Are You Journaling Wrong? 5 Things to Check

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Journaling is a wonderful practice that can help you find clarity, reach your goals, and
find your next direction in life. But if you feel bored with it, don’t know what to write
about, or find that you aren’t being completely open and honest, you may be doing it
wrong. While there are no rules with journaling, you could be unintentionally taking
away from the many benefits it provides you.

1. You Aren’t Enjoying the Process

Do you find journaling to be extremely tedious, boring, or just not beneficial to you at
all? If so, this might come down to how you are journaling and what mindset you are in.
Take a few minutes to meditate or practice mindfulness before you pick up your pen
and start to write. Consider how you are feeling in this moment, what you are struggling
with, what part of your life you are enjoying, and what your plans are. Get into a mindset
of gratefulness, positivity, and kindness before you start writing.

2. You Keep Using it Like a Diary

While many people do actually benefit from using their journals just to write about their
day, this isn’t the best option for everyone. Look at how you are journaling, and
determine whether or not you are actually digging deep or just using it like a diary,
where you list what you did today, and didn’t actually get to your thoughts or emotions.

3. You Never Have Anything to Say

If you feel like every time you open up your journal, you have nothing to say, there are a
few quick ways to remedy this. The first way to fix this problem is to use journaling
prompts. These are questions or statements that give you a topic to write about in your
journal. These often lead to other ideas in your head about what you want to say in your
journal.

Another option when you feel you don’t have anything to say is to make a list each day.
It can change by the day, such as today writing down 3 of your best moments, then
tomorrow write 5 goals you have for the next week.

4. Your Stress Has Increased Since Journaling

Journaling should be helping your stress, not making it worse! If you find it to be super
stressful or the act of journaling is actually making things worse for you, it’s time to try
and figure out why that is. Consider what you have been writing about, and whether or
not you are being kind to yourself. If every journal entry is a rant or negative, and you
beat yourself up a lot, that is probably the cause. Try to write at least one positive thing
about yourself and express gratitude in your journal.

5. You Find Yourself Holding Back a Lot

The reason you want to keep your journal to yourself is that you are holding back. However, not
being open and honest with yourself really halts your progress. You need to be able to
be candid if you want to find any sort of clarity. Journaling is a process and one that can
do amazing things, but not if you find that you are filtering out certain parts of your life
because you fear who might find it one day.

2022 is coming around soon. Do you need a new journal to start your journaling practice?

Check out my journals on Amazon KDP or Journaling Pages on Etsy!