The final pages of my diary are an epic shortened to my heightened events.
For many kids and teenagers, journals are often started to record any thoughts, feelings, or insights that they may have without the worry of being judged. Originating from 10th century Japan, journaling was practiced daily to record observations and to reflect on their personal lives. Over the years, journaling has reshaped to become a more composite and more practical source for cultivating ideas, understanding emotions, and ultimately, de-stressing. Whether you are 12 or 18, journaling still stands as a good medium for emotion and beliefs.
While some benefits of journaling are not as obvious, some are also fairly straightforward. For starters, writing helps process your emotions by prioritizing them and identifying obstructive mindsets in order to find a solution. Stress heightens your emotions to the point where it might be overwhelming, but writing lets you channel everything you're feeling into words and clears your mind. It reduces the intensity involved and keeps you aware in the process of self-therapy. Although it may take time, every letter that you write down is a step further down the road to understanding and accepting every part of who you are, whether it's good or bad. By better recognizing what makes you you, it's easier to remain confident through both success and failure.
Aside from the present, journaling can store any goals and aspirations that you hope to achieve, whether they are personal, academic, or other. A Harvard Business School study found that journaling daily can improve how well you perform academically by 25%. Not only is it good for writing down personal things, but it's also extremely helpful for setting objectives in your intellectual career.
The first step to getting started is to choose a journal. I prefer writing on paper, but some people may prefer digital instead. You can also style it to your liking by adding photos, stickers, decorative tape, drawings, and more. It's really up to you to decide how you want it to look.
At first, it's good to journal daily to get used to it, but once it becomes a habit, it's okay to write every other day or weekly. Contrary to many beliefs, I think that once it's muscle memory, like riding a bike, it's okay to incorporate it into a non-daily routine. A journal is there for when you feel like you need to write, not writing just to write. It also doesn't have to be set on one type of writing, it can be events, thoughts, feelings, nonsense - anything that makes you feel better. Reflecting on yourself is a very important part of journaling. Unless you feel that it should be often, it also doesn't have to be. For me, I always save the front and back side of my diary's last page to write a reflection on everything that has happened from the moment I started the diary. It serves as a closure to anything that I may have not gotten over or been able to come to terms with yet. Through doing this, my day-to-day life is easier to get through.
Even though it has many advantages, keeping a regular journal can be difficult for students because they have to balance their social life, schoolwork, and extracurricular activities. They become overwhelmed with their to-do list and although it may seem easy to allocate a few minutes to writing a journal entry, people often get consumed with their daily routine and forget about writing in their journal. As a result, the journal ends up sitting on the bookshelf, unused and collecting dust.
Another challenge lies in the loss of interest or motivation to continue with the habit. At first, starting a diary seems fascinating – those empty pages promise a field for creativity and self-expression. However, as time goes by, this feeling fades away and eventually turns into routine duty. Such periods make us abandon the process for days or weeks long. To avoid this, one should set certain goals connected with writing in their journals and try out new styles of writing to keep them engaged.
Additionally, some individuals may face difficulties associated with perfectionism when it comes to making entries into their personal journals. The fear of not being able to express something important or interesting becomes an insurmountable barrier preventing us from writing anything at all. It's important to remember that no one will judge you based on your journal entries and regardless of your writing quality, one needs to embrace their imperfections because every style of writing is unique. Instead of concentrating solely on the outcome of your writing, you should focus on the journey itself and how journaling has increased your overall well-being.
Journaling is a powerful tool to discover who you truly are, but from the first to the last, words were never meant to determine our lives. They were only there to place until you set your life on a different course. However and whatever you decide to write, it'll be just as important at any point in your story.
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