What Is Journaling? How to Start a Journal & Ideas for What to Write in It

Journaling is a popular trend that started … several hundred years ago. The habit of writing down our thoughts, feeling, and experiences is an old and persistent one, but for good reason: Journaling has many benefits for emotional and mental health.

Read on to understand how journaling can benefit you, how to start a journal, and what journaling ideas can help you get the most out of the exercise.

What journaling is

Journaling is the practice of regularly writing down your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It allows you to reflect on your daily life, emotions, and goals, and better understand your inner and external worlds. A journal can be written by hand or typed on a device like a computer or phone. Journaling can be a daily activity, or a less regular, but consistent exercise.

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How journaling benefits us

Studies show that journaling benefits your mental health significantly by reducing stress, managing anxiety symptoms like overthinking, coping with depression symptoms like negative thought patterns, and more. By writing about your thoughts and feelings, you enhance emotional processing and achieve a stronger sense of well-being.

These benefits are especially true for keeping a handwritten journal. Journaling by hand activates more parts of the brain, than journaling by typing or texting, and over time, strengthens the connections and coordination between these parts. Since writing by hand is less common today than ever before, this can mean that the neural pathways developed from journaling become specialised for processing thoughts and emotions; this further strengthens your resilience and ability to cope with challenging thoughts and emotions.

Overall, the advantages of journaling include:

• less stress and worry
• better mood
• greater self-awareness
• more efficient problem-solving
• enhanced creativity

In simpler terms, journaling benefits you like this: Imagine your mind as a cluttered room. When things are messy and overflowing, it’s difficult to focus or relax. Journaling is a mental decluttering tool. By putting your thoughts and feelings down on paper, you can start to make sense of them, organise them, prioritise them, let go of unhealthy or unhelpful thoughts and emotions, and spend more time with the healthy and helpful ones.

How to start a journal

Starting a journal might seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be.

To start a journal effectively, set up a consistent routine. For some, journaling may be a daily exercise; for others, a weekly or as-needed activity. Decide what is realistic and most helpful to you. If you’re unsure what’s realistic and most helpful, start small – consider setting a goal of journaling weekly. You can always increase your frequency, if you find the activity helpful.

It is also helpful to establish a consistent time and place. For instance, many people who struggle with stress, anxiety, worry, overthinking, ruminative thoughts, or racing thoughts find journaling right before bedtime helpful. The pause that journaling allows you to take, and the expression of the thoughts and emotions burdening your mind, can allow for better and easier sleep.

Finally, when you start writing a journal, keep one thing in mind: how you write does not matter. For journaling, it doesn’t matter if you spell correctly, use correct grammar, or wax lyrically. It doesn’t matter if there is a clear structure to your entry, or whether your writing feels like random babbling or stream of consciousness.

Journaling means writing down your thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a way that helps you reflect, spot patterns, and ease your mind – not in a way that wins any essay prizes. Your journal is for you, not anyone else.

What to write in a journal

While journal writing doesn’t require instructions, many people prefer guidance on what to write in a journal. Several techniques can guide you here:

• Gratitude journaling. Gratitude journaling involves writing about things that you are thankful for. This technique can help you focus on the positive aspects of your life, which can help improve your mood by countering depressive thoughts and low feelings.
• Daily logging: Keeping a daily log means recording the activities, thoughts, and emotions you experience each day. This kind of journaling can be helpful in identifying patterns and triggers and in increasing self-awareness.
• Goal setting: Writing down your goals and the steps you need to take to achieve them can make you more accountable and more likely to take action. It can also be beneficial in helping you celebrate small successes, another practice that benefits mental health.
• Free writing: Free writing involves writing your thoughts and feelings freely, without any specific structure, technique, or prompt in mind. It can ease worries and other negative thoughts, improve mood, aid problem-solving, and enhance creativity.

Journaling ideas to get started

If you’re still unsure what to write about, these journaling ideas, also known as journaling prompts, are a good way to start. Journaling ideas often come in the form of a question or statement aimed at helping you reflect on experiences, beliefs, and more.

Try these journaling ideas to get started:

• What are three things you are grateful for today?
• Describe a recent challenge and how you dealt with it.
• Write about a time you felt truly happy.
• Write about a time you overcame a fear.
• Describe your support system and how they help you.
• What activities make you feel most fulfilled?
• What are the qualities you like most about yourself?
• What made you laugh today and why?

Journaling for mental health

While journaling benefits mental health significantly, it is only one tool that works best when used alongside others. Journaling cannot replace therapy (whether self-therapy or one-on-one sessions).

Instead, journaling works best as a complement to therapy, by providing a space to process thoughts and emotions and spot patterns that can then be explored more deeply in therapy with the support of a trained therapist.

Therapy can also help you expand your toolkit of strategies and exercises to manage your struggles beyond just journaling. For mental health struggles that are disrupting your relationships or day-to-day capability and comfort, seeking help from a licensed therapist is crucial.

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SOURCES:

• DiMenichi BC, Ceceli AO, Bhanji JP and Tricomi E (2019) Effects of Expressive Writing on Neural Processing During Learning. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 13:389.
• Memarian N, Torre JB, Haltom KE, Stanton AL, Lieberman MD. Neural activity during affect labeling predicts expressive writing effects on well-being: GLM and SVM approaches. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2017 Sep 1;12(9):1437-1447.
• Smyth JM. Written emotional expression: effect sizes, outcome types, and moderating variables. J Consult Clin Psychol. 1998 Feb;66(1):174-84.
• Sohal M, Singh P, Dhillon BS, Gill HS. Efficacy of journaling in the management of mental illness: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Fam Med Community Health. 2022 Mar;10(1):e001154.
• Van der Weel FRR, Van der Meer ALH. Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom. Front Psychol. 2024 Jan 26;14:1219945.