Dear Diary...

I know, when you picture journaling you probably think of a teenage girl writing about her crush in a sticker covered book. We usually associate journals with high school drama and mood swings, not with something that can help us as adults.

While many teens do find journaling helpful in establishing their identity and dealing with new emotions, it can also be just as useful for anyone able to write! It's a form of self-expression that helps us process our emotions and can result in many positive outcomes for your life.

Journaling can look different for everyone and can help you reach a wide range of goals. You may use it to monitor your progress towards external goals, such as changing fitness habits. Or you may use it to help make the connections between your thoughts and feelings or clear your head. You may use a pre-made format or prompts to help with journaling, or you may just write freely whatever comes to mind.

Whether its anxiety, depression, stress, or goal setting, journaling can help you improve your life. Here are some of the science backed ways journaling can benefit you:

Help to manage depression

Journaling is not a substitute for therapy or medication for depression, however, studies have shown it can complement other treatments and bring additional benefit. It can help to release negative emotions and bring about a more positive frame of mind. It can also help to reduce brooding and take your focus off gloomy thoughts and situations.

Help to manage anxiety

Anxiety often comes about from problematic thinking patterns, but to change them we need to know what they are. Journaling can help you make the connection between these thinking patterns and your anxiety. Journaling also can help those with anxiety clear their mind, let go of negative thoughts, and be more aware of triggers for their anxiety.

Stress management

Keeping a journal is an excellent way to reduce and manage your stress. It helps you explore your thoughts and emotions, processes your experiences, and gives you an outlet to release your stress. It can also help you to problem solve ways of reducing sources of stress for you. Journaling can also be helpful in encouraging you to take action in making changes you want in your life.

Improve physical health

Most of us know that we are more likely to follow through with a plan if we have it written down and track our progress. Journaling can help you set diet and fitness goals and track your progress towards them. It can be very inspiring to look back and have a record of all the progress you've made so far on days you aren't feeling as motivated.

In addition to actively working towards physical health goals, journaling by itself can help to improve your well being and health. By helping you manage stress and difficult emotions, it also can help to reduce blood pressure, improve energy, and has been shown to help you sleep better.

Set and Meet Goals 

Journaling is a way for us to keep ourselves accountable to make the changes we want and put in the necessary work. It can help us to clarify our goals and make a step by step plan of what we need to do to accomplish them. It also gives us a way to document our progress towards these goals and can be helpful in problem solving obstacles that come up along the way.

Increase your gratitude 

Consciously practicing gratitude has many benefits and journaling is a great way to help you do this.  Gratitude journaling can take different forms, but the essence is to journal about things you are grateful for. It can help promote long term well being and people who consciously work to cultivate gratitude in their lives often report an increase in optimism and happiness.

Improve self-awareness 

Keeping a journal can help us to identify patterns in our life we may not have otherwise noticed. It gives us an opportunity for self-analysis and can help us more clearly see attitudes or behaviors that cause us problems.