In your work and personal life, several negative and positive emotions can cloud your mind. Several things can overwhelm your mind such as the stress of meeting deadlines, fulfilling expectations, conversations with people, lack of sleep, and many other things. This can cause mental fatigue and you may eventually find it hard to focus. To add on social media further worsens this situation.
What you need is mental clarity. There are many ways to achieve it, and journaling is regarded as one of the best ways to achieve mental clarity. If you are new to journaling, here, we’ll discuss some of the effective ways you can journal for mental clarity.
Why is Mental Clarity Important?
Mental clarity is crucial for your mental health. When you are clear in your mind, everything else falls in place. You can easily manage your tasks, solve problems, manage stress, and do everything else. All of this while being focused. You can prioritize things and channel your focus on tasks that matter the most to you.
What is Journaling?
It is the regular practice of writing down your thoughts, emotions, life experiences, feelings, and reflections that you may not be comfortable sharing with others.
How To Start Journaling for Mental Clarity?
1. Set Aside Time
Much before you write down your thoughts, set aside some time that you will dedicate to journaling. In our personal opinion, this step itself makes you ready to focus on your inner thoughts. In simple words, it conditions you to put aside all other thoughts and just self-reflect in a positive manner.
So, set aside a time of the day when you would journal. It could be putting pen to paper in the morning before gearing up for work or at night before you go to sleep. These are the times when you’ll encounter minimal commotion or minimal interruption from people around you.
2. Select A Medium
Choose a medium for journaling your thoughts. You can select a journaling app, a Word or Google document on your computer, or simply a traditional notebook. Broadly, both the mediums – digital and traditional have their ups and downs.
If you can curb the tendency to check on notifications, messages, apps, etc on your digital device and focus on journaling, you can choose your smartphone or computer as a way to journal your thoughts. You could also put this document behind a password so that no one else apart from you can access the document.
But, if you can’t curb the tendency to constantly check on your device, you can journal your thoughts in a traditional notebook. This step helps you give more importance to your thoughts. However, if you are writing down your thoughts and emotions in a traditional notebook, we recommend that you store this notebook in a a less frequently accessed location.
3. Choose a Comfortable Space to Journal
When it’s time to journal, whether you are journaling in a traditional notebook or writing a journal in a Word document on the computer, choose a comfortable and quiet place where you are sure that no one will disturb you.
Before you begin journaling you can also make yourself a hot cup of coffee or any other beverage, or you can put on your headphones and listen to some calming upbeat music. The idea here is to make yourself comfortable and get rid of any stress that’s stopping you from reflecting on your inner thoughts.
4. Write Down Anything and Everything
One of the reasons why you may want to journal is to get rid of unwanted negative thoughts. In human conversations where there is a fear of being judged, you often find it hard to express. As a result, the mind gets filled with negativity which defeats the purpose of sharing things, those that are bothering you.
When you journal, there is no fear of judgment when pouring down thoughts or emotions in a journal. You can be as raw with your words as you want and capture your thoughts and emotions.
What if You Are Clueless About What to Journal?
This is quite normal. There are times when you might go blank as you put your pen to the paper. That is the time you can reflect upon the following points and might find something to write on –
- Write about any random ideas, especially the ones that have hooked you.
- Mention how you are feeling. Doesn’t matter if you aren’t feeling anything. In fact, you can even write something as absurd as “Why am I not feeling anything?”.
- Write about all those things that you are grateful for.
- Any affirmations you have set for yourself.
- Any goals and plans you have.
Even though this point stresses writing down thoughts, you can also journal your thoughts via voice memos/ recordings or record a video of yourself.
Make Your Journal Personalized
In the above stage, the stress was more on building consistency. This means, that while you can start by just pouring down your thoughts the way we discussed above, at a later stage you can use your journal and personalize it to become more organized.
For example, you can target the goals on which you are finding it hard to focus. You can make sections in your journal such as – focus areas, important dates/ date trackers, progress levels, etc.
How you personalize your journal depends totally on you. You can always take references from various journaling templates available online and create one that suits you.
Journaling is a Way of Showing Self Love
Journaling is a great way and a safe space to clear your mind and thereby show self-love. It is almost like you care for your own well-being by expressing your emotions and thoughts in a non-judgmental environment.
By regularly journaling, you can understand yourself better, track your personal growth, and reflect on your strengths. Not to mention, that by venting out negative thoughts you’ll see a substantial decline in your stress levels.
If you found value in this post and feel better about yourself by journaling for mental clarity, do share your experience in the comments section below.