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Most of the time, we are all so caught up in the fast moving currents of our daily activities that we barely get to take a deep breath and think either about what is happening or about where we are heading to.
Responsibilities required to be accomplished, familial duties, delayed tasks, in addition to the unexpected problems that may be coming your way, all pile up to such heights that you might find it difficult to spend leisure time. But this is exactly what you need in order to face all these problems and manage them properly: you time.
If you do consider it necessary to make more time for yourself, one suggestion about what you can do is the following: journaling.
What is journaling?
Journaling is the practice and habit of recording and documenting life events, emotions, thoughts or impressions, it is an immersion in your inner world, bringing light to your inner most wishes, desires, fears, thoughts and emotions.
The difference between a journal and a diary (the type you might have kept during adolescence) is that you go deeper into the issue and gain a more valuable understanding of yourself, which can be translated into future actions for improvement.
Journaling can take different forms, all supporting you to raise your self-awareness and self-leadership. The list provided below reveals the diversity of ways in which you can journal:
- Write down freely, in a stream of consciousness, what you feel, think, what you have experienced during the day, without censuring or pausing to analyse;
- Choose a topic or a theme for each day / week, on which you focus on in order to direct your journaling entries;
- Write down the answers to concrete self-reflection questions, journaling prompts or your own questions that you want to find an answer to;
- Develop a pre-set journaling structure that you follow each day, in order to be able to make comparisons and identify trends;
- Draw or doodle, in case words are not enough to express and reveal your internal world or if you have an inclination of expressing yourself in such a manner;
- Use mixed media: images, text, shapes and texture to create a collage in order to journal in a more visual way what you are experiencing or going through.
Why would you want to start journaling?
You might have tried journaling before and stopped after a while or you never got to it even though it was on your wish list for a long time. Either way, I want to provide you with sufficient reasons in order to build up the intrinsic motivation to start the effective practice of journaling.
- Journaling supports your personal growth and development
Through self-reflection, you increase your self-awareness, get a deeper understanding and a lot more clarity on:
- Who you are as a person and the different roles you have in your life;
- What are your values, what’s important to you and what you stand for;
- What are your needs and what are the needs of the ones around you;
- What are your dreams and aspirations, what are your long term goals and your vision is for your life;
Having this information settled, you can start creating action plans and implementing productive habits in order to get to where you want to be.
- Journaling provides the space to manage your internal emotional world
Most of the interactions that we have with the ones around us or the activities in which we engage on, offer us a range of feelings amidst a carousel of emotions throughout the day. By journaling you can:
- Clearly identify your feelings and emotions and assess your emotional awareness towards the persons in your life as well;
- Access a deeper understanding of your emotions and get to their root cause, identify which was their trigger;
- Get to know what situations or people you need to avoid or confront, in order to manage your negative emotions;
- Realise what are the activities or the persons in your life that fill you with good energy and positive emotions.
This ultimately allows you to have a more balanced emotional life, to manage your emotions and relationships more effectively and increase your overall happiness level.
- Journaling is the platform for problem solving and solution generation
By recording the problems you face during the day, either at work or at home you can:
- Have a clearer idea on your perspective on the problem you are facing and the perspective of the other persons involved in the same situation;
- By writing down the details of a certain problem or conflict, you vent out so that afterwards you have a clear mind to rationally analyse what has happened and what are the concrete facts;
- You have the chance to understand what is the cause of the problems you are facing or the conflicts you are dealing with (internal and external);
- While you write about a certain problem, certain ideas and solutions tend to surface. After you have this journaling habit put in practice for long enough, it will be in your nature to think and act in terms of solutions and not get stuck on the problem.
Through the act of writing, you are accessing your left part of the brain, which is analytical and rational. While your left brain is rummaging on the situation, you give space to your right part of the brain to create and come up with solutions and use your intuition to see the underlining situation.
These are the main reasons for which I have been using journaling these days, but this practice has an infinite potential and you can use it to serve your current situation and needs.
It’s important to clarify why you want to start journaling and what you want to get out of it. The rest will come naturally.
What are the health benefits of journaling?
In case the mentioned reasons are not strong enough for you, and you need an extra boost in order to decide on starting this practice, I am going to address this also from a health point of view.
Journaling or writing about stressful experiences is accounted for having an easier closure, and acceptance of that specific situation, thus decreasing the impact these stressors have on your physical health and well-being.
Patients facing an illness or recovering from a traumatic experience find it comforting to write about what they are going through and pour down on paper what they are feeling. This helps them calm down and get energy to go through with it.
