One Snarky Chica with Issues

I started out my freshman year of college working towards a business degree. By the end of that year I was more interested in taking every class that an amazing English professor taught instead of focusing on my major. Besides your average composition and British Lit classes this professor also taught a journaling class. Granted, the journaling class had a bit of a literature angle as we read a lot of journals of famous writers like Sylvia Plath and Anaïs Nin. We also had to keep our own journal which is where I learned what a great tool a journal is for focusing on personal development and self empowerment. I view self empowerment as a way to take charge of my life and put the power to control my life in my hands as opposed to someone else.

Journaling allows you the opportunity to extract thoughts from your head and gain some insight that you might not have gained without the process. Journaling is really a great way to examine all of the thoughts that are swirling around your head. If you are trying to make a difficult or big decision journaling can really give you some much needed clarity by helping you to put all of your thoughts down on paper and then organize them so that they make some sense.

Journaling is also a very effective tool for stress management or even anger management. Of course, journaling can only be beneficial in this manner if you are accurately and completely recording your feelings down as opposed to a play by play of how your day has gone and the activities you have done. Journaling needs to come from a very personal place for it to accelerate your personal development and self empowerment goals. You may even want to think of journaling as a therapy session, minus the hefty fee and stranger staring back at you and scribbling little notes about you.

There have even been studies done that have concluded that journaling can be beneficial in improving cognitive functioning, which includes things like memory and the ability to mentally juggle multiple things. A slightly more scientific definition of cognitive function is the intellectual process where you become aware of, comprehend or even perceive ideas of all sorts. A loss of cognitive function means you can have difficulty thinking or concentrating, you can experience memory loss or memory gaps, you may even get amnesia, and in severe cases you can lose all ability to speak or write.

I like to use journaling for stress management and look at is as a form of meditation. When I am journaling I like to be in a room or place all by myself. I like for there to be complete and total silence so that I can be alone with my thoughts. If I am having trouble getting something to come out on paper then I focus on my breathing for a period. I prefer to use hard bound blank books from my journaling. I typically get them at a bookstore like Borders. I prefer the blank books as opposed to the lined pages in the event that I want to sketch something on the page or even if I just want to write upside down or sideways. Sometimes if I’m really stressed I need to have that freedom to work though whatever I am feeling.

The best thing about journaling is its cost. All you need is a writing utensil and something to write on. Some people opt to do their journaling on a computer, which is easily supported by the large number of personal blogs. However, I find something uniquely cathartic about putting pen to paper. You may want to try out several different options before deciding what works best for you. If you are interested in using a computer, LifeJournal is a fairly popular software program, and it even has specialized options that you can get for your self. Or you can always just keep a private free blog on Blogger or another platform.

If you are ready to start journaling your way to self empowerment, here are some tips to keep in mind.

1. Be honest. The whole point of journaling is to get your thoughts out on paper.  The key here is your thoughts- not someone else’s, not what you wish you were thinking, not what you think you should be thinking. To empower yourself you have to be honest with yourself. And remember, you are doing this for you, not for show and tell. It can be a private thing that no one has to know about.
2. Do it with some regularity. Yes we all have hectic days and cannot work in a trip to the gym much less some alone time with a blank book, but it’s important. If you don’t sit down and prepare to take charge of your life and aim to better your self, who will?
3. Don’t think, just write. You may want to sit down each night and write a brilliantly humorous journal entry. We won’t discuss the fact that this might not be honest, but what happens if you sit down and can’t think of anything to write? The answer is easy - don’t think, just write. You’ll never get to those hidden, inner thoughts that you never knew you had if you’re too busy thinking about what you are going to write. Think of journaling as a quest and your goal is to discover what lies beneath all of those pretty, packaged thoughts you first think on writing about.
4. Toss out the rules. You don’t have to capitalize the first letter of every sentence. You can write in all caps if you want. Run on sentences are welcome here. Profanity doesn’t offend anyone. Being nice is not a requirement. You can just cross something out, you don’t have to erase it. You are allowed to stop mid-sentence or even change what you are writing about. (You may want to put these rules on the first page of your journal to remind your self!)
5. Don’t forget about them. It’s a good idea to re-read your journals at least at some point. This way you can see where you started and where you have come. It is a good way to assess your personal growth and see if you can identify any areas that you may need to work on in your life.
6. You are allowed to trash your journal. There will come a time when you will be angry for whatever reason and your first thought will be of burning your journals. And you can. But you shouldn’t do it immediately as you may regret it. I suggest creating a ‘burn pile’ first and give it a week. If you still feel like burning or shredding them after a week, then go ahead. It may prove to be incredibly cathartic.