Personal Zen includes a journaling tool because tracking the ebb and flow of our emotions has immense benefits – from gaining personal insights, to reducing stress, to communicating better with others. But it’s hard to face negative feelings, and sometimes we just want to get on with life. The problem is that if we always push down our difficult feelings, we eventually pay a high price – from emotional burnout, to feeling fewer positive emotions like excitement and joy, to frayed tempers. Journaling is an effective tool for reconnecting with our feelings.
How you journal is much less important than just deciding to start. Writing down your feelings – no matter how messy or complex they seem — is the first step in working through them. To get the most out of journaling:
- Write every day, even if you only have a few minutes
- Don’t edit or censor yourself, just write freely; and
- Look for connections between life events, your feelings, and how these feelings influence choices you make about health, relationships, and work.
If you have any trouble learning to tune into your feelings, try this simple exercise:
- If this feeling was a color, it would be _______________
- If this feeling was weather, it would be ________________
- If this feeling was music, it would sound like ________________
- If this feeling was an object, it would be __________________
- Step 5: Talk to someone you trust to gain a new perspective.
