Life changing benefits of daily journaling

We live in interesting times where we are extensively connected with our world at any given point of time, thanks to social media. This on-demand ‘connect’ however, is concurrently resulting in an internal disconnect among people and their interpersonal associations. The technology that was intended to connect us together has rather left a sense of dissonance lingering amongst people.

With our mind being all over the place resulting from the continuous stimulus of social media, productivity has taken a major backseat. According to Team Lease World of Work Report, an average of 2.35 hours is spent assessing social media at work every day and 13 per cent of the total productivity is lost owing to the social media indulgence alone.

 So how does one consciously reconnect with oneself and enhance productivity?

In a world full of information and noise that demands our time and attention, jumping off the merry-go-round and getting a few moments of silence helps in tuning into our deeper selves. It is important not only to connect with oneself through these moments of silence, but to channelize them into a source of productivity.

Journaling is one such medium of gathering one’s thoughts and objectively putting them into actionable insights. It is an incredible stress management tool, a habit that reduces the impact of physical stressors on your health. Following are the top 5 reasons for you to pick journaling as a habit today:

1. Reduced Stress: A study showed that expressive writing or journaling for only 15-20 mins a day, three times a week, for a quarter of a year showed remarkable results in reduced blood pressure levels and improvised liver functionality. Journaling as a pre bedtime meditation habit has helped many to have a better sense of clarity and preparedness for the following day.

2. Better Immune Function: Journaling or any expressive writing has shown to improve immune system functioning and has even reported to help the wounded heal faster. Journaling helps as a catalyst in decluttering the mind. Therefore, it helps in reducing the stress from being constantly preoccupied with in actionable thoughts. Freeing the mind of such stressors has a profound impact on one’s immunity and a reduced risk of illness.

3. Improvised Memory: Journaling also helps boost memory and comprehension, thereby increasing the capacity of your working memory. Penning down from a myriad of thoughts into concise actionable insights, improves the cognitive processing capacity of the brain thereby resulting in increased productivity.

4. Enhanced Mindfulness: When writing about any roadblocks or atonality, we are consciously dissecting our thoughts from our emotions. Therefore, we are actively engaging better with our mind. Having a clear contrast of your thoughts from your emotions helps in driving a more useful scope of the aspects that deserve your attention. This process of objectively mapping your thoughts, enhances your presence of mind and helps one act mindfully.

5. A Step towards Manifestation: When we visualize, we manifest. But when we visualize with clarity and mindfulness, we manifest better. Journaling provides a roadmap to your goals and helps you monitor your progress thereby keeping you motivated.

The clarity that is enabled through journaling, enhances your creative flow thereby allowing you to manifest better. Journaling does more than just help you record your memories or find self-expression. It is a mental and emotional exercise that serves as a palette of creative expression. It helps open the window to your mind and paint your very own masterpiece. The goal is to simply start where you are.