Persons who have undergone a personal loss find solace and peace in writing about the entire experience. It is a self-guide for them to face and embrace their grief and pain.
More and more persons turn to journaling after going through a divorce or a painful breakup. Their journey of understanding what has happened, accepting it as it is and rediscovering themselves is facilitated by writing about it.
James Pennebaker, a professor at The University of Texas, Austin in the Department of Psychology has published several books on the benefits and the healing process of writing such as “Opening Up” and “Writing to Heal.
He states that writing and journaling strengthens the immune cells called T-lymphocytes which, ultimately, increase your immune system. You can find more details about what he claims on The University of Texas’ website.
Another study conducted by Joshua M. Smyth, PhD; Arthur A. Stone, PhD on patients suffering from asthma and rheumatic arthritis found that writing about their stressing experiences improved their health situation.
The study, published in Journal of the American Medical Association, had the following results: 4 months after the treatment, asthma patients in the experimental group showed improvements in lung function, whereas control group patients showed no change. Rheumatoid arthritis patients in the experimental group showed improvements in overall disease activity, whereas control group patients did not change.
As a conclusion, journaling is a health promoter and offers you a non-expensive way to gain better health.
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How you start your day counts
Whether you are a freelancer, a manager, working for a corporation or for an NGO, a student, in retirement or having any sort of occupation, truth is, we all want to have productive days. We want to take advantage of our time, make the best out of it and get the results we want, so that by the end of the day we feel satisfied with how we chose to spend our time, or better yet, how we chose to invest it.
This all sounds good, inspiring, motivational and in itself it should be a good enough reason to actually do what we set out to achieve and accomplish in a given day. But as you know, sometimes life happens 🙂 There are always going to be days in which we wake up and something happens and kind of ruins our day. We blame Murphy’s law, the weather, our luck, the horoscope and what not.
But there are also days in which we wake up and our loved ones surprises us with breakfast in bed, or we get a phone call with some amazing news, or we simply wake up from an amazing dream in which are superheroes and fly.
No matter if our days are bad ones or good ones, it is certain that the way in which we start our day influences the mood and thus our productivity for the remainder of our day. So for me this is a great opportunity. Why don’t I choose the way I start my day so that I impact the way the rest of the day will look like?
First thing in the morning
So what I am suggesting is that you find that habit which you can implement first thing in the morning so that you kick start our day, and get that proactive, positive and ambitious state of mind we all need to be productive.
In order to choose the right habit, I have compiled a short list of criteria you need to take into consideration for this very specific habit so that it completely serves our purpose.
- First things first – The activity that you choose should be the very first thing you do, every single morning when you wake up. You just open your eyes and know that you are going to do that one thing you set out to do, don’t let anything get in your way;
- Easy as a pie – you want to choose a habit that requires a small amount of effort to put in practice, so that you will find no excuses not do it. It should be something you already know how to do, so you do not get stuck into spending your time in finding out how to implement it. Choosing something hard and complex will definitely defeat the purpose here;
- In no time – Pick something you can do in no more than 5 minutes, anything that requires more time than this, will turn on your mind’s radar and you will most likely wake up the well-known self-sabotaging monster: procrastination. Something you can achieve in a jiffy is what we are aiming for here;
- Be proud – choose something that will make you feel proud, even if it is a small thing, something that is worth your time and brings you closer to that version of yourself you want to see every single day;
- The prize ahead – when you have finished doing this, give yourself a small reward, like a self-pat on the shoulder, or congratulate yourself, or smile, or even do your very own touch down dance. Something small, positive but powerful enough to reinforce in your mind the idea that you are on the right track.
Make your bed
If you are lacking ideas and need some inspiration regarding this habit, look no further, because I have something that fits all the criteria mentioned above and embodies what this kick starter habit is all about: start your day off by making your bed! If you are already doing this, then you are definitely already on the winning side 😛
My question for a long time, was, why should I make my bed when anyway, come evening, I will undo it just the same and crash down for a well-deserved sleep. But the simple act of doing your bed organizes your space, it gives you a sense of accomplishment, by ticking off a task before beginning your day and send off the message to your brain that you mean real business!
Start off, every single morning by making your bed, it is such a simple trick yet you will soon start reaping the benefits. Start your day off with a productive mindset!
If you need extra motivation for making your bed, watch this awesome 2 minutes video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKZRFDCbGTA
https://pixabay.com/en/sheep-beautiful-day-to-go-joy-1644144/
https://pixabay.com/en/gesture-thumbs-up-good-fingers-772977/
https://pixabay.com/en/pillows-bed-bedding-bedroom-white-1031079/
artesania de felicidad 