When I tell people how journaling has helped me transform every area of my life, the most common response I get is: "I know I should journal more, but I just don't know what to journal about."
What I say to that is, let’s back up one step.
First you need to ask yourself: What do you want to get out of your journaling practice?
You can't know what to journal about if you don't even know why you're journaling to begin with.
After you answer that question, THEN you can explore techniques to uncover what you should journal about.
I like to think of journalers in two* different buckets:
Release-focused journalers, and
Intention-oriented journalers
*You can be in both (I am and lots of people I know are too)!
Release-Focused Journaling
If you want to use journaling as a release and you’re looking for a safe space to unpack triggers and feelings, a place that you can just let it all out, you’re in the first bucket.
You are someone who would benefit from using stream of conscious journaling. This is where you put whatever's on your mind straight onto the page.
Julia Cameron talks about this type of journaling in her amazing book, "The Artist's Way".
In this case, the WHAT is not your issue. The WHAT is your mind’s chatter.
Instead, you might have some resistance to allowing whatever is going on within to come out on the page. That’s totally normal. It can be confronting to see our thoughts staring back at us in ink. But getting to know yourself in this way will be one of the most rewarding and impactful journeys of your life!
But if that’s not you (and even if it is), you might also be in the second bucket of journalers, intention-focused.
Intention-Focused Journaling
If you’re someone who wants to use journaling to move towards an intention, like finally quitting your job and launching your soul-led business, or getting out of a self-sabotage cycle of being in unhealthy relationships, then you’re in the second bucket.
There are lots of techniques like inner child healing or shadow work that you can use to move you towards your intention depending on what’s holding you back. Once you know the technique, you’ll know the prompts to use.
In the pages of my 25 journals that I've filled over the last 6 years, I have been able to move through some pretty miraculous transformations.
I've healed my binge eating pattern of swinging up to 20 pounds a month!!
I've healed from a divorce and attracted the most divine, conscious partnership I could have ever dreamed of!
I've courageously restructured my real estate business to have the energy to launch and run my soul-led business!
I've attracted sacred sisterhood and redefined the meaning of relationships in my life.
And these are just the highlights and don't even begin to scratch the surface on all the internal transformations I've made like finding internal peace, untangling and healing younger parts of me.
If you want to see what's possible for you when you go within and really start to uncover who you are and why you do what you do, conscious journaling is an amazing place to start!
P/s: If you're someone who already has a journaling practice and you're ready to take it even deeper, check out the free training on the conscious journaling framework to go deeper!
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