5 things I learned Journalling for 30 days!

I believe all of us have kept a journal at some point in our lives. Whether it was during our high school days when we were writing our hearts out about our crush; "Dear Diary, I saw my crush today." or in our rebellious teenage stages when it felt like it was “You/Me against the world”.

Journaling is a practice I have tried a lot of times in my life. But, all these years, I think I was more romantic about the idea of keeping a journal rather than really understanding why I was journaling.

Most of the times I’ve tried to keep a journal, I would start off feeling pumped and excited but a few weeks down the line, I either lose the desire to write or completely forget about it. Then, out of the blue, I make an entry after months and never write again after that. Well, not until I decide to journal again and start fresh all over. That's when I go on Amazon, buy a new Amazon Basics Journal, and start the process all over again. This vicious cycle has been going on for quite a long time now.

Recently, I thought to myself that maybe it would be a good idea if I looked at journaling as a way in which I could track my personal development. So, I decided to journal for 30 days to see what would happen.

Here are 5 things that I learned.

1. I was more conscious about my daily life.

The first thing I noticed while I was writing my journal was the way in which I was tracking how my day went. Unlike others, I usually write my journal in the evening. Writing the journal was a way of looking back on how the day had gone.

I always reflected back on if I was productive enough or if I could have had a better day. Then I'd often ask myself how my mental health was. I found this to be a good thing because as I wrote down my entry, I was always telling myself to make sure I improved on the things I was lacking behind in. I had this small goal of trying to "Make tomorrow a little bit better than today". It was like exercising mentally daily; you don’t see the results after day one but the gradual change in the long term was quite evident.

2. It helped me improve my writing.

I never knew this but journaling for 30 days made me realize the difference there is between writing on paper and writing on a digital gadget. Whenever I write on my laptop I tend to worry too much about making my writing as refined as possible. As a result, I'd have hit the backspace key a thousand times before I got a 500-word article. Journaling or writing on paper essentially meant to me that I was just focused on writing from the cusp of my thoughts rather than trying to make everything perfect. In essence, what I was writing was much more raw and unrefined.

Penning down my thoughts on paper made me realize that I was able to channel my creativity better when I didn't have to constantly hit backspace after every word. It helped me get more in touch with the careless writer in me that, I believe, can often be the better writer sometimes.

However, this is not to say that I've disregarded writing on my PC altogether because if that was the case, this article wouldn't be online. I just write down the first draft on paper before finalizing everything on my laptop.

3. A wonderful way to Declutter Mentally

I think in the world of information overload that we live in today; most of us become insensitive to what we see and what we hear. As a result, even when we come across information or content that we really love and are very valuable to us; since it is easily available, we let it pass trusting our brain to remember it while forgetting how distracted and forgetful our brains can be. So, this ends up in a lot of mental clutter where we cannot find the loose ends of the intertwining strings of our thoughts.

For me, journaling helped me be more concise about what I took in. I had my first phone when I was 13 and this played a major role in what I was mentally receiving. I have a very short attention span and I am very distracted naturally. Journaling helped because I was able to write down thoughts or ideas or inspirations that hit me at the most unexpected times. I would carry a small notepad as a part of the journal to do this.

And this was massive in helping me declutter mentally and get more mental clarity, which, I believe is essential if we want to be productive.

4. My vocabulary improved immensely

Auto-Correct is a bitch!

I don’t know how many of you struggle with this but for the better part of the last 10 years, auto-correct has been messing with my vocabulary. I have come to a point where I have become so dependent on autocorrect that I would type in some gibberish and wait for the predictions to come up. This took a massive toll on me and my ability to spell words.

As I wrote the journal, sometimes I would be stuck on some spellings. Because auto-correct had been helping me so long, I had forgotten how to actually spell some words. So, while journaling, with the help of my phone dictionary, I would make sure I was spelling every word right before writing it down in my journal.

For me, this was a massive help because it is easier to remember things once I have written them down on paper. Over the course of the thirty days, there was a lot of relearning and improvement involved in terms of my vocabulary.

5. Falling back in love with writing again.

I first started writing when I was a senior in High School. I wrote about life, about nature, about love, about the childhood I lost, and the sanity that I hadn't yet wanted to embrace. While most of my writings from those days were rubbish, they meant something to me. Writing helped me find a way in which I could vent out all my angst and frustrations; it was my therapy.

However, by the time I got into college, I had stopped writing for myself altogether. Most of the writings I did over that period were content writing or assignments for one website or the other. The writing was tedious, it stopped being fun.

Journaling helped me fall back in love with writing for myself again. The constant writing on paper brought back the times when I had first gotten into creative writing. I still work as a content writer today but my time is split between writing for clients and writing for myself.

If you are looking to start a journal again, I hope this helped and I wish you all the very best.

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