How to Journal for Personal Development to See Results!

Here’s How to Journal for Personal Development to See Results!

written by Ana

posted on Oct 20, 2022

Most likely you have heard that journalling is an easy-to-implement daily habit that can help to improve your wellbeing. Letting go of worrying thoughts and self-reflecting regularly can do wonders for your mental health.

But, did you know that journalling can also be beneficial for personal development?

You might be wondering how writing can help you become a better version of yourself and if that’s the case, where do you start, and what do you write about?

In this blog post, we will explain how journalling can help you elevate your performance at work or school and break down what and how to write in a journal for personal development.

How does writing a journal help a person with personal growth and development?

If you are someone who has tried keeping a diary in the past or use a planner at work but haven’t seen any drastic impact these things had on your life, you might be sceptical to the thought that journalling can be any different. For a complete beginner, it might be helpful to learn about the difference between a diary, a journal and a planner first.

Moreover, for any habit to stick and make improvements to your life, you need to set aside some time to work on it regularly. How much time to spend journalling depends from person to person but writing a little every day can help you grow.

So, how does writing a journal can help you with personal growth and development?

Journalling regularly can boost your creativity, strengthen self-discipline by writing down your goals and keep track of your progress. It also gives you an opportunity to reflect on your experiences, behavior and observations that in turn can help you to learn from them. The practice of writing a journal can improve how your brain intakes, processes, retains and retrieves information.

What should I journal for self-growth?

Here are some ideas to write about in your journal if you want to increase your productivity, performance and elevate self-growth:

Write down your goals and keep track of your progress
Express gratitude – note down things you are grateful for
Journal about your worries and problems
Reflect on your experiences, behavior and observations
Write down your weaknesses and strengths
Make an action plan for your goals
Do a brain dump to clear your head
Answer the question of the day every day

Now that you know what to write about, it’s time to figure out how to actually write everything down in your journal to have a structured process that will certainly help you in your personal development journey.

If you just got a journal and don’t know how to strat, you can read an article that Adrianna wrote on Medium talking about how she uses her journal while doing her Master’s degree and interning in the vision lab!

How to write a journal for personal development (7 Easy Steps)

Step 1: Do an evaluation of different aspects of your life

A good starting point for any self-growth and personal development journey is analysing where you stand. By critically analysing your current situation, whether it’s related to your career, relationships, health, or studies you can see what aspects of your life you want to change.

It can give you an overview of the room for improvement in certain areas and on which aspect you should start working first.

Step 2: Move on to the practice of self-reflection

After you evaluated where you stand in different aspects of your life, it’s time to reflect on your thoughts, believes, feelings and patterns. Self-awareness is very important for any change to happen in our lives. With better awareness, you can be in control of your thoughts and emotions and have more perspective.

So, it’s worth taking some time of your day to write in your journal for personal development about your dreams, aspirations, desires and your highs and lows. That way you can stay present and observe yourself and gain another perspective.

When practicing self-reflection, it is very important to include both positives and negatives. Very often we simply concentrate on bad things happening in our lives but focusing on the positive helps us to see the whole picture.

Step 3: Set your personal goals

Now that you have identified the areas of your life that need improvement and are aware of your strengths and weaknesses, the next step would be writing down your goals. You can do it on a number of levels such as:

1. Create a big picture of what you want to achieve in your life. You can write 10 things you want to have in all areas of your life including health and fitness, career and business, finance and net worth, romance and relationships, family and friends, recreation and hobbies, spiritual.

Or if you are like me and prefer to look at what you want to achieve every day, you can print pictures that represent each of your goals and glue them in your notebook or stick them on a white board (I did both):

2. Have a set of smaller goals to get to the big picture. You can do it by creating a one-month, six-months or a one-year plan of progressively smaller goals. Each off these new smaller goals should be based on the previous goals that are now accomplied.

3. Start working on your goals. You can do it by having a daily To-Dos list with the checkboxes you can tick once you’ve accomplished the task.

Writing down your goals and having them on the display helps you to visualize that you have accomplished them. Also, it’s easier to keep a record of the things you want to do by having them written down rather than keeping them in your mind.

Step 4: Write about things that stop you from growing

Even though you have your big picture, practice self-reflection and have your goals figured out and working on them, you might feel like there is something holding you back.

If that’s the case, it would be useful to dedicate some time to think and write down about things that might be stopping you from achieving your dreams.

It varies from person to person, while for someone it might be their upbringing, past trauma, or problems with physical or mental health. Or maybe you are someone who procrastinates a lot or has a tough time at work.

Trying to figure it out will help to make progress toward the resolution.

Step 5: Try to come up with solutions

It’s very important not to just talk or write about things that stop you from improving your life, but to propose solutions. Try to think and write down ways how you can make things at least a little bit better or completely change something.

Step 6: Keep a record of your learning

Learning and practicing what you’ve learned is a key to self-growth. Your journal is a perfect place to take notes and record what you’ve learned. If you read a book that gave you powerful insights or listed to a podcast, make an entry in your journal with key takeaways so you can always come back to it.

You can also take your journal for personal development to online or in-person seminars you’re planning to attend to always have it at hand. Some people find it very helpful to make notes of key points from the conversations with their mentors, supervisors or managers with useful feedback for future learning.

Step 7: Review your progress – ask a question of the day and do a 5-minute evaluation

The efficiency of keeping a journal is not only in writing down your plans and keeping record of your thoughts, but it also lets you to analyse your experiences and learning. Looking back at what you wrote and spending some time reviewing your progress can help you get a perspective of how far you’ve got in your personal development journey.

Tip: Make sure to put the date on your entries to reflect on your journal in the months and years to come.

One way to review your progress in a journal would be asking yourself a question and write an answer. Here are the examples of questions you can use to review your progress to date and see what you can do next:

– What have I achieved to date for each of my goals?

– What’s working and not working for the actions I set for each goal?

– Have you developed or strengthen new habits?

Answering these sort of questions can help you to see if you’ve made any progress in achieving your goals or sticking to a new habit.

Or simply evaluating at the end of the day or each week how much you have accomplished or what obstacles you encountered when trying to do what you planned, can be a good indication of you progress. Setting 5 minutes aside to do it once in a while can do wonders for your personal development.

Are you journalling for personal development? What do you like to write about when it comes self-growth? Let us know in the comments section down below!

Thank you for reading this blog post and we hope you found it useful!

If you want more journaling tips, tricks, and ideas, please follow us on Pinterest! And subscribe to our weekly newsletter to have a look at our own journalling journey in your inbox.

Happy Journaling:)

Better awareness, better results

A&A

Hi there!

Thank you for stopping by! We are neuroscientists by day and digital creators by night who are passionate about self-development, personal growth and a healthy mindset. 🧠

We met when studying Master’s degree in Clinical, Social and Cognitive Neuroscience at City, University of London and instantly realised that we had a lot in common!

Let’s see what it is! ➡️