Journaling For Personal Growth

Writing things down helps to crystallise your thoughts and shed light on things. Simply writing your thoughts down can help you to understand what you’re feeling and why. You'll find that journaling helps you to get to know yourself better and fosters personal growth.

Why Journaling Works

When you write, your mind slows down. Writing your thoughts down helps you to become more aware of what you’re thinking and what's important to you.

Journaling can help to change your perspective. When you read and summarise what you’ve written, it helps you to step back and look at things differently.

Keeping a journal leads to self discovery. It helps you to identify beliefs that hold you back and talents and gifts that you’ve done little with as yet.

Your journal is a safe place to express your thoughts, feelings, anxieties, ideas and questions about life. It’s somewhere you can be totally honest. If you are honest with yourself your journal will help you to get to know yourself better.

Journaling is an effective, powerful way of venting your feelings. Once the words are out of your head and on paper you’ll be able to see what you’re thinking more easily. Expressing your thoughts gives them shape and meaning and helps you to see what you have to work with.

Journaling helps you to make sense of your life. Writing things down sometimes brings immediate clarity because it helps you to stop and notice what’s happening.

As time goes by you’ll begin to see patterns emerging and start to see the bigger picture.

Write Your Journal For Yourself

Your journal is your journal. Write your journal for you. Be honest with yourself and your journal will become a useful tool on your journey towards personal growth.

“When I write down my thoughts, they do not escape me. This action makes me remember my strength … I educate myself proportionately to my captured thought. ” Isidore Ducasse

Tips For Using Your Journal For Personal Growth

Keep it simple
You don’t have to buy a special journal unless you want to. You could use an inexpensive notebook or file. There's no right or wrong way to journal. Feel free to journal your way; it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Don’t edit as you write
Allow your thoughts to flow freely onto the paper. Just write whatever comes to mind.
Focus on your thoughts and feelings

If you’re struggling to get started, ask yourself questions such as

How do I feel?
What do I want?
What can I learn from this?
How does God see this?
What would Jesus do?
How did I make a difference today?

Alternatively you could list what’s happening in your life right now and start writing about the thing that triggered the biggest response as you wrote it down.

Review And Summarise Your Journal Entries

Reading and reflecting on what you’ve written will help you to see things from a different perspective. Summarising your journal entries will bring new insights and help you to reach helpful conclusions. As you begin to see patterns in your thinking and beliefs, ask yourself how you can use what you’re learning about yourself to improve your life.

You Can Use A Journal For Things Other Than Personal Growth

You could keep a

Spiritual journal to record your journey with God.
Gratitude journal where you write things that you’re thankful for each day
Success journal to record all your successes both great and small and note the compliments paid to you
Dream journal where you record your dreams and insights as God shows you what He’s saying through your dreams

There are many possibilities.

A Journaling Exercise

What does the big picture look like?
What would you do if you could do absolutely anything?
Take time to think about this
Tune into the deep longings of your heart
Now, decide what you’re going to do about it

Decide now to do something every day to bring your dream closer to reality.

What will you do today?

Click on the link to see an article on spiritual journaling You could use your journal to record your meditations

If you've never kept a journal before, I encourage to begin today.

Take a look at who you are in Christ Meditate on the Scriptures in build your faith Use your journal to reflect on the power of your words

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