When you were a teenager, you may have kept a diary or journal hidden under your mattress. Many teenagers religiously manage sticker-covered notebooks with locks and keys in hopes their siblings, friends, or (God forbid) parents would never find them. Either way, you or some one you know has likely had some kind of a history with keeping a journal, either on paper or on your computer.
For many people, journaling on a piece of paper is the perfect place to face our fears and issues without the risk of punishment or embarrassment. Getting all those thoughts down to paper and out of your head can feel incredibly cathartic and liberating.
Unfortunately, most of us stop keeping a journal as we transition into adulthood. But we shouldn’t stop. We shouldn’t stop because regardless of age, there are immense benefits to journaling, especially when it comes to building our confidence. So, if you’ve stopped journaling, but you want or need a good nudge to starting journaling again, then let’s dive into these handful of benefits of journaling for confidence.
THE BENEFITS OF JOURNALING FOR CONFIDENCE
Note: We are not professional healthcare providers: So, if you struggle with mental health like depression, stress or anxiety disorders, keeping a journal is a useful idea, but it doesn’t substitute for professional medical care. So, if your mental health is severe, please seek the assistance of professional healthcare provider.
1. Positive Mental Health Impact
Let’s start with the most powerful, but the least obvious of the many benefits of journaling for confidence: it drastically improves your quality of life. Journaling lets you regain control over your emotions, which in turns give you much more stable mental health. Here are just some of the ways journaling helps keep depression or other mental health issues at bay:
- it lets you track your symptoms on a daily basis
- it improves mood
- it allows you to recognize patterns and triggers for your mental health issues
- promotes positive self-talk
- tackles negative thoughts and patterns through a more objective perspective
- drastically reduces stress levels
The highest impact on stress levels is boosted by the fact that journaling allows you to identify problems and patterns that repeat on a daily basis. You can use this knowledge to avoid or tackle these issues to reduce your stress levels. Journaling is, according to psychologists, one of the healthiest coping mechanisms for people suffering from high stress levels.
It’s also a great routine to introduce before your bed time. If you have issues with falling asleep due to intrusive thoughts that pop up in your head, journaling can significantly help you get some of those thoughts out of your head. You wouldn’t believe how easier and smaller a problem seems once you put it down to paper.
2. Benefits for Physical Health
It sounds crazy, but journaling can also improve your physical functions and make you healthier. According to a study that carried out a four-month period of expressive writing (journaling) showed that short periods of journaling several times per day lower blood pressure and can even improve liver functions.
Other studies have shown that journaling boosts the immune system, and can even help heal wounds faster. Plus, when you look better, and feel better about your health, you’ll exude a more positive aura, which will help you look and feel more confident (to yourself and others.)
3. Better Memory and Focus
Another one of the benefits of journaling is its impact on your memory and focus. When you write on a daily basis, it’s like a mental exercise for your focusing capacities. Journaling every day will keep you sharp and bright. You will be able to remember small events from your life much more easily.
Ultimately, you will learn how to remember the important things by separating them from the irrelevant.
It can also help you unlock the highest levels of creativity. Many first-time journalers are amazed at the expressive power they manage to exhibit when they find themselves in front of a blank piece of paper for the first time.
Related: Ways To Start Believing In Yourself
4. Journaling For Confidence
The majority of people suffer from low self-confidence. It’s a condition that has a seriously debilitating effect on everyday life. However, there’s a paradox here: no one can improve their quality of life if they do not believe they are capable of doing it.
This applies to all aspects of life. That is why writing a journal will allow you to increase your confidence. So, when you begin to increase your self-esteem, you will feel different in various areas of your life. You will probably feel that you have all the skills necessary to improve your quality of life.
On the other hand, if you do not respect yourself, then there is no reason to improve your quality of life. Here’s my tip. Go ahead, grab one of those cheap composition books, find a place where you’re at peace, and start.
Write where do you want to be and what are your goals. The next day, turn your journal to a new page and write how you feel in that exact moment. Spend the next few days thinking, feeling, and writing about the future and the present moment. Whenever you catch time, turn to a fresh page and continue writing. Over the next days, continue searching for your inner self-confidence, for the strength to do, believe, and speak. It doesn’t matter if it’s about small things or big things.
5. More Gratitude
What is important here is to include everything that had a positive impact on you. It is also a good time to remember those people who made you feel good. Write down a compliment that you get, or what positive action they had with you. You can also add things you have learned and enjoyed.
By writing down each of these experiences, you will be able to remember them and therefore enjoy them again in a certain sense. Without a doubt, these positive thoughts will improve your self-esteem. However, you can also write messages for yourself by writing about your best qualities. Each of the qualities you name will be strengthened as well because you will be recognizing them.
So, one of last benefits of journaling is that is also increases mindfulness and self-awareness. The act of writing things down allows you to be more aware of your life and behavior. Increasing the self-awareness of your emotions leads to more self-confidence.
Why? Because now you have a choice. You get to be in control of your actions instead of going through the motions without thinking about it. The result of all of this is a stronger self-confidence.
Conclusion
Journaling is good for you on several levels – the physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual. It allows you to tap into the best version of yourself and start building upwards from there.
When you keep a journal, you get to know yourself all over again, which will ultimately improve your confidence. These days, many of us form our opinions about ourselves depending on what the media tells us or how closet to us treat us.
However, it goes much deeper than that. In order to find deep and lasting self-love, you have to know yourself well. And there is no better way to do that than by keeping a journal. If you manage to keep one for several years, you will even be able to witness the progression of your character and all the events in your life from a bird’s eye view.
So, if you’re not currently journaling for confidence, go out and get yourself a journal and get started today. Your more confident future self will thank you for it.
Till you reach your aims,
STRIVE
PS – If you enjoyed this article on the benefits of journaling for confidence, then you’ll also enjoy these other helpful resources related to both journaling and confidence:
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