"Journal writing is the voyage to the interior."
~Christina Baldwin
Journaling is something I once thought wasn't for me. The perfectionist within me couldn't fathom making a mistake and the over-thinker inside me always pictured someone hundreds of years from now reading and judging me.
Combine the two and I ended up in frozen unable to write so I avoided it. I would push it off saying I'll do it tomorrow but tomorrow would never come. If you told that version of me 5 years ago that journaling would be my favorite part of my day they would have been awestruck and disbelieving. But I swear it. Its true. It took me months of consistently retrying and finding new ways to go about it before I was about to fall in love with it.
As someone who now loves journaling, I am going to share some of my favorite additions and ways to start off your journal and set it up for success, from someone who has now consistently journaled for the last 4 years!
Take what you love, leave what you don't. Everyone's journal should be personalized to themselves!
Tip #1 - Write yourself a letter
You've got your journal. Before you do anything, write yourself a letter. Talk about what you've accomplished, where you are in life, where you see yourself at the end of this journal and your hopes and dreams during this time period. Then seal it up in an envelope and paste it at the front of the notebook. This is amazing to reread when you finish your journal. The feeling of flipping to the front of the journal and seeing how far you've grown mentally and in life. Sometimes we don't realize how much our lives change in such small amounts of time until we have it written on paper in front of our eyes.
Tip #2 - Title page!
Title your journal! Mark it as yours! You can even add a cheesy, "my eyes only" or "no peaking" note underneath. Just make it yours. This is not anyone else's journal. It's your story, your thoughts, your mind, your words. For my title page I often add the date I am starting and leave a blank spot to fill in later on the ending date. I decorate it based on how I'm feeling in that moment of time and remind myself mistakes I make are things I will laugh about when or if I go back and reread these one day. It's not a mistake but an accidental addition.
Tip #3 - Junk folder... (for the knick knacks you collect)
If you're anything like me, you keep every note, receipt, letter, photo, ticket, ect... Just for the memories. I found that I would often loose these little scraps or leave them lying around in hopes to find a time to make a journal page with it but ended up loosing them before I could! The solution I found is a small folder at the front of my journal. The first page beside my title page is folded halfway to make a weird triangle then taped at the bottom and sides to create a tiny folder. Here, I store journal prompt pages, quotes I've printed out, all those memories I'm saving to create a page with, stickers I want to use even.
It's really just a junk drawer for your journal! Not only do I feel organized but it keeps the pressure off of me from feeling like I have to glue something in my journal simply to keep it! Now, I can simply place it in my folder!
Tip #4 - An about me page (and picture)
Adding onto the first tip, the first couple pages after my title, I always dedicate to "about me". I got inspiration for this part from one of my favorite authors, Jessa Hastings, who changes her "about the author" section in every book because she says how she is always changing. When I read that I thought, how cool and how accurate. It's now one of my favorite things to read in a book, just to learn about the authors. And you are the author of your journal.
Some examples I've done:
Favorite movies/tv shows/songs
Most recent book you've read
Current celebrity crush
Best friend at the moment
Go-to outfit (bonus if you include a photo)
Smells that you adore
Are you dating? If so, who?
Whats the most adventurous things you've done?
Who's the last person you called?
Favorite quote and why
The food you've been stuck on recently
3 things you love/fear
Something you're looking forward to
These are so fun to repeat questions in every journal you do and see yourself growing up right in front of your eyes. In addition to writing, I like to include a picture of myself, sometimes even a drawing of myself at the time.
Tip #5 - Journal Prompts
Sometimes, we get stuck and we don't know what to write. To combat the writers block that sometimes occurs, after my 'about me' pages, I put a list of journal prompts. I will also leave a blank, like a table of contents, on the right side for the page number I completed it on so I can go back and reread quickly if I ever want to. Another option I've done in the past is putting a topic on the front of a notecard and adding a list of journal prompts about that topic on the other side. Then I place these inside my junk folder I made at the front of my journal and when I get stuck I'll pull one of these notecards out.
You could honestly do both if you wanted to! (I've done it like that too)
Some journal prompts to get you started:
Your favorite memories and why
Rant about what happened today
What did you enjoy as a child?
What makes you feel content?
Where do you feel at home?
How do you show love?
What drains you?
Write out three dream days
Best compliments you have received and why they stuck with you
Dear younger me...
Books you want to read or movies you want to see
10 things that you love
Your IN's and OUT's
A monthly recap
All the things you are grateful for
Favorite songs at the moments and the lyrics that speak to you
How does your dream partner make you feel?
Where are you 5 years from now?
Have fun with it and embrace the mistakes and the learning process.
I've done a post in the past on an Introduction to Journaling, if you are brand new to this, I suggest reading it. It tells you different types of journaling, and ways to go about it after the set up process. Truly journaling can be life changing, but consistency is key. Remember that mistakes are just funny additions for later in life when or if you reread these words. Your journal is meant to be messy. For me, I used to think of it as a very nice outfit that I could hardly do anything while wearing without fearing I'd mess it up. But once I began to shift my mindset to "messy comfy outfit" the real beauty of the journaling occurred. I told myself these pages are MEANT to be messy, they are seeing messy words and messy writing and messy life because life is not perfect and it never will be.... perfection does not exist. Now, in my mind, my journal is a comfortable outfit that is meant to be worn around the house and worked in, slept in, worn to its very end.
It is not that perfect outfit you wear once... and if you treat it so, you'll never gain consistency and you wont see the results you are looking for.
I hope this helps you to set up your journal and to give you some advice when it comes to getting started. See you on the first of the next month!
All my love,
Brooklyn.
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