Journaling and Writing for Personal Growth

Journaling is a powerful tool that few people take full advantage of. It can seem like a silly waste of time to some. However, journaling provides a ton of benefits and a surprising number of highly successful people make journaling a daily habit. 

You can learn a lot about yourself and gain a lot of insight into your life. There’s something magical about writing that thinking alone just doesn’t have. 

While you can type your journal into your computer, most people find it more effective to use actual paper and write. 

Use these tips to take advantage of journaling to gain insight into your mind and your life: 

1. Review your day. Take a look at your day and make some notes. 

• What happened?
• How can you use this in the future?
• What did you learn?
• What mistakes did you make?
• How can tomorrow be better than today? 

2. List progress toward your goals. Think about your goals and list the progress you made toward each. If you failed to do anything to make progress toward one or more of your goals, note that, too. 

• Be proud of the progress you’ve made. 
• Become more determined by the progress you failed to make. 

3. Address your fears. Write about your fears. What are you afraid of? Why do you think you’re afraid of those things? How do your fears impact your life? What is your plan to address those fears? 

4. Choose one way to enhance yourself. Pick something you want to work on and work on it. Write about it in your journal. Perhaps you want to lose 10 pounds or strengthen your communication skills. 

• Choose something that would enhance your life and write about your thoughts, plans, and progress. 

5. List your goals each day. Writing down your goals each day is a powerful way to stay focused on them. Write your 10 most important goals each day and notice how they evolve over time. 

6. List five things that make you feel grateful. What are you grateful for? Make a list of several items each day and notice how your perspective on life changes. 

7. Write about the obstacles in your life. What’s standing in your way? List the obstacles in your life that you believe are blocking you from happiness or achieving your goals. 

8. Make a plan for the future. Aside from your specific goals, what does your dream life look like? How are you planning on getting there? Think about it and sketch out a plan. 

9. Write about what is causing you to feel negative emotions. What is getting you down? What are the situations, people, habits, and beliefs that are causing you the most grief? Why do these things bother you? What can you do about it? 

10. List the best thing and the worst thing that happened today. What are these two things and what was so great or terrible about them? 

11. Use journaling prompts. There are literally thousands of journaling prompts online you can choose to use at any time. Here are a few examples to get you started: 

• Make a travel bucket list.
• List five things you appreciate about each member of your family. Describe your ideal day.
• If I could speak to my teenage self, I would say…
• I wish that others knew I…
• I wish I could say no to… 

Journaling each day can take some time, but it’s time that’s well spent. Develop a routine that incorporates journaling into your life. It won’t be long before you begin noticing the benefits. Do what the most successful people in the world do and write about your thoughts and your life.