How to start writing a diary to increase your successes in life?

Journaling is the best way to relieve stress, gain clarity and improve life. With the ease of this practice; They are not valued, and this is not surprising. People are surprised that something so easily has so many benefits, and instead they try to find other magical solutions that can solve all problems and improve their quality of life.

But in fact the secret is in journaling. Journaling may not solve all your problems, but it sure does move your focus to the level where you find the answers in your mind. So if you haven't practiced journaling before and are wondering how it is done; You have found the article that will tell you about the benefits of writing, and how to write your diary.

What is diary writing?

Journaling is a very personal activity, and it takes many different forms, but they all agree in that its main benefits are stress relief and improved self-awareness.

The question is: What exactly are you writing about? It is entirely up to you. The beauty of diary writing is that there is no right or wrong way in it; You can write about events during your day, how you feel, your dreams, or your desires.

The freedom to practice journaling is also one of its strengths; as you can; Rather, you should customize this practice to benefit and inspire you more. Of course, you do not have to start from scratch. There are many common diary writing techniques that you can try, and you can also create your own technique.

Here are some common diary writing techniques:

• Gratitude diary: The practice of writing about the things you are grateful for in your life, such as having clean drinking water and food on your table.
• Meditation diary: It is the practice in which you write about a specific event to understand it better, and its usefulness is that the feelings are not as strong as they are when the event occurred; This means that this type of writing gives you a different perspective.
• Diary of a future ambition: is a writing practice that aims to express the person you dream of being in the future, or the things you want to achieve. This method helps you visualize the outcome you want, and it is a great strategy for making a positive change in your life .
• Diary of basic values: It is writing in which you identify some basic values during a specific period, and seek to develop them, and then write down your diary, such as recording the progress you make towards establishing those values.

There are two other forms of journaling, but as we said above, you don't have to follow one strict method of journaling; You can even come up with your own ideas, or combine several of these shapes; This is what makes journaling so much fun.

You can experiment with different forms of journaling until you find one that works for you, but the most important thing about journaling for beginners is finding a way to keep the practice.

Benefits of keeping a diary

There are many benefits to writing a diary, and these benefits are varied and fall into topics such as:

• relieve anxiety .
• Improving self-awareness.
• Improving self-esteem .
• Achieve your goals faster.

The list goes on for much longer, but we will address the most important 6 benefits of writing a diary; So keep in mind that you may enjoy many or a few of these benefits; It depends on the topic you choose to write about.

For example, if you only write about the past, you may not find that journaling helps you achieve your goals , and if you write only about your goals, you may not see that journaling improves your self-awareness.

But if you journal on a variety of topics, you may get all of the following benefits:

1. Calm the mind:

You may have experienced how the mind continues to generate new ideas , even when you don't want to, and sometimes those ideas are not desirable or useful.

Our minds are often messy and turbulent, and it can be hard to control yourself during stressful times, but writing can help you calm a troubled mind and you'll notice how your mind calms down when you start writing.

The reason for this is clear. Writing requires your brain to organize and focus, and while your brain is trying to produce ideas quickly, writing is often slower. The brain has to slow down to keep up with your speed; This makes journaling soothing and even therapeutic.

Although writing does require some effort at first when you are in the learning stage, It is a wonderful activity to calm the mind, and this benefit is very important, and forms the basis for the other benefits.

2. Reducing Anxiety and Stress:

When you are stressed, your body convulses, your brain begins to work hard to think, and your nervous system releases many hormones in case of stress, such as adrenaline and cortisol. As a result, you feel irritable, your heart races, and your mind is hyperfocused. Although stress is helpful in some situations, chronic stress is not, and anxiety and depression can cause a variety of problems.

Journaling helps you calm yourself down; This makes it a great practice for overcoming chronic anxiety and stress. It also reduces stress by expelling negative thoughts ; Journaling is an emotional release, and it does a great job against chronic psychological problems.

3. Clarify your vision:

Many people often go to great lengths to figure out the right choice to make, or in cases where they are faced with a very important decision.

Writing a diary helps them in these cases. Writing the things that occupy your mind organizes your thoughts in a different way from abstract thinking, and makes you feel that your mind is going out into wide horizons; Which expands your imagination and increases the clarity of your thoughts.

Moreover, when you write what you think, you are forced to organize your thoughts, and this mechanism has a magical effect in making your thoughts clearer, and although what we have mentioned is not a scientific fact; Journaling has these benefits that everyone can experience, and because writing organizes your thoughts and makes them clearer; It helps you discover your goal.

4. Develop Self Awareness:

No matter what topic you choose to write about in your diary, it is bound to improve your self-awareness; When you learn how to write a diary as a beginner, you will have to wait and adjust your thinking; This helps you see things from a different perspective, and this also gives you great visualizations of your feelings and thoughts; Writing also gives you a more holistic perspective, and helps you discover patterns you didn't notice before.

Also, one of the benefits of writing is that when you write about a feeling or an event, your feelings are not as intense as they were at the event, for example: you may get angry at someone, and your anger may seem justified at that moment, but when you think about it Later, you realize that your anger may have been exaggerated.

