Journalling is not necessarily about keeping a log of your day-to-day activities but refers to taking time to write down your thoughts and feelings.

Journalling may help you:

• Clarify your thoughts and feelings, providing you with increased self-awareness

• Manage stress, fear, or anxiety; writing down your problems can help you think about them more clearly and identify possible solutions. It can also help minimise the intensity of feelings

• Work through traumatic events by allowing you to process and release the emotions that were involved

• Increase happiness and well-being by starting a habit of writing down people and things you are grateful for and why you appreciate them

• If you are working toward a health goal, tracking your healthy behaviours can really help to validate your progress and can fuel motivation.

Tips for journalling:

• Try to make it a habit - Write something every day. It doesn’t matter how “good” it is—it just matters that you wrote something!

• Make it easy - Keep a pen and your journal with you so you can write whenever you feel like it

• Make time for it - Look at your schedule to see where you could carve out 5 to 10 minutes of writing time

• Don’t stress about it - You don’t need to worry about proper grammar or punctuation, or the quality of your handwriting, when you are journalling

• Keep it private - It is best if you journal honestly, without worrying what others might think of what you are writing.

You may wish to keep your journal for your eyes only. If you do want to show someone you trust—a friend, a counsellor, or a loved one—you may want to plan to only show them select pages that you are okay with them reading.

**Adapted from VeryWellMind