How to use a daily journal to gain clarity and calm your mind
As part of your mission to create a calmer life writing in a daily journal is a great way to quieten the chatter in your head. It can also act as a healing process, clarifying what’s occurring beneath the surface and helping you to identify concerns and challenges.
Research shows that keeping a daily journal can reduce stress, increase feelings of self-esteem and help us deal better with traumatic experiences.
More surprisingly, it can also benefit our physical experience: psychologist James Pennebaker of the University of Texas has studied writing and immunity, and found that keeping a journal strengthened immune cells.
Writing can be a healing end to a hectic day, a great way of clearing the mind in anticipation of the new day to come.
Your journal will become a wonderful thing to have in future years too.
When we think now of the great diarists of the past from Samuel Pepys to Virginia Woolf, Alan Bennett to Tony Benn, what makes their writing so compelling is its immediacy.
When we read it, we are instantly transported back to the time and place they were writing about.
This is something you can treasure about your own writing.
To get started, we suggest you answer 3 key questions every day.
What made you feel calm today?
What are you grateful for?
What were three highlights of today?
Buy a notepad and keep it on your bedside table or alternatively you can record it digitally using a tool like Evernote or Day One.
