3 Benefits of Journaling for Your Mental Health

With the change of modern living habits, it is not easy for modern people to keep the habit of writing a diary. However, as long as you spend 10 to 20 minutes every day, it can be of great benefit to your mental health.

1. Reduce stress and anxiety
In daily life, we encounter many problems every day. Unconsciously, we will feel irritated and uncertain. Many times, as long as we calm down and spend a little time to observe our feelings, we will find that the pressure or anxiety we feel is not as bad as we imagined. The ancient Roman philosopher Epictetus once said: Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them. Epictetus himself also had the habit of writing a diary every day, even though he experienced all kinds of pain as a Roman slave class at that time.

Modern psychology has also done a lot of research on the effectiveness of diaries. The results can be roughly divided into several categories:

• Reduced severity of depressive symptoms (e.g., Gortner, Rude & Pennebaker, 2006, and Krpan, Kross, Berman, Deldin, Askren & Jonides, 2013),
• Reduced anxiety (e.g., Hasanzadeh, Khoshknab & Norozi, 2012),
• Reduced stress (e.g., Ullrich & Lutgendorf, 2002).

As a minimalist method (all you need is a pen, a notebook and 20 minutes a day!), there is a lot of scientific evidence for the effectiveness of journaling on mental health.

2. Sort out your thoughts and inspire new ideas to solve problems
As the knowledge-based economy gradually becomes the main economic activity of big cities in the 21st century, many of the problems we face every day require intensive thinking. It is really difficult to have time to calm down and reflect carefully during work. But we often need such space and time to sort out and inspire solutions to problems. Messy thoughts are like a messy desk, with stationery, documents and various sundries in a mess. It is difficult for you to find the items you need, let alone work efficiently.

After a day's work, we often feel tired and want to do something, such as: chasing dramas, playing games, watching TV, etc. I believe many people will feel the same. After entertainment, they still feel tired. In fact, the brain needs to be sorted and cleaned. From the process of writing a diary, we can take back the "dominance" of our thoughts, focus our energy on the problems we really care about, and then unravel them to inspire new ideas to solve problems.

3. Talk to yourself and explore yourself for your future self

When you start writing a diary, these topics may be "heavy", but after a while, suddenly, you will write some ideas that even you will find shocking, or you may not have noticed it all the way. In addition to recording daily events and weather conditions, a diary can also help you discover and explore yourself. What exactly makes me feel happy, depressed, excited, and so on? The human brain is not good at storing emotions. Many times, we tend to forget the source of our happiness. When writing a diary, identify the things that make you happy, so that you can seize the opportunity to enjoy them when you have time again; identify the things that make you unhappy and find ways to improve them.

A diary is an "external hard drive" for the brain, allowing us to keep our thoughts and emotions well. Whenever you are in the mood, you can flip through the old diary and always find more about yourself. Without a diary to record, it will be difficult for us to recall the joys, sorrows, anger, and happiness we have experienced.

In addition to the above direct benefits, writing a diary also has the indirect benefit of "establishing daily habits". When we get used to writing a diary every day, it will be easier for us to develop other daily habits.