The Power of A Journal and How to Use It

Over the past couple of decades, dozens of studies have shown that certain journaling practices can positively impact a variety of outcomes, including happiness, goal attainment, and even some aspects of physical health. This research is often challenging to locate, given that the word “journaling” is not often used by investigators. Instead, they may label their interventions with names like “setting implementation intentions” or “engaging in expressive writing.”

Some of the effects of journaling are well-known. Most of us know, for instance, that keeping a gratitude journal can improve mood, an idea that first gained traction in a seminal paper published in 2003 by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Although versions of this practice differ slightly, the basic idea is to write down a few good things that occur every day for anywhere from 2 to 10 weeks. They can be big things like “I just got a new job” or small things we might normally overlook, like “The flowers in the back yard were blooming today.” Given the turmoil in our world, it’s easy to overlook the little things that fill us with gratitude, instead focusing exclusively on the many negatives around us. Journaling may be a way of “hacking into” the brain, helping us be more mindful of the positive.

Taking 15 or 20 minutes to write freely about emotions, secrets or upheaval can be a powerful tonic, says James Pennebaker, a psychology professor at the University of Texas and author. Dr. Pennebaker says writing privately about traumatic experiences, even for as few as four consecutive days, can reduce stress, help people sleep and improve their immune systems.

“When you translate an emotional experience into words, it organizes them in ways not organized before. It makes them simpler and easier to get past,” he says. There is some evidence that writing about emotional issues on social media can be beneficial for health in ways similar to writing privately, he says, but that research is new and not definitive.

More than anything else a journal is a place to document the development of your own life. It is a textbook of self-discovery and self-awareness. In the pages of a journal, our innermost feelings and dreams are revealed, as are our strengths, our weaknesses, our positive attributes, and our negative habits and characteristics. If not in the words themselves, then at least between the lines of what we have written are the shadows of self-doubt, pride, envy, jealousy, and anger. Just as actions speak louder than words, so too will journals often say more than what we have written.

When you live each day with intentionality, there’s almost no limit to what you can do. You can transform yourself, your family, your community, and your nation. When enough people do that, they can change the world. When you intentionally use your everyday life to bring about positive change in the lives of others, you begin to live a life that matters.