Selfcare: Manage Stress by Journaling

According to studies, journaling can be a super-effective way to get on top of stress. Never kept a journal? Not sure how best to use a journal for stress management? Let’s talk briefly about how you can get started with that.

A few easy ways to use a journal for your mental health:

• Gratitude - Spend a few minutes detailing some of the things for which you’re grateful. These can be something big such as family and health or something much smaller such as waking up in the morning. Either way, it gets you into the habit of looking at positives, rather than negatives.
• Positive Intentions - Spend a minute or two first thing in the morning on setting a positive intention or plan for the day ahead. What would make today a great day?
• Positive Affirmations or Quotes- Creating a couple of positive affirmations is another way to use your journal in the mornings. What do you want to be today? Turn it into a positive, first-person statement that sets this belief in your mind. Or if you prefer, jot down an inspirational or motivational quote.
• Good Things that Happened in the Day - At the end of the day, write down anything positive that happened, no matter how small. These can be things you’ve achieved or something beautiful that happened.
• Challenges - Go a step further, try setting yourself a daily or weekly challenge that pushes you out of your comfort zone, and make a few notes on how you get on.
  
  The great thing about journaling is that you don’t need a lot of time to make it work. Even if you only have 5 minutes to spend on it, there are tons of ways to get the most from journaling and reduce your stress levels.