What To Write In Your Journal?

Since my teenage years I always wanted to journal. When I finally put pen to paper, I did around one entry every two weeks. Months would go by without a single entry. You see, I’m a guy, and the feeling of curling up in bed writing, ‘dear diary’ didn’t make me comfortable. But when I started getting into it my life changed.

In this entry, I will show you the priceless benefits of journaling. I will also show you the dos and don'ts of making your journaling work for you.

Let’s start with the don’ts. Don’t go out and buy a fancy pen or a fancy journal. This is not simply a matter of personal preference. If you go out, and buy a ten-dollar journal you will be hampering yourself, and I’ll tell you why. Fancy fountain pens and fancy journals encourage fancy writing, which is not the purpose of journaling. Journaling is about organizing and recognizing your thoughts and feelings. It is also about learning how to control your thoughts and emotions. The work you do with your journal is more methodical than creative. Phonetics, poetry, spelling and grammar are all useless when it comes to this type of work.

The second don’t is writing when you feel like writing. When I first started writing in my journal, I would wait for something catastrophic or euphoric to happen before I put pen to paper. Remember when you journal the goal is to grow as a person. And you can’t grow in anything if you only measure progress periodically. To better understand and control your emotions it is a must that you write in your journal daily.

Now it’s time for the dos. Because you need to write everyday in your journal, you’ll first need to schedule a time to write. Don’t be overly ambitions with this at the beginning. I suggest that you allocate 15 minutes a day during your lunch break, which is how I got started.

Now that you have a time allotted for your journal work, you will now need to get your supplies. You’ll need a comfortable pen that writes well. I use the Pilot G2 Fine/0.7mm. These pens are very common, and you could get them at your local pharmacy. I buy them 16 at a time from Amazon. The next things you will need are the journals themselves. Again, you’ll need something comfortable and simple—either legal pads or marble notebooks. I use the marble notebooks myself—the cheaper the better.

There you have it. To get started, all you need is a G2 pen, a cheap notebook and fifteen minutes of your time. This is an exercise that is as easy and convenient to do as push-ups or crunches. The only difference is this workout will make you mentally fit. It will reduce your anxiety, make you a happier person, help you with your interpersonal relationships and it will also help you achieve your goals.

So you have your time, place, pen and notebook. What now? I suggest you start with the most simple and most powerful of the exercises, which is a gratitude journal. You don’t want to mix your gratitude journal with your affirmations journal or your dream journal, so make sure and have a specific journal just for your gratitude journaling. The entry for this journal is simple. Just list ten things you’re grateful for. It sounds too simple to be effective. But doing this is more effective than any happy pill out there on the market.

I must admit, when you first start this it will feel awkward, and the benefits are not immediately apparent. When I made my first entry, I struggled to come up with ten things. But I stuck with it. Needing to put anything on paper, I would write, ‘I’m grateful for my shoes’ and ‘I’m grateful for the slice of pizza I ate’. But as I practiced, I developed the ability to come up with my list quickly. Not only that, I also recognized the things that kept popping up on my list. And I would put them in my journal day after day. If you had asked me what I was grateful for before I started this journal I would have struggled to answer you. Now if you were to ask what I’m grateful for, I wouldn’t hesitate to say, ‘my loving family, my life, God, the country I live in, my freedom, my childhood…’ This is what the gratitude journal will do for you. It will remind you of all the things in this world you should be grateful for and that will go a long way in making you a happier person.

Once you’re regularly writing entries in your gratitude journal, and you feel like you’re up to expanding your mental exercises, I suggest you move onto a general journal. Think of your general journal as your personal psychologist or psychiatrist who can’t prescribe you meds or have you committed. When you put in an entry in your general journal just write whatever you feel, and imagine your journal replying with a simple ‘uh ha’ and ‘how did that make you feel?' The only thing you have to remember when writing in this journal is that your journal can’t have you committed to the psych ward in a hospital, so say whatever you wish. Just make sure the snoopy person in your life doesn't get a hold of it.   

If you’re up for it, another journal you should have is an affirmation journal. The key to affirmations is understanding that it does not give you permission to be grandiose. Writing, I’m the greatest tennis player God ever created, is actually counter productive. Instead, write, I am tennis player who continually gets better with practice or I’ll achieve my goal of becoming a great tennis player by practicing for three hours everyday. If you tell yourself that every morning you will see a difference in your game by the end of the year.

Another thing you need to remember with affirmations is not to have too long of a list. Narrow it down. It is difficult to keep track of fifty different affirmations, even if you’re writing them everyday. Instead keep your list low—no more than three.

If you’re still up for more journaling here is another one for you. Keep a Work Performance journal. The title of this blog is winsabovereplacement, which is a baseball term for the additional value do you provide compared to a generic performer. So if you’re an assistant, what value will your boss lose if she was to replace you with a replacement assistant. For some people their boss or business will gain value if they were to be replaced. But if you had a Work Performance Journal this will definitely not be the case. For your Work Performance journal simply start with this question, ‘what are three things I need to do to be a better tennis player/golfer/father/wife/ mother/whatever? You then list three things you think you need to do to improve your performance. You should answer this question with the same three answers day after day with some flexibility. For example you could write, ‘wake up at 4am every morning’, but you may want to replace that with ‘work on your backhand for an extra fifteen minutes after practice’. If that is the case then feel free to do so.

After you write your list of the three things you need to do to be better at your job or career, you will then write a list of positives (+) and deltas (/\) at the end of your workday. This is something I picked up from my boss. Positives are the things you did well, and the deltas are the things you should change. By doing these exercises before and after your workday you will become irreplaceable at your job at the end of six months. And that can be for anything, whether you are trying to be a better boss, employee, spouse or parent.

My final journal recommendation is to have a dream journal. I am the least consistent with this journal—writing about one entry a week—but I do know people who swear by it. If this is something you think you will like, then by all means.

The benefits of journaling are just as important as reading. It is a phenomenal mental exercise. It will lead to self-discovery. It will help you organize your thoughts and emotions. And most importantly it will give you a level of control over your feelings. If you are interested in growing as a person then journaling is a must.