We recently caught up with Christine Steel from My Mind Health to discover why journaling is great for your mental health. This is what she said:
What’s the link between journaling and mental health?
Journaling is classed as a Keystone habit. Keystone habits are established practices that influence other actions throughout the day. Journaling is the most potent and powerful Keystone habit you can acquire.
Journaling helps improve your mood, concentration, creative thinking, problem solving skills and helps you to build meaningful friendships and relationships.
Why is journaling so good for your mental health?
Journaling is so good for your mental health because it puts you in the driver’s seat of your life where you can feel more in control of your daily tasks and it puts your mental health in a much better place. Journaling can help you to craft your life with intention.
Journaling brings out the best in you on a daily basis by releasing any pent up emotions lurking just under the surface and freeing your thoughts and feelings from pressure and helping you to relax and to be more yourself.
Over the longer term journaling can move you forward with more clarity and motivation and can help you to move any obstacles that have been holding you back by a weighted past.
How important is it to have journaling in your tool kit?
Consider the impact journaling can have on your overall life experiences. By writing down your thoughts and feelings you will be processing your emotions and learning how they actually affect you.
This will help you to grow as a person, build your self-confidence and your emotional resilience, you will be more mindful and understanding of yours and other people’s life experiences.
By writing down your ideas and dreams you will bring purpose, intention and focus into your daily life, affecting every decision you make and to take you where you want to get to. Journaling has the potential to improve every area of your life.
Your wellbeing will be greatly improved and your mental health will be in a healthier place.
You have all the answers within you and with the power of journaling, together you can design your own destiny.
Where can I start journaling?
It is important to recognise that journaling is personal to you. The best place to start is by finding a quiet place, often before bed or first thing in the morning.
Write a few words to start with, maybe about how you are feeling or what and who you are grateful to have in your life. These three thoughts are often all you need to get you off to a good start.
I have created a de-stress tool that can help you to get started on your journey of journaling. It provides a safe space for you to write as little or as much as you like, as many times as you wish, with a unique feature you have to press delete and let it go.
Letting go of those daily frustrations can make you feel so good. You get to write exactly how you feel with no fear of being judged, no fear of any come back from anyone else. You are freeing up your mind and improving your mental health.
My Mind Health is free of charge and collects no personal details – it’s simply a space to write freely and let go. Why not try it out now?
The vision of My Mind Health is to help you to become comfortable with writing your thoughts and feelings and processing your emotions.
Once this is achieved you may start hearing from other students who are facing the same or similar concerns. From this, conversations might start and you can share your stories, whilst building bonds with others.
The vision is also to help strengthen your commitment to yourself to encourage you to take the time to reflect and build a journaling practice as a preventative measure to help care for your mental health.
Who is Christine Steel?
Founder of mymindhealth.com and mobilemindsonline.com
(Mind Health And Wellbeing Limited and Mobile Minds By Design respectively)
“Education is my passion, but when education and health collide inside your loved one, it becomes a desperate situation.
Unable to help my daughter at the time, it’s now my mission to help stop other students suffering the same level of anxiety and stress as my daughter, and prevent burnout happening to them. We need to make sure there is a balance between education and health.
Reducing stress for students is where my journey started when researching what would be of value to share with students to help and support their challenges of daily life affecting their mental health.
The power of journaling stood out as one of the fundamental areas in helping to reduce the anxiety and stress of daily pressures and helping to unlock long term deeply hidden issues blocking students from building their confidence, self-esteem and emotional resilience.”
