Stress Management Journaling for Optimal Health

Health care professionals have long praised the benefits that keeping a journal has on one’s mental health. And it can certainly be proven that journaling or recording one’s life experiences is an aid to self-development and self-awareness, since it records information about one’s innermost feelings and ideas.

In fact, much has been written about the benefits of keeping a journal, including:

More than a diary, journaling allows us to clarify our thoughts, solve problems and connect with our deepest feelings.

• Journaling helps clarify goals and dreams
  
  
• Journaling helps quiet the mind; it provides you with the ability to focus on anything you want
  
  
• Journaling provides you with “ME” time, time alone with yourself and your thoughts
  
  
• Journaling provides a private arena to say and feel whatever you wish
  
  
• Journaling provides a written account of where you’ve come from and where you’re going
  
  
• Journaling helps with stress reduction – things don’t seem to bother you as much once they are written down
  
  
• Journaling helps provide a written account of your personal history, something to look back on
  
  
• Journaling can be done any way you choose, daily, randomly, when the spirit moves you, whenever; there are no rules, no musts
  
  
• Journaling helps you speak what’s in your mind and in your heart
  
  
• Journaling is a form a self-expression

Many use the excuse, “I don’t have the time to journal!” Try it for a few minutes a day for a month. See how it makes you feel. Many people admit that they don’t know how they lived without their journals after a month’s time. It becomes a valuable resource, a pleasurable pastime, and a trusted friend to process situations and maintain our emotional balance.

Click here to watch a video on how to journal.

Editor's note: A version of this blog, written by Perfect Patients, appears on Eaton Chiropractic's website.