Journaling Your Journey | Shannan With an A

I used to be really good at keeping a Journal. I’d write my dreams every morning, and any time I was having a lot of feelings, I’d write those down too. It was great because I was journaling my journey to becoming the better me with The Abundant Life. But, over the past couple of years, I’ve fallen out of the habit. Getting married, I think, has played into this a little. Now I have someone to talk to about everything I wrote in my journal. In a way, my husband has become my living journal, which is and isn’t good. So I’m starting the process of getting back to journaling.

I realized part of my problem was finding the right system and time. I always have my phone with me, and I just got a tablet. Both sync and have pens, so all notes go into my note app. Also, I decided to switch up my morning routine. I used to work on the blog and shop in the mornings, but it wasn’t as productive as I wanted it to be, especially when there were kids in the house. So instead, I’m going to do my journaling, writing, devotional meditation time, which is probably what I should have been doing all along.

So if you want to make journaling a part of your everyday rhythm, figure out how, where, and when you’re going to do it, then start. You don’t have to do pages upon pages every day. You could even make some lists if writing in prose doesn’t sound fun. But journaling has significant benefits. Some of them, according to web MD, are:

Reducing Anxiety
Helps with brooding
Creates Awareness
Regulates Emotions

I’ve also found it creates clarity by just getting the clutter and haze out of your head and somewhere you can make sense of it. It prevents your thoughts from being a broken record, which plays a little into the brooding benefit. Not to mention the assurance it can give to look back at where you were and compare it to where you are now.

In any case, I recommend journaling. And if you want to try journaling, here are my daily starter questions to help me not stare at a blank screen for the whole time, unsure of where to start.