When you’re always busy with work and communicating with people, silence sounds like a dream. The absence of noise is comforting in its rarity, and a few minutes to spend with yourself can be the greatest form of self-care. But what do you do with that rare moment you have nothing else to worry about?
Turn to journaling if you want to be productive while treating yourself to much-needed self-care. Here’s why you should do it:
You’re Stretching Your Creativity
Journaling can be as easy as using journaling pens to write what happened on your day or it can be more creative by scribbling or adding photos that summarize your thoughts. The tools you have at your disposal can improve your creativity and teach you to be innovative in how you do things.
You can turn a blank canvas into a work of art, and while doing it, you’re unloading all the negative thoughts you had for that day. At the end of your journaling session, you’ll feel calmer but surprisingly more inspired to do more for your job or personal life. When you’ve created something beautiful and you feel proud of it, you’ll want to create more.
You’re Tapping into Your Emotions
Sometimes, you don’t want to talk about your overwhelming feelings. Bottling them up doesn’t make them go away. In fact, they might become a problem on another day because they’ve been building up inside you. Rather than being a slave to your emotions, let them out through journaling so that you’ll come out of it feeling stronger. You may find yourself crying when you write down what happened, but after you’ve let it out, think back to how you wanted things to play out so you can do better next time.
You’re Keeping Track of Your Moods
Journaling is a way to chronicle your days, but it can do more than that. It can also help you keep track of your moods. Each post can go with a mood meter or you may use a different pen to signify your general mood for that day.
At the end of the month, look back at what your overall mood was and think of what caused them. You may be surprised at the patterns you discover. More importantly, knowing what triggers mood swings will help you avoid them. There are stressful situations you don’t have to subject yourself to, but you can’t figure out what they are if you don’t notice the patterns.
You’re Getting to Know Yourself
You may have this idea of who you want to be, but you’re always frustrated because things don’t seem to go the way you anticipate. You’ll be more self-aware if you have a journal of things that happened to you and how you reacted to them.
The person that you are now — the real you — may need more work to be the person you want to be. To get started on self-improvement, you’ll have to identify your weak spots and the habits you need to change. You may not even be aware of some habits you’re prone to doing, such as ignoring problems or reacting defensively to constructive criticism.
Spas, massages, and a night in all sound like fun forms of self-care. But if you really want to help yourself, know which areas need improvement.
