Though you might not feel that you are a writer, if you stop to listen to your brain, you can hear a number of thoughts rumbling around at any given time. These thoughts might be causing you to feel more stressed than you were before, or they might be making you feel distracted, which causes you to become behind in work or in other areas of your life. By using a journal as a daily practice, you can begin to unload the many thoughts in your head, making room for peace and creating a place for stress monitoring.
How to Journal to Relieve Stress
What you’ll want to do for this stress monitoring practice is to begin with a journal of your choosing. This could be a file on your computer or it could be a basic loose leaf notebook you have at home. Create a time when you will not be disturbed and write four pages each day about what’s in your brain. This journal doesn’t have to be well written, it doesn’t have to make sense, and it’s never going to be read by someone else. The goal is just to let all of your stressful thoughts fall onto the paper and leave them there. It can help to do these pages at the same time every day since this will allow it to become a habit, but if this is not possible, that’s okay too. You will want to do this journaling everyday, helping to create a notebook of all of your stressful thoughts in order to let them go.
Should You Read What You’ve Written?
It might be tempting to look back over what you’ve written, but in the beginning, this is not a good idea. You might find you don’t like what you’ve written, so you might begin to change the way you write. This is not the point of this stress monitoring tool. Your goal is simply to write down what you're thinking and get it out of your mind. Once it’s written down, you don’t have to look at it ever again. But if you are concerned about your stress monitoring, it can help to look at your journal after a month has passed to see if there are any things which jump out at you in terms of causes of your stress. In this way, you can see what you need to change in your life.
When to Stop
Journaling is a lifelong practice for many people, helping them to organize their minds and their worries. But for those who aren’t as sure about writing all the time, you might want to stop after a few months. This will allow you to get a handle on your stress and you could always return to the journaling again if you like. It's not just about your stress, that's your life.
