Finding Mental Clarity: The Life-Changing Benefits of Journaling
If physical exertion and struggle is one way to release excess energy, strengthen our body and feel right with the world, writing could be considered as the mental equivalent.
When our mind feels like a chaotic, scrambling mess, it often simply needs some exercise; a task to occupy the mind and work through the many streaming thoughts and feelings. Personally, I love a bit of cleaning with some music, but another great practice I use is journaling.
Today, we thought I’d do a little more journaling, but share my thoughts with you. Today, my writing is about the benefits of the practice itself. It will help me understand the topic more and why I feel so much clarity after journalism.
How to get started.
Everybody says starting the process of journaling is the most difficult part. We may find ourselves frustrated, staring at a blank page, or embarrassed by what we write. This is completely normal, and part of the experience.
It should bring peace to know that some of the greatest people of all time took to journalling and likely experienced the same feelings as we do. JFK, Leonardo Di Vinci, Serena Williams, Winston Churchill, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Oprah Winfrey and, potentially the most famous journal of all, Anne Frank. Each wrote in a journal for their own unique reasons, and each has gone on to influence the world we live in today. They all started somewhere.
The key to the practice of journaling is to remember that it is a personal experience. The words are not written to be read, but written to process the thoughts in a slow and constructive way. The objective is to simply write and allow the thoughts to flow out into your hand, and onto paper. After that, you can keep them to read at a later date or destroy them: it’s up to you.
There is science behind this. When we write something down, our mental space changes: we must slow down and make sense of what exactly it is we wish to say, so that we can create a sentence, that isn’t a random collection of words. We think about the words to start the thought, and how that may impact the latter end of the sentence. In this process, we are forced to consider what it is we are thinking and the best way to communicate it.
As the words are written onto the page, the information swirling around in our mind is organised and creates a linear thought. The small practice of writing about our day allows our mind to slow down and we can make sense of complex, emotional, subjects much easier.
The benefits of Journaling.
The benefits of journaling are very well established within numerous studies and thousands, if not millions, of anecdotal examples.
While the evidence shows that journaling is a key tool to overcome mental health conditions, we feel that keeping a journal should be seen as a daily/ weekly exercise to retain our mental well-being, or mental fitness.
In the same way that our body requires exercise, nutrition and maintenance, so does our mind. We ensure that we put the same effort into keeping our minds fit, resilient and healthy, as we do for our bodies.
A journal does not need to be used every day, but like training, as often and as regularly as you can.
There is no right way to journal. Why you journal is more important than what you write.
1. Improves your sleep!
There is plenty of evidence that suggests journalling before bed dramatically improves sleep.
A study – this one [source] – looked at those who completed a quick 10-minute writing exercise before bed. It found that a task, as simple as writing a to-do list, allowed the participants to fall asleep (on average) 10 minutes faster, than those who didn’t complete the task.
The findings suggest that the improvement in sleep onset is a result of the subject’s mind being less chaotic while trying to sleep.
It found that those people with busy lives (with more stress) tended to struggle to sleep more on average, and the likely cause was the brain cycling through information in an attempt to organise the day done, and the coming tasks ahead.
It is a very relatable feeling to be tossing and turning, with random stressful thoughts popping into our minds at the worst moments.
The simple process of writing down appears to start a cognitive organisational process which offloads some of the stress and anxiety. The study identified an overall reduction of rumination and cognitive arousal.
A more relaxed mind ultimately leads to decreased sleep-latency and lower levels of general anxiety at night. Therefore, better recovery and healthier sleep patterns.
While it makes you feel as though you are relaxed, scrolling social media has the direct opposite effect, which explains why people find is very difficult to sleep after spending a number of hours on social media. However, he simple act of writing a to-do list, or writing about your day, allows our minds to process all of the information it has absorbed, and process it in a healthy way.
The result being a less anxious and disturbed mind, and a sounder more restful sleep.
2. Reduces Anxiety.
The practice of keeping a journal is a key part of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which is the treatment for numerous mental health conditions – including anxiety and depression (believe it or not, stoic philosophy played a fundamental role in its development).
Anxiety is a general feeling of unease, created as a neurological response to possible danger. It is a feeling which has ensured our survival as a species; it sends signals from our brain to our body to be on alert and ready to act for self-preservation.
It is quite normal, and helpful, to feel anxious before a big event or challenge.
However, in today’s world, we are beset by challenges on an almost constant basis. We have created a world where we are subject to the perpetual feeling that we are being threatened and in danger, which creates the feeling of chronic unease, often without an initial stimulus. At the very worst, general anxiety can remove our agency; whether it cripples us with fear in a social situation, or fear irrational perceived dangers. Chronic anxiety has extreme consequences for our mental well-being and physical health.
