Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

 

Starting a new journaling practice can help bring clarity, insight and healing in all areas of your life. But to get the most from your journaling practice, you need to be consistent.

If your goal is to journal every day, but you’re struggling with consistency, these tips can help you find your way toward making journaling part of your daily life.

Create a Routine to Build a Journaling Habit

Every habit starts with a routine, and every routine starts with structure. This is why if you’re trying to find clarity, set goals, or work on your personal growth through journaling, you first need to create some structure to put a journaling routine in place.

Add Journaling to Your Routine – It’s almost impossible to start something new and turn it into a habit if you don’t add it to your routine first. Being consistent with journaling is about setting yourself up for success, just like you would with any other new habit you want to incorporate into your lifestyle.

Choose a time of day when you feel a short journaling practice would fit. This can be stacked with other habits you do around the same time, such as journaling after reading a chapter in your book in the evening or in the morning while drinking your first cup of coffee. Consider when you might have 5-10 minutes in your routine to write in your journal.

Turn Journaling into a Habit – By scheduling your journaling practice into your daily routine, you’ll eventually create a journaling habit. When you become consistent with your daily journaling, before long, you’ll notice it has become habitual to where you don’t even have to think about it. With regular repetition, this tends to happen naturally, and just becomes a part of your lifestyle.

Find a Journaling Style and Method You Love

It’s important that you not only find the style or type of journaling you enjoy the most and that you feel will benefit you on this journey, but also the method of journaling.

Your journaling style is the type of journaling you practice. There are dozens of types of journaling, from a basic daily journal where most entries are stream of consciousness about your day and how you’re currently thinking and feeling, to specific journals meant for the benefits you receive, such as a gratitude journal or goal-setting journal.

You can choose one style or mix up what you decide to journal about each day. But it’s good to take a little time near the beginning of your journey to consider what you want to write about and what you’re hoping to get out of journaling. Once you find that perfect style, it will be easier for you to stay consistent.

Just as important is your method of journaling, which means either writing in a physical journal or notebook, or digital journaling. Digital journaling can also come in many forms, from using your smartphone to make notes in a digital file to using your computer and documents where you type your journal entries each day.

Journal Prompts Can Offer Inspiration

The final method for being more consistent with your daily journaling practice is to use journal prompts. You can either choose your own prompts to write down in your journal or notebook each day or get a prompted journal where the prompts are already printed on the page.

Either way, journal prompts offer a great way for you to do more introspection and practice self-awareness. Just writing your thoughts on a blank page isn’t easy for everyone. Some people would prefer answering a question or being given a topic to write about, as opposed to a brain dump or stream of consciousness writing.

You can find prompts for just about everything, from bringing up cherished memories and planning the future, to gaining more clarity and working on your personal growth.

When you journal more consistently, that’s when you’ll see the most progress and benefits from this practice. It allows you to gain more insight into who you are, what you want out of life and what struggles you might be facing that need to be addressed.

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One of the best resources we’ve found for establishing new habits is the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Clear’s book shows you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results. Check it out. It might be just what you need.

 

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Tags: accountability, habit, journaling, journaling benefits, writing