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You might not keep a journal, but it can help with many areas of your life, including practicing self-care. Anyone who wants to focus on bettering their lives, improving their thoughts, and gaining control of their feelings should begin to journal. It’s not only a good habit that helps you get to know yourself, it’s also a habit that helps you with your self-care. Did you know self-care is vital to the success you have in life no matter how you define success in your life? If you’re not familiar with journaling, perhaps learning how using your journal for self-care will help you change the way you live and think.
Write What You Feel
The thing about a journal is you’re meant to keep it private. It’s not for anyone else. You might take great care in posting status updates on the internet or composing emails to your mother, but you’re not required to be careful what you say when you journal. You’re allowed to write down anything you feel, and that’s what you should do. Don’t worry about your handwriting, your incomplete sentences, or even your spelling.
Write what you feel, and use that to learn about yourself. You can look back in your journal to read how you really felt, but also to learn about yourself based on the appearance of your handwriting, the jumbled thoughts, and so much more. You get to observe your own feelings later, which can help you understand yourself far better.
Empty Your Mind
Journaling is amazing when you have so much in your mind you can’t focus on anything else. When you feel overwhelmed and unhappy, go ahead and focus on the things that matter the most to you by writing down what’s in your mind and getting it out. All the little things that bothered you are now out of your mind and on a piece of paper, and you feel as if you worked through things. Now your mind is clear to focus on what matters.
Include Gratitude
Each day, try to write down at least three things you’re grateful for. It can be something as big as being grateful for the sun rising. It can be as small as being grateful you had an extra pair of pants in the car for your little one after he had a little accident. It can be nothing that seems significant at all. Maybe you’re just grateful for coffee because it puts you in a good mood. Whatever it is, write it down.
When you can see the things you’re grateful for on a tangible list, you’re able to focus on being very happy for those things. You’re able to focus on what they mean to you, and you get to remind yourself how much you have to be thankful for any time you re-read your journal.
Put Your Dreams to Paper
The problem with dreams is that they can come true, and there is nothing preventing you from making them happen but you. You let people tell you your dreams are too big, too silly, too unattainable. Do you think Brad Pitt woke up as a child and say he was going to be a superstar and everyone told him he was? That’s probably not true. He had a dream, and he went for it.
If you put your dreams to paper, they seem more realistic and even more attainable. Perhaps you want to do something amazing like start your own business. Write it down. Write down your dreams. When you see them on paper, they seem more realistic. Perhaps your attempt at self-care is going to provide you with the bravery you need to get out there and make your dreams come true.
Practice 5-Minute Journaling
This is a significant form of stress relief. The days are long, and they are filled with moments that cause you stress. Everything causes stress if you allow it, but spending five minutes at the end of each day writing in your journal. Write whatever comes to mind. Write the alphabet. Write your name. Doodle things that come to mind. This is your way of relieving your stress by putting pen to paper or your fingers to your keyboard. Whatever it takes to ease your stress in five minutes is what you do.
The world is filled with chaos, but there’s no reason your mind needs to be filled with chaos. Write it down. Whatever you’re thinking of, feeling, or experiencing in life is worth being put on a piece of paper. It’s self-care that doesn’t feel like much work, but it provides satisfaction you might not imagine possible.
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