11 Mar 2016

You’d be surprised how many benefits there are to keeping a journal in your day-to-day life. And no, I’m not talking about the sticker-covered journals with KEEP OUT scrawled on the front and carried by pre-pubescent girls everywhere. I’m talking about crisp, black Moleskines, plain notebooks, hidden blogs and public ones.

Journaling your brain-farts, fears, concerns and achievements are proven to be immensely beneficial for every aspect of your life.

1. Help clarify your thoughts

Get in touch with your inner self and write all the mish-mash that’s making you confused. I clarify my thoughts through stream of consciousness writing where I write pages and pages without thinking or caring about grammar and sentence structure. For example: ‘Man school sucked today but I really liked it when Miss told me I had improved and I really feel like a cheeseburger right now…’. You will be surprised at how much lighter you feel doing this for 15-30 minutes every day!

2. Perform better in exams

Science shows that anxious students are less apprehensive after journaling, which helps them perform with more confidence in the exam hall and therefore will help their grades. Hello, secret HSC weapon.

3. Quieter mind

As soon as you write it out – all of it – from all the nooks and crannies of your brain, you will feel quieter and lighter, as if you just took a yoga class and drank a kale shake.

 4. Improve your writing and thinking

Writing regularly helps you improve the way in which you construct sentences and formulate ideas. This will help your ability to communicate with people, and better your essay writing.

5. Stress release

Scribble all over the page, write about what’s stressing you. Write something angry and mean and nonsensical just because it’s all in your head and you’re feelings the feels – plus, it’s far more productive than blowing up at your best friends or parents.

6. Judgement-free

Sometimes you want to be really honest and open with someone and either you can’t find a person who will listen, or the person who will won’t take you seriously. That’s what your journal is there for.

7. Authenticity and honesty

It’s so easy to put up a front at school or the workplace and to manipulate your character for others. This is your safe place – the place for you to just do you.

8. Accountability

On Monday you wrote about trying to maintain a more healthy and active lifestyle. On Friday, after a large Quarter Pounder Meal, an Oreo McFlurry and a few Starburst lollies, you open your journal and there is it, staring you in the face like Michelle Bridges on The Biggest Loser. Be healthy. Be active.

9. Enhances creativity

It’s a place to write your ideas – your creative stories, your artworks, your musical compilations and the new bedside table you want to build. It’s there to store and to water those little brain seeds.

10. Write yourself into history

Imagine if your parents kept a journal; imagine diving into the thoughts and memories and anecdotes of great grandparents. You have the ability to leave a tangible mark in history!