BEGIN YOUR Journal Journey Part 2

Sounds good, but are you unsure of how to start? Here are six quick tips.

1. Begin with the date.

Dating your entries gives you a chronological timeline as well as allows you to note the space between journal entries. You can also begin to track cycles, patterns and trends in your writing. People who journal often describe the rhythm and flow of handwriting with words such as calming, soothing and focusing. They report that insight and solutions are more reliably accessed; clients remark that answers bubble up and spill onto the paper when they write by hand.

2. Start small.

Set your timer for five minutes and start with what you already know or can easily remember. Sentence stems such as Today I want to…. or I’m thinking about…. or Three things I want off my to-do list are…. are all great starting points.

3. Ask yourself a question.

How do I feel? What do I need? What’s my next action step? Questions tend to take us deeper, often into reflective or more emotional territory, contrasted to the narrative or more cognitive focus of sentence stems.

4. Don’t plan to write every day.

Aside from your own personal preference, there’s no particular advantage to daily writing. Even writing once or twice a week is sufficient to develop a journaling habit, and you’ll likely benefit from a more relaxed approach.

5. Protect your privacy.

Think through where you’ll keep your journal so that it’s out of sight and out of mind for curious housemates. I reserve the first two or three pages of every new journal for privacy protection. On the first page, I write the starting date and a note: This is my personal journal. Please don’t read it without my permission. Thank you for respecting my privacy. On the second page I write, As I was saying…. Please don’t read! Under this, I draw a large stop sign. Note that this will not deter anyone who is intent on reading your journal, but a healthy boundary often gives an impulsive reader enough time to close the book.

6. Don’t fret about your handwriting.

If your writing is illegible, that’s a great privacy protector! No one is grading or judging you.