INTRODUCTION TO THE DIFFERENT STYLES OF JOURNALING

Journaling is a great tool that can be utilized in many ways and this article discusses the 3 main ways journaling can serve your journey of self knowledge and personal growth.

A short and simple definition of journaling could be that a journal is a private place where you can organize your thoughts and vent your emotions.

The complication comes from the fact that each person is free to use journaling as a tool for whatever they feel like. Journaling is a broad umbrella term that doesn’t refer to only one structure of writing. Journals serve a wide range of purposes and there are many different styles of journal writing.

Is journaling same as goal setting and planning?

Journaling and planning are complementing each other but they are usefull for different purposes. Planning is a productivity tool while journaling is a self-expression, self-discovery, self-perception and analysis tool. There are work journals, project journals also that will not have much focus in this article because they are productivity tools and not self knowledge tools. They are tracking what you do while the journaling styles discussed here track why you do things, how do you feel doing things and what you can do to feel better.

In short, in my view it is useful to start with journaling, self-discovery and self-exploration. Understand first who you are and why you want those things that you want, because otherwise you’ll be chasing mirages. Learn what makes you feel good in reality here and now, and than set goals and plan to include more of that in your daily experiences. You can plan to be very productive of things that don’t satisfy you and be busy realizing things that are meaningless to your wellbeing. Journaling is a great self-discovery, self acceptance and self assurance tool.

A planner, calendar or a diary is sometimes also considered journals but for me journaling seems more personal in nature. Calendars, planners record short sentences, words but real change doesn’t really come from recording activity in short words. You could look back in a month, or in six years and see a calendar page with reminder words about food, fitness and other important things but what does it tell about who you are, how did you feel. Was it a good period for you or a difficult one? Planners have their role and can be super usefull tools when they are used for the right reasons.

The 3 Main Journaling Styles

Most journals will focus on 3 aspects of ones personality : the mental wellbeing, emotional wellness and expressing the creative flow. On this basis we can categorize journaling styles as follows :

1. Concentration enhancing or mental journaling

We have a fascinating mind where thoughts arise and subside continuously. Thinking seems like an endless rhythm that automatically translates life. In 2005, experts at the National Science Foundation estimated that the average adult mind thinks between 50,000 – 60,000 thoughts a day. This large quantity of data that passes through our brains can result in a frustrating, uncontrollable stream of thoughts.

The mental background noise goes on and on when you brush your teeth, when you dress up, drive to work, talk with others, when you watch movies and there are not so many ways to stop this stream of thoughts. It goes on almost unnoticed until you want to focus on something. When you want to concentrate on a task that is when you realize that the mind is like a bee flying from flower to flower. It doesn’t want to stop and it is really hard to have a perspective on the flow while being in the flow.

You have dreams, aspirations, ideas, inspired thoughts, fears, anxieties, frustrations streaming continuously and journaling is one of the realistic, working ways to step out of the stream a little and take a step backwards and have a larger view on you thinking process. Journaling in this sense is used as a tool to concentrate and focus. How it works? Writing is an interesting procedure because you are not stopping thought just slowing it down. You are slowing it down so you can realize logical bugs and make adjustments when necessary.

When the stream of thoughts slows down your mind can work better on solving problems, noticing patterns, understanding complex ideas. Journaling is a tool used also for mental hygiene. As you take a shower in the evening to clean your body the same way you can use a journal to clean your mind. You can jot down creative ideas as well as troubling situations. Just putting on paper the thoughts that arise in an interval of time will help you manage stress better and deal more efficiently with distracting or illusionary thoughts.

There are specific exercises that you can choose to do in a written format daily to improve your overall mindset and self-talk, like writing down a set of affirmations each day for 30 days. Learning every month a new set of smart, good feeling thoughts will make it easier for them to come up and help you when your mind is troubled by problems. You can use journal prompts to embark on the self-discovery stream.

A nice type of mental journaling is recording ideas, quotes that inspire and fascinate you. Those who like to read can include a reading journal in their mental journals, but is can be usefull to write down in your own words the moral or lesson from podcasts, Ted Talks and You tube seminars as well. You’ll see how it helps you understand and remember thoughts better. It can serve as a collection of inspiring thoughts and ideas over time and enhances the efficiency of learning. You could also include excerpts of articles that you find interesting and want to learn more about.

2. Emotional , inspirational, expressive journaling

Journaling for emotional wellbeing has many benefits. Journaling can be self-soothing, decreases stress and anxiety and can teach you how to become your own best friend and supporter. The journal is a safe and private space where you can honestly put out your feelings. Better said you can recognize your feelings as you write them down.

In our busy lives the bigger problem is not that we are stressed and cannot manage feelings but we do not know most of the time what these feelings are. Most people don’t stop and ask themselves What is this feeling that I am feeling? This situation makes me feel angry or ashamed, stressed or blameful? WHY? There are usefull tools, like the Map of Consciousness created by Dr. David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. or the Emotional Scale by Esther Hicks, that can help you understand what you are feeling.

One of the best known and most beneficial form of emotional journaling is gratitude journaling. Gratitude journaling can take many forms and the easiest one is to list each night 5 things, people, situations that made you feel grateful. The feeling of gratefulness is sometimes hard to find, so you could do a variation where you list things that where good enough. The main idea is not to look like a saint, but to actually practice how to feel good, how to feel satisfied and thankful for all that is going right in your life. Feeling good doesn’t happen by itself and the more you practice intentionally feeling good the easier it will be to maintain your emotional stability during challenging times.

Another wellbeing, emotional journaling type is to write out how the major events in your day made you feel. This brings you closer to befriending your own feelings and recognizing patterns and causalities. You can create a track of %s where you measure how much of your day you think you felt good enough and how much was less than comfortable. There are emotional coloring pages for the more creative minds. (Notice that this way you are basically measuring how much of that 60,000 thoughts you were thinking during the day felt good to you. )

3. Creative, hobby, travel, scrapbook -journaling

The first two styles of journaling focused mostly on writing but why not combine writing with photos, images, stickers to create visually engaging journal pages. Creative journaling is a form of creative self-expression so you can even sketch or paint. In the category of creative journaling there are no limits of what to do or what not to do. make your journal feel your own by personalizing the covers adding art and stickers.

Scrapbooks are great examples on how to record important life events, ideas, emotions in an interesting way. Travel journals whit photos are another type of journal where you can really set your imagination free.

In the category of creative journaling it is important to mention the more and more popular vision journaling. Discovering and defining your vision is a creative process. Vision journal is based on the same idea as the vision boards. With the help of pictures a vision board sort of brings to life the life that you desire. The vision journal takes it one step further allowing to add more details. It is basically just a vision board that has more pages. The vision journal is the introductory step to goal setting but it is also an ongoing process.

Conclusions and suggestions to finding your journaling style

Credits and further readings : P1 freepik; Remez Sasson – How many thoughts does your mind think in an hour; Tlex Institute – Mind matters