Writing and journaling about the moments of your day is proven to reduce general anxiety, lift depression and give us purpose [source]. It is itself a form of active meditation and mindfulness (bringing our minds to the present moment).
The simple act of documenting the moment, of how you are feeling and analysing it from a distance, is a process of externalisation. It is often very easy to identify problems with other people’s lives, but almost impossible to see into our own lives – the reason is because that judgement is clouded by emotions and the need to protect ourselves. By externalising our actions on the pages gives us the needed distance to look at ourselves objectively.
When a problem is written down, we are able to strategise with a clear and unfiltered perception and work to overcome it with a healthy and productive mindset. From personal experience, the feeling of self-confidence after overcoming something which would previously have triggered crippling fear and anxiety, is a reward enough on it’s own.
We can use the process to clarify our thoughts and identify any reoccurring issues or behaviours which may not be helpful to our general mental well-being. We can use it to clear our minds of unwanted thoughts and help us understand ourselves more. Once we do that, we can move forward with confidence.
3. Increases happiness and gratitude.
Our mind is wired to always look beyond our current moment. It is another biological mechanism which enabled our hunter-gatherer ancestors to hunt for the next meal, to find a safer place to live or to secure a higher rung on the social ladder within the tribe. Without it, we would have joined the Dodo.
Today, it manifests itself in our ability to look up and dream – for the next opportunity, the next pay bracket, the next new car or the join most current trend. To be liked, and popular, and successful and special.
Our ability to constantly look forward is equally as amazing and it is destructive. While it can offer the motivation to improve our lives, and the lives of our families and friends, it can also blind us to what we have already achieved and how great life is at the very current moment that we are living. This undoubtedly leads to feelings of worthlessness, being smaller than we are.
Our mind is similarly wired to scan a narrow field of view to assess danger, and obesely focus on any potential harm we could face. An extremely helpful element of evolution, but not helpful in a world of our own creation.
Our propensity to focus on the negative, drives our mind to obsess about scary stories on the news, to attack each other in comments and view everything in the tribal lens of Us and Them. Our obsession with the negative makes us more fearful, increases levels of general anxiety and blinds us to the fact that we are not – in reality – in any immediate danger.
So, let’s turn this down a notch and bring ourselves to what is great about what we currently have.
It is common in journaling to practice gratitude – which is proven to dramatically improve our well-being [source], and to rewire our brain to look at what good we have in our lives and, at least for a moment, forget about what we could have or what could be.
The simple practice of gratitude makes us happier, more fulfilled and more content; incentivises compassion which lead towards much happier communities of people. Life is simply more enjoyable when we are content with ourselves, and what we have.
4. Improves memory & brain power.
The mind works in fascinating ways, and our ability to learn and pass on learning has set humans apart.
To be able to identify knowledge and use it to advance ourselves, and others around us, is the reason we have hospitals, medicine, cars, planes and the reason you’re reading this right now. Humans have learned, remembered the lesson, and used it to advise humanity.
It is no coincidence that the most impactful humans of all time, were avid journal keepers (Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Dr David Livingston to mention a few).
It is a fact that writing in a journal can improve our working memory [source], and help cement knowledge in our minds for longer. The act of writing helps our brains process the information and latch it to greater understanding, therefore, improving our memory and memory recall.
While writing is a simple act, your brain is doing something very complicated – it is thinking. If we have a problem, or moment of conflict, or a subject we do not fully understand, the process of writing it down allows our brain to view the information with increased clarity, allowing us to pick apart ideas and play with concepts more easily.
When writing, we can lay the facts our infront of ourselves and deconstruct complicated problems and solutions without emotion clouding our view. The same reason why this post has been written.
Whatsmore, it’s a great feeling to look back and read your journal to remember what you learned, or to see how far you’ve come.
5. May speed up physical recovery.
This is a very interesting benefit of journaling that is more conceptual than the others.
There is some evidence to suggest that mediative writing for prolonged periods could improve physical healing [source]. While the mechanism behind this finding isn’t fully understood, it is suggested that the lowering of overall stress and cortisol management plays a role in wound healing and recovery.
This is particularly important for professional athletes, where recovery is the most important aspect of their training. Many spend much of their time trying to recover – and mediative writing seems to be a great way to calm the mind and soothe the body.
Traumatic events, whether they may be physical or perceived (the death of a loved one or close call, for example), can injure the mind, very much like the body can be injured. Cognitive trauma can wreak havoc on our lives by rewiring the brain and can lead to debilitating cognitive illness [source].
Studies have shown that journalling can dramatically increase well-being after a stressful and traumatic event [source] and start, accelerate and even complete the process of healing.
In conclusion.
Hopefully, this has been an interesting post that has helped you start your journalling journey, or understand deeper why it can be beneficial to your general well-being.