Are you looking for ideas for what to write in a journal? If you’re a beginner when it comes to daily journaling, we’ll walk you through the process and give you a free daily journal template to get you started!
I cannot overstate just how transformative daily journaling has been in my life. Three of four years ago I took an Artist’s Way workshop over the course of 12 weeks.
One of the biggest components of the program were the signature Morning Pages. Simply put, this journaling exercise requires you to write three pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling first thing each morning.
And if you’re wondering what the heck you write on those three pages…the simple answer is anything. There’s no right or wrong way to do them.
Over the years, I have adapted my approach and come up with daily journal template that checks all of the boxes.
So I thought I’d share some insights into what to write in a journal, talk you through the process of keeping a daily journal, and share my daily journal template.
If you’re interested in personal growth and all things self-improvement, you might enjoy the Artist’s Way. It’s a guided journey into your inner world designed at helping you connect with your inner artist and connect with your greater purpose.
Table of Contents
- Why Keep A Daily Journal In the First Place?
- What To Write In A Journal Ideas
- How To Keep A Daily Journal
- Daily Journal Template
- Where To Do Your Journaling
Why Keep A Daily Journal In the First Place?
Journaling has all kinds of benefits but for most people, it’s a place to get to know themselves better and explore their inner worlds. While there are no rules when it comes to journaling, topic often include thoughts, feelings, emotions, and accountability.
Here are a couple of the main reasons to keep a daily journal:
- Stress Reduction & General Mental Health Benefits: Similar to going to therapy, keeping a journal gives you a safe space to process your emotions, verbalize your feelings, and manage stress. Overall, this can help you gain clarity and navigate challenging experiences as they arise.
- Boost Productivity & Stay Accountable To Your Goals: A daily journal is a great place to keep track of your habits and stay accountable to your goals. Whether in a separate tracker section or in the open writing part of your journal, daily reflection and reminders are great for staying on track.
- Dive Deeper Into Your Inner World: Taking time to reflect on your values, recurring thoughts, and lived experiences helps you to gain self-awareness and get clearer on your purpose.
- Practice Gratitude: Did you know that giving thanks can literally make you feel happier? A daily journal is a wonderful place to spend a couple minutes reflecting on what you’re grateful for each day.
- Build Resilience: No matter if you struggle with confidence, self-doubt, negative self-talk or anything else, journaling helps you unpack your emotions and can help you feel empowered to take action.
What To Write In A Journal Ideas
While there are no rules when it comes to what to write in a journal, when you’re just getting started, it can be helpful to have some structure.
There are so many different types of daily journaling practices depending on your goals but here are a few of the most popular:
Gratitude Journaling
Gratitude journaling is the practice of writing a list of all the things you feel thankful for. It’s really all about shifting your focus from scarcity to abundance or from challenges to positives. Studies show that those who practiced daily gratitude had more life satisfaction, better mental health, and less anxiety and depression.
- Purpose: Cultivate daily happiness by focusing on the positive in your life.
- How to Do It: Choose either the length of the list or a length of time. Then start writing! Start with “I am grateful for” and finish the sentence until you’ve completed your list or run out of time.
Morning Pages
Morning Pages originally came from the teachings of Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way. As the name suggests, the book is all about how to connect with your inner artist and find your truest purpose in life. Morning Pages are meant to be a place for personal exploration so they rely on a stream-on-consciousness writing style. The real magic happens when you run out of obvious things to write and gain clarity on the things you might be avoiding thinking or writing about.
- Purpose: Morning Pages have a wide variety of benefits but they can help with soul searching, accountability, and connecting with your inner artist.
- How to Do It: First thing in the morning, sit down and begin writing without stopping until you’ve filled three pages. It should take roughly 15 to 40 minutes to complete depending on the size of your page and how fast you write.
Prompted Journaling
Journaling with a prompt is sort of like writing the answer to a question…but a very profound and deep question. Prompts on all kinds of topics exist or you can try writing your own!
- Purpose: This journaling style is all about self-reflection and can be very targeted on a specific concern or topic. For example, if you had a specific goal of inner child healing, then prompted journalling might be the way for you.
- How to Do It: Find a list of pre-writing prompts. Choose one prompt for each day and spend a designated amount of time writing your response. (ChatGPT can be a great way to source prompts.)
1-1-1 Journaling
The 1-1-1 Journaling Method is a simple and time efficient journaling method that’s all about accountability and goal-setting.
- Purpose: Provides a balanced yet efficient daily check-in moment.
- How to Do It: Write down 1 win for the day, 1 point of tension or anxiety, and 1 gratitude.
Memory Keeping
Have you ever heard of a One Line A Day Journal or a 5 Year Journal? These types of journals are dedicated to keeping a record of your life. They make it easy to jot down big life events and significant milestones.
