How I Finally Stuck to Journaling (Almost) Daily
Shifting your perspective is the key to overcoming mental blocks
In an ideal world, I would get up every morning and journal while having my coffee.
I’m sure I’m not alone in loving the idea of journaling, in theory. I’m a writer, so it seems natural I should be a journaler, especially since it’s helpful to have a good record of events and thoughts for memoir and personal essays.
Being a writer also means notebooks are the default gift I receive on most occasions. These gifted would-be journals stare at me from my bookshelf, judging me.
It’s also common knowledge at this point that journaling has a number of psychological benefits, including reduced stress, increased emotional intelligence, and more. These are all good things, and I would like to invite more of them into my life.
But, for some reason, I’ve struggled year after year to solidify my journaling habit. Inevitably, I journal for a few days in a row, miss one day, then another. Soon enough, a month goes by without picking up my notebook, and by then it feels like too much to try and recapture all that lost time.
The trouble was, I could never quite figure out how to journal. It sounds silly, but I’d sit and stare at the blank pages…
