Why Everyone Should Keep a Journal

I remember starting to journal when I was about eleven or twelve years old. It quickly became a habit that I cultivated almost daily, until I had collected a pile of tattered composition books full of diary entries, memories and pretty much all my feelings (as I was a pre-teen, there were a lot of them ;).

But now that I’m older, I don’t journal as much as I did back then. It's something I’m trying to get back into though, because I remember how much it used to help me and how much I used to love it.

There are so many benefits to keeping a journal, which is why I think everyone should do it. Today I want to share some of my favorite reasons for journaling:

It Helps You Keep Memories

I think one of the neatest things about social media and our ever present smartphones is how easy they've made it for us to photograph moments. But while it's true that a picture is worth a thousand words, there are some things that even a picture can't fully convey. Journaling allows you to remember more than what you did on a certain day. It provides a way to look over how a memory made you feel. I love going back through my mission trip journals and reliving some of the moments I captured in photos. It makes the memory that much more alive and special. It Helps You Develop Your Writing I will always insist that part of what's made writing such a big part of my life is that I started doing it when I was young, filling up notebooks underneath my bed just for my sake. Journaling allowed me to develop a writing voice. And since blogging is very similar to the art of journaling, I believe it's a big reason why blogging comes naturally to me. Do you want to become a more eloquent blogger? Journal. The more often, the better.

It Can be a Creative Exercise

The cool thing about keeping a journal is that you can do it however you want to. I know some people who go beyond just writing about their day. They include photos, cut-outs, even the occasional short story or poem. And I say go for that if you're up for it! I've dabbled a bit in creative journaling over the past few months and it's made the experience even more awesome than it usually is. It's Private and Therapeutic As much as I love sharing my personal thoughts on this blog, there are some things that need to be kept just for me. That's the way it should be, I believe. There are some things that we need to work on privately, just between us and God, before we share them with the world. Journaling was always a source of that for me. It was amazing how I could start off an entry feeling stressed and worried about everything going on in my mind, but by the time I'd finished writing, I suddenly had a lot more clarity and peace about the situation. There's something powerful about writing our feelings down. It forces us to take our time to think through things and contemplate the root of our anxieties.

If you keep a journal, what benefits have you gotten out of it?

#life #2016