- Purpose: Record life’s most important moments so you can look back on a snapshot of your past.
- How to Do It: Write one line to a one page per day that goes by. Make sure you include the most important things happening in your life from career milestones to significant events like weddings.
If one of these techniques calls out to you, give it a try and see how it goes! Or you can try out several techniques to see what fits you best.
And if you’re feeling totally unsure and overwhelmed, it might be helpful to reflect on why you want to start journaling in the first place.
Are you looking to process difficult emotions and experiences? Why not try targeted Prompted Journaling?
Or maybe you want to feel happier on a day-to-day basis? Well then maybe a gratitude journal is right for you.
Are you someone who struggles to remember the past? Keeping a short summary of you day helps to record all the important events in your life.
How To Keep A Daily Journal
When it comes to starting a new habit, the biggest challenges can be forgetfulness and motivation. Luckily there are two really solid strategies that you can use to combat these obstacles.
First, in order to not forget to complete your journal, I recommend habit stacking. That means choosing an existing habit and tackling journaling on right after it. For me, that means making my morning coffee. As soon as my coffee is ready, I head to my sofa and begin journaling.
Another great tip is to put it into your calendar so you always hold the space you need for it.
Secondly, if you find that you often struggle to find the motivation to continue a new habit, you might be starting too big.
Try starting really small with just one line a day or three gratitudes. From there you can slowly slowly build up to more.
Similar to the law of inertia, an object in motion stays in motion. So don’t try to go from 0 to 100 overnight, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle with that one.
Daily Journal Template
As I mentioned, starting the practice of Morning Pages several years ago has seriously changed my life. Though at times it can feel hard to honor the time I have set aside to do it, when I am in a good consistent streak, I see all kinds of benefits in my life.
For me, it really comes down to starting accountable to myself and listening to my inner voice – particularly when I’m doing everything in my power to block it out.
So with that, I’v developed a daily journal template that takes me exactly 20 minutes each day to do and it include these five sections:
Section 1: Header
This section is the header and includes the date and the time. It’s an essential in any daily journal and keeping the time front and center means that it’s easy to check when 20 minutes is up.
Section 2: Habit Tracker
At the top of my journal I keep a habit tracker. Typically, I choose 3 to 5 new habits that I’m constantly working on forming. The top one to two tend to stay consistent but as I master new habits, or my priorities shift, I swap out the bottom two to three habits.
Unlike a traditional habit tracker, this forces me to focus on a max of five goals which is the secret to making new behavior stick anyways – not trying to do everything at once that is.
Section 3: Free-Form Stream-of-Consciousness
In this section, I write stream-of-consciousness without letting myself take a break – even if that means writing “I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what to write…”
Having this no-pause rule is excellent for getting the things that are top of mind on the page and then forcing yourself to delve deeper and explore the thoughts and feelings that you might be resisting. For me, I typically spend 15 minutes on this section and when the time is up I move to the next section.
Section 4: Gratitude
When I have 5 minutes left to complete my journaling, I begin writing down all of the things that I am thankful for on any given day. I start with “I am grateful for…” and continue until I am out of time.
Section 5: To Dos
I’ve found that when I’m journaling all kinds of to dos start to surface that break my focus. I would get tempted to multi-task by putting something in my calendar or shooting off a quick email or text. I now have a rule where I give my 20 minutes of journaling perfect focus but as to dos come up, I jot them down on this list so I can reference and act on them later in the day.
Where To Do Your Journaling
Okay, so you’re all hyped and ready to start your daily journal. What’s next?
Now you get to decide where you want to journal and your first big choice is physical versus digital. While there are advantages to both, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:
Physical
- No distractions
- Fun to buy cute new journals
- Handwriting can be uncomfortable for some
Digital
- Free
- You will always have it on hand as long as you have your phone with you
- Everything indefinitely can be saved in one place
My favorite place to journal is just in Apple Notes. I love that I can access it on my phone or computer and that it automatically updates across devices.
No matter where I am, if I have my phone, I have no excuse not to journal and sometimes I like to scroll back to a random day and reflect on what my life was like a couple weeks, months or years ago.
I’ve created a free downloadable template that you can open in your Apple Notes app and start journalling right away.
Final Thoughts
Journalling is a simple but highly effective daily habit that has the power to transform your life.
If you’re wondering what to write in a journal, we hope you found this post helpful.
When it comes to journaling there really are no rules so follow your intuition and notice what works for you.
Developing a personalized practice is essential for getting the specific benefits you desire and building a life-long habit.
Happy journaling,
A small note to my readers – Over here at VLHhealth, we occasionally include affiliate links in our posts. This means that if you purchase using our links, we will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
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