The Benefits of Journaling

Have you ever kept a Journal? If not – and it’s not something you feel inclined to try, I can empathise because that describes how I once felt.

I was somewhat sceptical, too, about the value of life coaching, until I agreed to try it … and look at me now, enthusiastically pontificating about the value of life coaching to anyone who is willing to listen!

It was back in 2006 and I was a few sessions into being coached by that wonderful lady, Sharon, when she asked me to keep a daily journal in which I would record my thoughts, feelings and achievements.

[box type=\”shadow\”]“Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.”

― Christina Baldwin[/box]

 

The Benefits of Journaling (continued)

 

Bathing in ice water

With everything else on my plate at the time (I was working in the London office of a multinational and trying unsuccessfully to balance my time between work and family) the idea of finding time to journal every day appealed to me as much as bathing in ice water.

“I’m too busy meeting everyone’s demands,” I remonstrated. But Sharon was equal to the task: “Isn’t that exactly why you need to carve out a little special time for yourself?” she said, smiling.

From sceptic to advocate

She was right but I already saw life coaching as something of an indulgence in myself so I pushed back. Sharon responded with a compromise: “Look, if you’re not comfortable with doing it on a daily basis, do it once a week.”

So that was my introduction to journaling – and now I’m a great advocate, so much so that I chose to include an online journaling platform as part of the New Insights offering.

Give it a try

You don’t have to be a trainee life coach with New Insights in order to try out online journaling.

In fact, if you’d like to give it a try for free you can click on the link provided at the bottom of this post and enjoy a 52 week self-guided journaling programme (that means that we will provide you with 52 interesting questions on which you can reflect and write each week.)

When you list your profile you can choose your privacy settings and render your journals unseen to anyone else but yourself, should you wish.

The benefits

So what are the benefits of journaling regularly?

If I had to sum these up in a couple of words I would say enhanced self awareness. That’s a fancy way of saying it helps you to get to know yourself better.

It’s a bit like writing a book about your life when you know that you will be the only reader.

Once you have journaled for a protracted period of time – perhaps six months to a year – you can look back and reveal things about your personality, what you think about, what you dream about, what causes you stress, what makes you feel great and how different emotions are triggered by different events.

Here are seven key benefits that I personally got from journaling:

1. Writing for me

This may sound a little strange but when you think about it writing is almost always something you do in order to communicate with others.

When you write in your journal you are communicating with yourself – recording your thoughts and feelings for posterity – and this can be very therapeutic!

2. Understanding how I assign meaning

In New Insights life coaching we often say: “Nothing has meaning except the meaning you give it.”

There is little more profound than realising that you have absolute control over the meaning that you assign to certain events and experiences in your life. This is the beginning of harnessing the power of taking total responsibility for your life.

3. Helping me to identify my values

I’ve written a lot about values in recent posts. Values are those things that mean most to us and thus to which we assign great value. They guide our actions and behaviours and therefore have a powerful influence over what we do and the way we act.

Reading over past journals helps to clarify what is important and not so important in your life.

4. Monitoring my emotions

Emotions provide amazing guidance about whether we are following our hearts or inner voices – or veering off in the wrong direction.

Becoming more in tune with your emotions allows you to conduct more frequent ‘course checks’ in life thereby ensuring you keep heading in the direction that’s right for you.

5. Seeing myself in context

There are so many demands and pressures in modern day living that it is easy to become totally reactive to what’s happening on the outside, as if you are just a cork bobbing aimlessly around on the ocean of life.

Of course that couldn’t be further from the truth but it is necessary to take a step back from the day-to-day world occasionally and reflect on who you are and what it is you are wanting to achieve from life.

Journaling provides an opportunity to see yourself as an integral part of the world; an individual with purpose and meaning and unique talents to contribute to the whole.

6. Finding clarity in my thinking

Journaling tends to reveal to you how you think, act and learn from your experiences.

By knowing and understanding these processes you can help bring clarity to situations that require you to make and take important decisions and actions.

7. Understanding and evolving my key questions

We all have a question or questions that we ask of ourselves frequently; questions that define how we interact with the world. A typical question that I would ask in any situation is “How is this relevant to me?”

Journaling allowed me to appreciate how self-centric that question was and to consciously evolve it to “In what way might I be able to contribute here?”

Try it out

If you found this post interesting and would like to give our online journaling tool, Journal@New Insights, a try, please click on this link:

http://www.life-coach-journal.com