bound rather than a spiral because as you're writing on this side of the notebook if you have a spiral like your hand is constantly going to be on top of this Cyril and it makes her a really uncomfortable writing experience so I like something that's nice and smooth down the middle and my last criteria is finding a notebook that is the right cost for you this was a problem that I ran into a lot when I was younger because I was like earning minimum wage but I was so excited to buy stationery so I would go and spend like $30 on a really nice journal but then I would feel so scared to fill up the pages because it was like the mentality of using stickers when you're a little kid like it's so fun to acquire them but then you constantly feel like the opportunity at hand isn't a good enough opportunity to use up those pages so sometimes I would have thoughts in my head but I was like oh those aren't really important enough thoughts I only have like a hundred pages in this journal that I spend so much money on so it's pulling out worth writing them down I'll just save it for something really important and I would keep doing that until I would never even use the journal to begin with that's one of the reasons that I love this journal so much again this isn't like sponsored by the way this is just the journal that I love I feel like I'm hyping it up a little bit too much but this journal cost like thirty dollars it's 400 pages front and back so my cost per page is it's well under a cent per page and that makes me feel really good and really comfortable writing in it because I know that I'm not just like burning money with my journaling experience and my final tip in this video is to set the scene and make journaling a whole little experience for yourself make a journaling feel like a treat for yourself rather than a school assignment to fill out kind of in the in-between moments of your life I am such a nerd but like one of my favorite activities in a day is be able to go to the park at sunset go and I don't have a balcony if I had a balcony I would be journaling on it go sit outside watch the sunset make a cup of tea go to a really cute coffee shop and get yourself your favorite drink I love a good lighting setup so I have some candles um these are the mrs. Myers candles from Amazon I will link them below I got them because they're pretty much the cheapest candles you can get on Amazon I think it's like seven dollars per candle and they last for like 36 hours so again I don't feel too guilty burning them it just feels so cozy and it's nice to have a particular warm scent that you associate with journaling I don't makes the whole experience very like homey and nice also literally like building a blanket for her in your journal I don't know just like making it a really nice cozy experience for yourself it makes it feel more like you're taking yourself out on a date with your thoughts I feel like we all have a tendency to only do these kind of like romantic treat yourself type of things like lighting candles or going and watching the sunset when you're on a date with somebody or with a friend but those are 100% things that you can go and do on your own and I feel like it makes the experience of journaling and just the experience of spending time with yourself a lot more enjoyable alright that is everything that I have for you guys thank you so much for watching I hope that these tips were at least moderately helpful if you guys have any more tips my experienced journals out there leave them down below and I hope that if it's something that you guys genuinely want to get into that this video helps you out okay thanks for watching I will see you guys next week bye [Music]

Channel: bestmess

Views: 1,438,773

Keywords: journaling, journalling, i tried journaling for 30 days, i journaled for 30 days, diary, best journal, bullet journal, stationery haul, stationery, favorite notebooks, best notebook for journaling, how to start journaling, starting a diary, bullet journal with me, healthy habits, life changing habits, self reflection, journaling for beginners, journaling for mental health, journaling supplies, journaling tips, journaling for 30 days, journal flip throguh, how to journal

Id: 4EHrQMR6qko

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 15 2019