By Novelist and Book Writer Denise Turney

Journal writing is growing in popularity and for good reason, especially as it regards self-awareness. Yet, that doesn’t mean that the benefits are obvious. If you’ve felt stuck or like you’re living on a hamster wheel, you may be aware that hidden beliefs could sabotage your success. You also might know that it can take weeks or years of therapy or self-help work to identify and remove these sabotaging thoughts.

Journal Writing to Discover Hidden Beliefs and Open Up to Self-Awareness

What you might not be aware of is how effective writing in a journal could be in surfacing erroneous beliefs. However, to work, you can’t just write in journals every now and then. To gain from journal writing, it’s a good idea to do daily journaling. In addition to creating a brain routine, writing in a journal every day could help you to notice behavioral, emotional or mental shifts that you might otherwise have missed. This leads to the first benefit that you could gain after you start writing in a journal.

That first benefit is self-awareness. This is an important benefit because without self-awareness, you might not know that something is off. When you consider how fast things change in this world, not to mention how many distractions you face each day, it’s easy to see how you could overlook a slight change that’s building into a big problem.

Internal Shifts That Happen When Working with Journals

It’s these missed shifts that could develop into internal blocks. For example, if you were told that “you’re a slow learner” when you were a kid, you could have the seed to a potential block in your mind. After being told that as a kid, let’s say that you grew up and hadn’t heard anyone say anything about your learning abilities in two decades only to have someone comment that “you’re slow” this afternoon. Just hearing that could cause you to experience an internal shift.

But you might not be aware that you’d shifted. You might even shrug the comment off, telling yourself that another person’s voiced opinion has absolutely no impact on you. As good as that sounds, what you tell yourself is happening might not mirror exactly what’s going on.

Another point to consider is how one erroneous belief could cause a negative domino effect, which is certainly not what you’d want. Therefore, the sooner you spot and identify an internal shift, the better.

Writing in Journals Sharpens Self-Awareness

So, how does writing in journals sharpen self-awareness? Writing in a journal:

• Puts mental and emotional states that you’re dealing with in front of you
• Keeps these mental and emotional states in awareness, allowing you to work through them with power
• Helps you dig through internal blocks, offering rewards with each breakthrough

If you write your dreams in journals, you could also start to spot subconscious routines that are holding you back quicker. Due to the fact that journaling is a private activity, you might enjoy the comfort that what you write is for you only. Years ago, there were journals that had a lock on them, a way to potentially offer more privacy. Today, you could simply keep your journals in a drawer or a locked space. The point is to feel comfortable with becoming more self-aware. Another point is to welcome the act of allowing different thoughts and emotions to surface from within you.

This is more helpful than repressing feelings and thoughts that you don’t want to face. It’s worth mentioning that it takes honesty and courage to do the type of journal writing that digs and brings erroneous beliefs to the surface (or to the level of your conscious mind). So, keep at it. In addition, reward yourself for being honest and open. The payoff could be deep and long lasting.

More Journal Writing Benefits

As it regards payoff, check out the below benefits associated with writing in journals. Not only could you become more self-aware after you engage in daily journaling, you might improve your communications skills. Other reasons why journal writing may be good for you include:

• Improved writing skills – With more people communicating online, via text messages and email, strong writing skills have proving to have impact.
• Track and monitor personal and career goals – Consider using a journal to write down short-term and long-term goals, followed by actions that you will take to achieve those goals. Use journals to track your progress.
• Become more mindful – The more you see the connection between what you tell yourself and how you feel, you might become more aware of the impact that your words are having on other people.
• Sharper brain – Because you’re writing and not typing in journals, you can exercise different parts of your brain while you journal. The frontal lobe, the part of your brain that deals with cognitive functioning goes to work while you write.

Love Acts

• Trust – As you allow beliefs and emotions to surface without hard judgments, you could become more self-accepting. Trust is another takeaway that you could gain. The more you write down what you’re feeling and experiencing, the more you might trust yourself to face things you’d previously kept hidden from yourself.
• Healing – Releasing thoughts you’d previously repressed can reduce stress. It can also open you up to healing.
• Reflection – Over the years, you can return to your journals to spot recurring themes in your life. You could also come to know what symbols in your dreams mean. Looking back through journals you wrote in decades ago can also give you better insight into what’s coming next in your life.

Writing in journals is a way to put the responsibility for your life in your hands. Start writing in journals and you may begin to see just how much your thoughts, what you focus on, fears that you’ve been running from and emotions that you find attractive are mapping out your life. Even more, as you continue daily journaling, you might notice your successes more. You actually might take the time to acknowledge and celebrate forward steps that you take. This could be when writing in journals becomes an act of love for you.