What Even is Journalling?

Over the weekend, a friend asked me, "What even is journaling?" It felt a bit like explaining the birds and the bees to a curious kid—where do you even begin?

Journalling is one tool in your toolkit that you take on this journey called life.

• It's a problem-solving tool, helping you to become your guide and build upon your inner strength.

• It's a stress management tool.

• A self-awareness tool, helping you find awareness of what's going on in your life so you can spot patterns and make positive changes.

• It's a self-healing tool that provides ongoing support, especially around life’s challenging events.

Asking for help is essential; however, what is equally important is being able to sit and ask ourselves. This is what journalling gives us—a safe space where we can be completely honest and explore ourselves, what we need, and the direction to move in.

We can use the practice of journaling in different ways. For example, we use the practice of mind dumping (the first journaling technique you'll learn in the journal) to quieten a busy mind and to get physical space from our thoughts so we can gain new perspectives, see solutions, and explore new areas. It's like hitting the reset button on a cluttered mind.

Try this now: place your hand right up close to your eyes—it becomes quite dark, and it’s hard to know what the object right in front of your face is. Now slowly move your hand away—as your hand moves further and further away, the focus changes, and it’s much more obvious and clear what that object is—your hand. It’s the same with our thoughts; when we can create some space between us and our thoughts, we gain a new perspective, and we start to see them more clearly for what they are. With some distance and awareness, you can begin to loosen the grip they have over your mental well-being, find new solutions, or generate new ideas. This is what we do when we practise mind dumping.

We can also use journalling to gain new information. We can tap into the subconscious mind. This one's a bit harder to explain, as it's a felt process. Our subconscious mind influences us without us being consciously aware of it; it's also a place where pre verbal memory is often buried. Journalling allows us to tap into our subconscious, where a wealth of insights live. The dynamic process of journalling moves this information up from the subconscious into preconscious and then into our conscious mind, where we can know it and, from that place, change and move in a more positive direction.

Journalling can also help us create new neural pathways, ultimately rewiring our brains to be happier and more positive. This is the third journaling technique you learn in the journal—gratitude journaling.

Journalling like the birds and the bees is probably best to be explored yourself than me explaining it. It's more than just putting pen to paper; it's a transformative journey (I'm talking about journalling) that equips us with the tools to navigate the complexities of life.