Learn to Unlock Your Creativity with Journaling
Journaling is one of those things that I have been doing as long as I can remember. In fact, when I was in 4th grade, my best friend in elementary school gave me a 5-year journal. Honestly, I wish I had never gotten rid of that journal. Unfortunately, I went through a de-cluttering phase several years ago and got rid of a lot of my writing from my youth – perhaps this is one of the reasons I struggle with de-cluttering! I have done it before and regretted what I got rid of!
Journaling has been something that has grounded me for almost my entire life it seems. And today, we are going to discuss how to unlock your creativity by putting pen to paper. This is one of my favorite ways to focus on crafting my dream life, and I believe it will help you as well!
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What is Journaling?
Before we get too far, I think it is important to define what I mean when I say journaling. Anytime you write anything down on paper, I qualify that as journaling. It doesn’t need to be a beautiful journal. Nor does it have to be something that is meticulously put together. It can be scribbles, it can be notes, it can be lists, it can be paragraphs of creative writing, or getting all of your emotions out on paper.
Whenever you are writing down your thoughts, whatever those may be, that is what I consider journaling.
Now, you will find a lot of other people consider it to be more of a memory-keeping exercise. Yes, that can also work, however for unlocking your creativity, we need to be a bit more broad.
Different types of Journaling
There are so many different ways to journal, we should get some of them out there so that you know what I am talking about.
The first type of journal is the journal where you write all of your thoughts. Think of this as stream-of-consciousness writing. You sit down, maybe in the morning, and write out as much or as little as you want. Getting all of your thoughts down on paper allows you to let go of some of the stress in your life, and helps open your mind up to creative pursuits.
Then there is the brain dump type of journal. This is perfect if you have constant nagging thoughts that keep blocking your creativity. Instead of being able to move on with your goals, these nagging thoughts keep cropping up. A master to-do list or brain dump journal is a great way to, again, get the thoughts out of your head so you can focus on more creative projects.
The last type of journal I want to chat about is the goals journal. This is a place where you sit and reflect on your goals, on your life, on how things are going. The purpose is for goals, but it is a landing spot for ideas for new projects and goal ideas for the future. It also is a great tool to look back on when you are struggling with limiting beliefs or need a little inspiration to see how far you have come.
Of course these aren’t the only types of journals. Some others that I love to use are gratitude journals, book journals, journals for memory-keeping, scrapbooks and scatterbooks, common place journals, 5-year journals. Honestly, the list goes on and on.
Make way for Creativity
The first benefit of journaling is that it helps remove mental clutter. When you take the time to brain dump and get all the thoughts out of your head, it allows you to make a plan with what you actually need to do, figure out the tasks that can immediately be trashed, and move items to a new list for considering later. There are so many amazing ways to do a brain dump, and I recommend it to everyone I chat with. We are not meant to keep so much stuff in our brains. It stifles our creativity. Last month I shared a whole workshop in my membership community all about creating master-to-do lists and how to use a brain dump to reduce the mental load. You can find that workshop here.
The next benefit is that it helps with reflection. We all need to reflect on our thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Taking the time to journal allows us to reflect and gain new perspective. And when you do it enough, it allows you to see new creative ideas come out, because you start to write more about the ideas that you have, and want to work on.
Another benefit is that it fosters a creative practice automatically. When you build the habit of journaling, it helps to fuel creativity. Similar to journaling for reflection, once you do it enough, new ideas start to form that lead to other ideas. After a while, you will want to start a list of creative ideas that you can draw from when your tank isn’t in a creative mood.
Finally, it boosts self-confidence. Remember when we talked about limiting beliefs? The more you write about things, the more confidence you will have in writing, and it will lead to more creative pursuits.
The Bottom Line
Writing itself does not have to be the creative endeavor that you continue to foster while crafting your dream life. However, it will lead to new ideas and stretch your brain to come up with those new ideas. That is why journaling helps unlock creativity. And when we unlock creativity, we can start to problem-solve, we start to view life differently, we are aware of the changes that we want to make.
It is a wonderful way to encourage a creative lifestyle, and it is something that I hope to focus more on in the coming year as part of my goals.
Do you have a regular journaling practice? If not, what is holding you back?
