Name: how i finally started journaling *and actually enjoying it*
Uploaded: 2020-03-12T01:50:59.000Z
Duration: 16 min 17 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Gerund

So today I just wanted to build a little sit down and chat video, talking about how I started journaling because believe it or not, for the first, like okay, not like 21 years of my life, because I don't think I knew what journaling was when I was literally fresh out of the room for a long time in my life.

Modal verbs - A2

As long as I can remember, I always wanted to be somebody who journal because I thought it would be so cool to have a record of my life to look back on.

But it seemed like no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get it to be a habit that stuck until around three months ago.

And now journaling is one of my favorite activities.

I have filled up literally, like 150 pages of his journal.

In the past couple of months, I've been doing a lot.

It's been helping me a lot mentally, and it's something that I think has definitely made me a better person over the past couple of months, like you girls still a work in progress.

But I actually like making steps towards kind of like being at peace with my own thoughts and being able to self reflect Maur and really think about my priorities in life, which was something that I feel like before was lost in, like the hustle and bustle of my crazy day today.

So if you guys are like me and you have always wanted to journal what you're just not quite sure how to start or how to get motivated, this is the video for you.

I'm actually so my first and most important, it is going to sound very they and it's a little hard to explain, but basically I think it's super important to set your intentions properly.

The main reason that I really failed to journal in the past was that my heart wasn't really in the right place.

I used to see journaling as more of this, like aesthetic, productive, aspirational lifestyle type of activity, like I didn't actually enjoy the process of thinking deeply about my life and writing it out.

What I wanted was like the identity of a tumbler girl who has her journal also is an excuse to buy more stationary.

That was a big reason for me, like I mostly just enjoyed buying journals and not actually writing in them.

Journaling is not about the goal of filling up a book.

It's not about the image of being this like artsy, productive person.

It is about the actual process of journaling.

So if you don't enjoy that, you're not ever gonna get yourself to do it, because why would you do something that you don't enjoy?

For much of my life, my priorities were very much just climbing the career ladder as fast as possible and having as much like quote unquote success as possible.

So I really never ended off prioritizing, journaling or any other type of like self care or self reflection or self exploration.

I just was so focused on school and success in a very traditional sense that anything else seemed like a waste of my time.

A lot of us feel like too busy and too self assured to do that, but I think is as you grow up, you realize there's a lot more like death to your own, your own head in your own complex and your own personality, and it becomes very exciting to be able to discover those things.

So, yeah, now that I know what I want to get out of journaling, it is so much easier to actually sit down and do it because I have a real reason behind it.

And I feel like a genuinely something that benefits me.

And it's not just this kind of like aesthetic activity trying to force myself into another thing that really helped me get on this journal and kick was basically like the only times I've journal throughout my life earlier were when I was on plane, right?

And so I probably have, like, three journal entries before the past three months.

But a couple months ago, I was clearing out my computer, and I stumbled across this old journal entry from like, two years ago, and it was just like the most incredible thing to read I had never experienced before, like the joy of being able to look back at the thoughts of my past self and this time capsule of what my life was like and even like I was so sassy back then.

And I just loved it because I was so proud of this old version of me for, I don't know, like sticking it out for everything that was going on in my life then for still having this, like sense of humor about me, even though I was very confused and young in college.

And I still am confused, although not in college anymore.

That experience gave me a taste for the first time off.

This joy would feel later on in life when I can go back like 3 10 100 years from now.

If technology gets that good and read this journal and really just, like, rejoice in the nostalgia if you are a nostalgic person like me and you're looking for some motivation.

If you have ever journal in your life or you have even, like, written a poem, you jotted down some thoughts.

Go back and look at it because it'll help you realize, like what, 10 years down the line, journaling now building for you and it will encourage you to like make that investment.

Now I know it's a really special feeling, and it's a feeling that I want to be able to repeat in the future, and I think that you guys will do so.

My second tip is to take the pressure off yourself.

Another reason that journaling never clicked with me an earlier age was because I had heard of hold these rules and I was trying to follow them while I journal.

But it actually made it a much worse experience for myself.

Like I had read a lot about turning things into a habit.

So I would start a new notebook and I would tell myself, actually have to journal every single day for the next year.

And lo and behold, like three days into my years worth of journaling, I would fall off the wagon.

I would forget a day, and then I already felt like a failure.

And then that journal would just sit at the bottom of my desk for, like all of my other journals.

If routine works for you, you could make it work, But what I have personally found works best for me is literally just journaling when I feel like it and when I feel the need to.

To me, it's like the difference between having an assignment to read a book in class and reading a book for Ledger.

One of them is much more exciting because I feel like when you give yourself assignment like journal every single day and right X number of pages, it becomes a dragon.

Just become something that you do to check off the box rather than really being able to enjoy the process and just do it for yourself.

Some weeks when I'm like in panic mode where I have a lot going on, I'm writing every single day because I feel like I have these thoughts that I have to process.

I feel content with life and I, my journal a little less often because my head is less hectic and I feel the need to less.

Another thing I wish I knew, is that there are no rules when it comes to journaling whatsoever.

I used to think a main purpose of journaling.

Waas have an incredibly detailed record of my life so that I could look back in 10 years and essentially read a biography of myself there some days where I do enjoy recounting the activities that occurred.

But more often than not, when I'm listing out every single thing that I did in a day, it's not exciting, and I literally get bored writing.

And that is something you want to avoid like the plague, because it's an activity for you.

And you should only write things that you feel like are revealing or exciting to write about or feel therapeutic to write about so you don't need to frickin like right what you had for lunch.

That's what's gonna matter to you 10 years from now.

I think what really matters is talking about events.

And like little vignettes in your life that are important, you literally don't even have to talk about your day at all.

You could just like stream of conscious right about your feelings or your emotions, or like one moment that happened the day.

Also, your writing does not have to be well worded or beautiful or cohesive.

You don't have to have transitions between your paragraphs as a three right and concentration in school.

This was a pressure that I felt for a while, because I do take pride in, like the craft of writing.

But you have to let go of that perfectionist tendency and realize that you're not writing for anybody but yourself.

You're not writing a school essay where you need your main idea and a piece, a statement and then like evidence to support it like there is no format, there are no rules.

The only person who's gonna be reading it is maybe you 10 years from now, and there's absolutely no pressure to write in any specific style.

Granted, I do like kind of throwing in jokes here in there, just like you told me to read.

Like my journal, I would say, is 75% free flowing thoughts for my current brain and then, like 25% me, just like talking to older me and trying to be a little bit entertaining for myself.

An important choice when it comes to journaling is do you want to do it digitally or physically.

Digitally obviously has its advantages of being much faster because you could type faster than you can write.

It is easier to read if you want to look back on it, and it's also very easily searchable and editable.

So I have thought like, Oh, what if I want to start like this one boy's name I went out for like for it would be so hard to find in this, but it would be much easier to find in a digital document.

However, I do really prefer drilling in a physical notebook.

I feel like it is a much more meditative experience, and something feels really good about, like the physical processes, getting your thoughts out with your hand.

It's something so different than typing, and my favorite thing is that gives me an opportunity to get out my thoughts without feeling the pressure to go back and edit some.

Especially because I always always writing pen.

Once it the sentence, I'm flowing with it, of course, here and there I'm gonna go back and cross out a word or two.

But if you, like generally look at a page like this has one word crossed out on it, and it's an entire two page spread.

I feel like if I'm typing on a computer, it's just so easy to go back and edit something that I'm going to after I write like a paragraph and like, Oh, the sentence could be better structured.

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how i finally started journaling and actually enjoying it

literally

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incredibly

process