The power of journaling
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Writing daily for a few minutes can help you reduce stress, improve your overall well-being, and help you better understand your needs.
In today’s fast-paced and competitive professional landscape, finding ways to improve your well-being can be challenging, time-consuming and even too expensive. While networking, skill-building, and continuous learning remain crucial, an often-overlooked tool can significantly impact your career trajectory: journaling. A 2019 study found that expressive writing has been shown to improve emotional and physiological health. As per Harvard Business Review, writing can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression; improve our sleep and performance; bring greater focus and clarity; and even heal from trauma. Journaling has emerged as a potent instrument for enhancing productivity, self-awareness, and success in the professional realm.
With burnout and stress rates increasing, your overthinking and negative self-talk needs a way out. While coaching, mentoring and connecting with a friend or partner are ways to help people express their thoughts, many professionals also take advantage of the power of journaling. With practice, journaling can help process emotions and lead to a clear picture of what to do next, it is like a king of self-coaching. It allows you to see what you are thinking and feeling. It may look like a big ball of interwoven thoughts in your head. By writing about them, your thoughts can be “ironed” and displayed more organized for you to understand them.
3 benefits of journaling
1. Harnessing Clarity and Focus:
Journaling provides a structured platform to articulate your objectives, brainstorm strategies, and prioritize your ambitions. By putting pen to paper, you create a roadmap that guides your actions and prevents distractions from derailing your progress.
2. Strengthening Self-Reflection:
Journaling offers a dedicated space to contemplate your accomplishments, setbacks, and lessons learned. Regularly reviewing your entries can illuminate patterns in your decision-making, enabling you to refine your approach and make informed choices moving forward. Starting a gratitude journal is an easy way to reflect on your daily wins and go to bed with a positive mindset.
3. Cultivating Emotional Intelligence:
By expressing your thoughts and emotions in a private space, you become more attuned to your own feelings and reactions. This heightened awareness translates to improved communication, empathy, and conflict resolution—essential competencies for effective leadership and collaboration.
How to start journaling
There are no perfect ways for journaling: journaling is actually a tool to unwind your own way. Simply start and see what works best for you. Some recommendations are:
- Pick a time of the day when you can take some time off, with no distractions, to write down your thoughts. Early morning, noon or before going t bed can be good times to start.
- Choose a tool to journal that really makes it easy for you. It can be a small book you take everywhere, your phone, or a tablet. You can also get some support from journaling apps. Journey is an app equipped with multiple writing tools, such as templates, coach programs, and plugins to guide you through cultivating journaling habits. One of the app’s benefits is sending you journaling prompts proposed by expert coaches.
- Take around 15 minutes to express your thoughts and feelings with no judgment. Forget about writing correctly; just write and remove it from your system.
- Be flexible and self-compassionate. If you don’t feel like writing every day, that’s ok. Don’t expect to be perfect about it.
In pursuing performance and well-being, exploring unconventional avenues that can propel your career to new heights is essential. Journaling, often underestimated, has proven to be a transformative practice and an accessible tool with wide-ranging benefits. By harnessing its power, you can unlock doors to success that were previously hidden. Consider incorporating journaling into your routine and watch as your career takes on new dimensions of achievement and fulfillment.
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