Looking for the best journaling techniques you can utilize for a better you? There are so many great techniques you can focus on, and each has its own pros and cons.
Journaling has been used for centuries by some of humanity’s greatest minds – and the journaling techniques you use depend on what you want to get out of your writing.
The main thing to remember when searching for the best technique is that what works for somebody else may not work for you. Experimenting with different techniques will help you to see which one works better.
Here are some of the most powerful and effective journaling techniques for personal growth:
Gratitude
Potentially the best technique you can use for personal growth is gratitude journaling. This involves writing down the things that you are grateful for each day.
Gratitude is an emotion that comes from appreciation. It’s an awareness, a thankfulness of the good things in your life, in you, and in the world around you. Gratitude is a powerful thing. It can turn any negative into a positive. It can change how you feel inside. It can bring hope and happiness. It can literally transform your life.
Studies have shown that keeping a daily gratitude journal can alter your mindset in just 21 days. It teaches you to be more positive about life and to be grateful for the things that you have.
It is common in life to only focus on the things we want and the things we don’t have. By switching to thinking about the positive things already in our lives, it helps to make us happier and content.
Dream
A dream journal may sound like an odd tool to boost personal growth. However, studies have shown that keeping a dream journal can help to improve your mindset.
Dreams are a fascinating thing. They are pulled from the creative center of the subconscious mind while you sleep. While some struggle to remember their dreams, others are able to recall many of the details. The stories: Frankenstein, Terminator, and Twilight came from dreams. Keeping a dream journal is a perfect way to document your dreams.
A clear link has been discovered between dreams and mental development. The emotions you experience in your dreams can relate to your mind’s ability to cope with and process information. It is thought that the skills we learn while we are awake, come out stronger in our dreams.
So, if you want to recognize emotions, traits, and fears that you may have, looking at your dreams can give you the clues you need to change. Start writing down your dreams as soon as you wake up. You can then go back over them later to see what they could mean.
Related: Learn How to Journal Every Day
Goals/Visions
Another popular journaling technique is to write about your goals and visions. Goals fuel your desire to reach your dreams. They give you the inspiration necessary to aim for the stars. Goals help you take control of your life. They help you focus on what’s most important.
A goal-setting journal is potentially one of the best ways to better yourself. You can use it to work on absolutely anything that you want to change. It could be you want to become more cultured by traveling more. Or maybe you want to lose weight and get generally healthier? Whatever part of yourself you are trying to improve; a goal or vision journal can prove invaluable.
With a goal journal, you basically write down your goals and then track your progress. With vision journals, you use them to write about your dream life. They also tend to be more visual. For example, you would add pictures of things you want to achieve in your dream life.
Affirmations
An affirmation is a process of affirming something. It’s asserting that something exists or is true. But it’s more than just acknowledging that it’s true, it’s stating it with confidence and believing it. Affirmations can be used to program or reprogram your mindset. When practiced deliberately and repeatedly it can strengthen the connection between your conscious and subconscious mind.
Some examples of positive affirmations are:
- I am confident.
- I am confident socially and enjoy meeting new people.
- I am naturally self-confident and comfortable with myself.
- I am happy driving my new car.
- I am enjoying my new home.
Affirmations are written in the present tense to give you the feeling that it’s already true. I find the easiest way to do this is by writing my affirmations down in a journal and spending some time thinking about and writing about my goals.
Journaling Techniques
As you can see, there are a few different types of journaling you can utilize. With all these powerful journaling techniques, you won’t likely return to your teenage journaling in quite the same way again.
