Personal Journal
Welcome to Journal On It, the podcast where we slow down, tune in, and turn the page on the story we tell ourselves. I’m Shannon, and each week we explore the powerful practice of journaling and self-reflection to help you reconnect with your thoughts, your purpose, and your inner voice. Whether you’re new to journaling or you’ve got stacks of filled notebooks, this space is for anyone ready to grow, heal, and get honest, one page at a time. Let’s dig deep, write freely, and reflect boldly. (instrumental music plays) Episode 1 – Personal Journal.
I figured we would, um, start here, mostly because this is where most people do start journaling. So I figured a personal journal would be probably the easiest gateway, I guess, into journaling. It’s the one you’re gonna see or think of the most.
What is it?
A personal journal is any way, be it an audio recording like this, a written notebook like what I use, or a digital app in which you record your personal feelings, thoughts, events, and on goings in your life. It’s your kind of personal record, your bookkeeping of you. But this isn’t written for anyone else. This is written for you and you alone, this isn’t a notebook or anything you’re going to pass on to your family or anything you’re going to want, like, archeologists in a thousand years to dig up. This is, like, your inner sanctum expressed. So first and foremost, know that a personal journal is for you. It’s where you’re gonna do all of your kind of thinking and processing and all of those things.
Pros
There’s a long list of known pros and cons to journaling. I personally believe that the pros far outweigh the cons, and as with most things in life, journaling should be done in moderation for what works for you.
Some of the pros are it can help reduce your anxiety, lessen depression. It’s known to help you regulate your emotions, be they positive or negative. Journaling also known to help improve your personal growth, there are some scientific studies that say it actually has, physical health benefits, like lowering your blood pressure, increasing your, like, quality of sleep, less time spent in hospitals is one I saw a few times in my research. And I’ll have all of that linked down below, the scientific stuff and the, like, more opinion-based items. There were a few that said it also helps you stay at work more often, having less time, like, calling out, less time looking for work after you’ve lost your job and things like that. Um, so there’s a whole bunch of really good benefits to it.
Cons
Now, there are always some cons. One of the bigger ones is it can kind of make you overthink. It can get you kind of stuck in your head in a way that is hard to escape if you’re not cautious. If you are somebody with a larger ego, it can make you extremely self-obsessed, uh, and kinda eclipse your worldview. Be careful of those. It can also become, like, a place where you self-blame or self-isolate a lot, so you have to kinda balance it out. And then, one that I know that I’ve personally fallen, headfirst into, is becoming someone who considers, like, “Ooh, how am I gonna journal about this later?” Instead of, like, living in that moment, I’m already thinking about sitting at my desk later and writing everything down and what stickers I’m gonna use and things like that.
So those are some of the, like, pros and cons there, and like I said, I’ll have a bunch of resources that I’ve used to gather that information listed below.
My experience
For me personally, I have been journaling for quite a while. Um, it started as a way for me to process emotions when I was going through some tough times, uh, struggling with personal relationships and finding stable work, and I just didn’t have a great outlet to alleviate the pressure, so to speak. Um, all of those emotions and thoughts built up, and I just needed, like, kind of a release valve. And I picked up a journal and started writing about all of that, and I noticed pretty quickly that having a stable outlet really helped me get it off my mind so I could actually think and focus on what I needed to do.
How my practice has developed.
Now, to be honest, my personal journal has developed a bit. It’s not just me writing every single day about what’s on my mind or what I’m thinking about. I use it every month. At the beginning of the month, I do what I call my habit spread or, like, my monthly spread, and it’s a couple of pages, usually, like, front and back or, like, two pages, like, side by side that I write out all of my goals, I write what habits I want to work on. If there’s anything big I have coming up, I’m gonna write it there.
A peek inside my journal.
Actually, I have my journal beside me, so I can open it up and tell you. Like, this month, one of my goals was to track my journaling, my skincare, and my meditation routines. My goals were to release the episodes of this podcast, keep up with doing the Instagram schedule I set, which is a minimum of three times a week, and do one nice thing for myself, and then I also have a mood tracker. This helps me. I do struggle with anxiety, so it helps me kind of monitor that and monitor what is happening in my, routine day. And then, of course, as you flip past that, I have my days that I’ve journaled. There’s a day in here where I did kind of like a junk journal page. And we’ll talk about that style of journaling.
But it’s evolved into kind of this amalgamation of different styles of journaling, and I think that that’s where most people who journal often end up, is you find a couple of things that work really, really well for you, and you kind of combine them together. And I think that’s how a journal should work.
But for me, I have pages of unsent letters, I have goals, I have days where I’m like, “I can’t think of anything to write, so I’m gonna do a prompt.” and then there’s this page is filled with stickers. And I’ve done pages of Zen-tangles, and if you haven’t looked those up, take a second, look it up. They’re really great. I have… Let’s see here. Of course, like, habit trackers. I have a whole page dedicated to, like, what I’m reading and when I’m reading it. That’s always a fun one to go back to. And my journal isn’t entirely chronological.
My reminder to myself and journal beginning
So I start at the beginning, always with a page to myself to remind myself that this is a place for me to express who I am, what I’m feeling, what I’m thinking. I am under no obligation at any point in time to share this part of myself. That’s always at the beginning of every single journal. And I mean it, every single one of them.
And then from there, typically what I will do is, like, I have my long-term things, like I have a savings goal where, like, every time I hit the savings marker I, like, fill in a little section. Kind of like the, the Stitch, uh, badness level thing. If you’ve seen Lilo & Stitch, you know what I’m talking about. So I do that to save money. I also have, like, as I mentioned, my, my reading page, where, like, I go back to and it has all of my books that I’ve read, when I was reading them and things like that, and it tracks that kind of information.
Monthly spreads.
Then from there, you would usually almost immediately, whatever month I’m in at that time, you would see that monthly spread. Um, all of the smaller monthly goals that I’m tracking, the ones that don’t take as long. And I would go from there, obviously fill out my month, then usually there’s, like, an end of month recap, and then it would kind of repeat. But always, I end up kind of, flipping back and forth through it ’cause obviously at the beginning of the month is the big habit tracker for the month, and at the beginning it’s, like, my big yearly one. So there’s that.
So now that we’ve talked about personal journals, uh, if you have one, tell me about yours. And if you don’t, tell me about what kind of journal you want to learn about, because there’s so many styles and types out there. I could probably fill hundreds of hours of audio on this, and I’d love to hear your opinions on what you want to hear next.
Outro
Thanks for joining me on Journal On It, where we slow down, tune in, and turn the page together. If something resonated with you today, take a moment to journal it out and let the words lead you. You can find show notes, journal prompts, and more at the link in the episode description. Remember, growth happens one honest page at a time. Until next time, keep writing, keep reflecting, and keep showing up for yourself. I’m Shannon, and I’ll meet you back here soon.
Show Resources
Music: https://pixabay.com/music/beats-whispering-vinyl-loops-lofi-beats-281193/
Resources: https://positivepsychology.com/benefits-of-journaling/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6305886
https://www.verywellhealth.com/journaling-7498123
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/201309/the-good-and-the-bad-journaling
https://connectedfamilyservices.com/blog/the-pros-and-cons-to-journaling
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=4552
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/journaling-isn-t-just-good-mental-health-it-might-also-ncna1114571
