After having spent over a year amid a pandemic induced lockdown where we have lost sense of time and days start becoming a repeat set of actions with no sense of direction and purpose, it is finally time for us to break free from the clutches of the mundane activities and start defining each day. It’s about time that we start every day with a purpose and something to reflect on instead of it being just a blurred out memory in the past. The secret to achieving this is none other than the “Art of Journaling”.
The advantages of daily writing are huge. The sheer number of successful and well-remembered people in history should be a good account of that. From writers and artists to scientists and engineers, from famous personalities to just common people, the habit of writing daily is one thing that helps people stand apart from the rest. We have insight into the working of great minds credited to their daily entries which have recorded the chaos to unveil some order to the madness. Anne Frank once said, “For someone like me, it is a very strange habit to write in a diary. Not only that I have never written before, but it strikes me that later neither I nor anyone else, will care for the outpouring of a thirteen year old schoolgirl.” If only she had known then that her diary would be one of the most remembered ones in history. People like Oscar Wilde, Queen Victoria, Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, George Lucas, Charles Darwin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Frida Kahlo and Marie Curie are just a few of the many who loved journaling. Writing daily also helps people deal with stressful and traumatic experiences better as mentioned by a study by Cambridge University. Improved lung and liver functioning, improved working memory, better physical health and even the feeling of greater psychological well-being are all results of journaling.
To start writing for the first time can seem very intimidating so here are a few topics you can write about. Often unsaid words tend to clutter our mind and build up a lot of frustration and stress. In times like this writing about our emotions can be a great way to start journaling and relieve stress too. Writing about topics that you are working on or leaving notes on a book that you’re reading can be a great way to reflect on your thought process and understand the workings of your mind at a more complex level. You can always write about things that you aspire for yourself and things that you plan on accomplishing. At the end of all this what you want to write about doesn’t matter as much as the act of trying to journal does. You could write about anything and everything that you want to write about, you can write poems, or jokes or even doodle in your journal as long as you’re adding something every day. It doesn’t even have to make entire sense, the only thing that matters is starting.
Journaling doesn’t have to sound so serious. With the modern take on new-age diaries and journaling kits being the latest trend, this rather mundane activity can now be an extraordinary and exciting process. We have put together a list of brands that will tempt even the most passive people to pick up their pens and start journaling