These insights are very effective, and it is from them that personal change begins, especially when you have these insights about your behavior and thoughts, and in addition, discovering the secrets of yourself and your awareness is fun.

5. Enhancing enthusiasm:

You will get the maximum benefit from it; This is when you practice diary writing, which focuses on your future, and your diary may be about big goals, or small daily goals, and the benefit of this type of diary writing is that you focus on your ambitions , and we know that what you think about most of the time turns into reality.

As a reminder, when you think negatively all the time, it is difficult to feel positive , and also if you always think about the negative things that happened to you in the past, it is difficult to create a better future for yourself; So focus in your diary on the future you want to achieve, and you will be able to set your mindset for the rest of the day.

6. Improve communication with others:

This benefit may come as a surprise, but journaling is the only practice of its kind that improves your communication with others. To communicate more effectively, you need two main things:

• The ability to listen and understand the other person's perspective.
• The ability to clearly present your point of view.

Although possessing these two elements seems easy, it is one of the most difficult skills in the world, and few people possess it, but these two elements can be mastered through writing a diary.

When you practice the reflective type of journaling, reviewing past events; You see things from a different perspective, and you get out of just a state of imagining what happened to a state of understanding and taking lessons and lessons, and although writing here focuses on events from the past, but it helps you learn a lot of lessons when you meditate by writing a diary.

Thus, when you are exposed to the same situation in the future, you will be more able to control yourself and influence others ; This is important for improving your quality of life.

5 tips to start writing a diary:

Journaling is a great way to increase your self-awareness, and gain a deep understanding of the facts in the real world, and with these five tips, you'll be able to start writing your journal.

1. Use a diary:

You may be wondering what is the importance of writing in a diary? What is the difference between it and writing in a notebook? Of course, there is nothing in principle to prevent you from using a notebook to write your diary, but a diary has the privacy and impact that a notebook does not achieve.

The reason for this is that when you write in a diary; It feels more private than a regular notebook; This helps you to stay motivated to write the diary, and here are some options for the diary:

• Diary with white pages; It is used for free writing, and is free of any organization.
• An organized diary, containing a division of goals, a calendar, and some psychological and emotional reviews.
• habits diary; This type is used so that you can organize its structure yourself.
• five minute diary; Use to write down the things you are grateful for.
• The productivity diary; It is recommended for people who care about their goals.

2. Choose a topic to write about:

Journaling comes in so many shapes, forms, and styles that it may  feel overwhelming at first. You may be wondering: where do you start? And what is the best time to write a diary? What are the topics to write about? And the only way to know these answers is by doing.

Some people like to write for 20 minutes straight without restrictions or preconceived notions of what to write. Others like to write for a short period and pick certain topics to write about. You may prefer writing weekly; While some prefer daily writing, you will probably find it useful to mix weekly and daily writing.

So as mentioned above, there is no right or wrong way to do this, and the best way to find your preference is to experiment. Here are some topics you can write about, with some tips to help you as a beginner:

• Goals: What three goals do you want to achieve today?
• Gratitude: What are the three things you are grateful for?
• Self-reflection: What was the last situation that happened to you that you didn't like the way you handled it? How could you have acted differently? Will the result be different, too?
• Emotions: What feelings did you feel today? And what triggered these feelings?
• Happiness: What made you  feel happy today?
• Self-development : What did you learn today?
• Energy: What can you do today to energize yourself?
• A task you want to accomplish: If there was one thing in the world that you wanted to change, what would it be?

You may want to tweak these details a bit depending on whether you plan to diary in the morning or evening; So try two of these topics, but keep the following rule in mind:

3. Commit to writing a diary for at least 30 days.

At the beginning of your learning to write a diary, you may feel that it does not benefit you in anything, and that nothing changes, it is like any other practice; For example, you wouldn't decide that push-ups were helpful if you didn't try it long enough for results to start showing.

30 days is the ideal time to see if the topics you write about in your journal are working for you, or if you need to change them.

4. Combine multiple themes:

When the 30 days are up, you'll have a better idea of what topics you want to keep writing about, etc., and it's helpful to blend the topics together and make some edits.

Perhaps you will decide to change everything and try a different topic, and the more you repeat the experiment, the more you will; You will get a good idea of the topic that really suits you; Therefore, it is recommended in this context to try topics that you think are not useful to you, as they are often the best and most useful topics.

From time to time you may feel the urge to change the topics and methods you prefer, and if you are the type of person who likes change; Mixing several topics may become essential to you.

5. Adjust your practice:

There is no perfect way to practice journaling for a beginner; So you should know that what works for one person may not be for another.

So there is no perfect way to write a diary; The reason is that we evolve and improve ourselves over time, and as our priorities change so may our journaling practice.

The bottom line is not to get caught up in your current way of writing; Rather, strive to improve it, and see it as an art that you want to develop based on your goals, desires, and priorities, and in general, think about what suits your lifestyle and adopt it, and as a piece of advice that sums up everything we have said: Try to find a writing style that brings you pleasure and makes writing always enjoyable.