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Keeping a journal for self-improvement can be crucial to your development. Journaling itself is usually associated with kids or teenagers that start with it. More often, girls than boys start writing their thoughts down in books. But journaling is essential for your self-improvement and self-growth. Both do not come naturally, but when done correctly, journaling can help you set your goals until they become a reality.
If you have kids, I can only ask you to encourage your kids to start writing a journal. With consistency comes experience, and the earlier you start, the better it is. It’s also good for kids to write down their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. And please leave this privacy to your child and do not cross this boundary.
Unfortunately, I did have parents that were not very mindful of any privacy – which led to my mom opening any letters I received or, for sure, reading journal entries of mine. It was a shame and painful, and the outcome was that I lost trust in her. Well, maybe it was because they grew up in the 1950th. Who knows?
But let me now return to the three steps to the journal for self-improvement and self-growth that will help you get started. First, I will focus on some general tips and how to get started. Second, I will tell you how I work with journals step-by-step and finally show you how it helped me achieve my personal goals.
General Tips: How to journal for self-improvement and self-growth
Let me tell you, journaling for self-improvement is not difficult, complicated, or time-consuming at all. Personally, it’s even close to meditation, as it helps me stay focused and gives me the tools I need for self-improvement. Thanks to journaling, I can keep myself accountable for what and why I am taking certain actions or deciding in a specific way.
The most challenging part for me was to get started with it. I asked myself many questions, like how I should do it (digitally or on paper), how often I should do it, and what I’d like to achieve. Looking back on all my doubts and questions, I wish someone had told me that it’s essential to get started and worry about the form later.
There is no right or wrong in how you approach it; just that you are doing it is crucial. I help you keep track of your happiness and your progress in life. But let me give you some tips that helped me get started with it.
Start with writing down your first words
Fresh notebooks, digitally or not, can be daunting for anyone who wants to start writing. I am a huge fan of paper notebooks, to be honest, and I love the look of blank paper in front of me. To give you some background, I plan out everything in my mind first and try to be as consistent as possible with my original plan. So it was tough for me to get started with journaling.
I found it very helpful to understand that it’s ok to be not perfect right from the start. If you are unsure how to start, I experienced that it was best for me to describe my day. So I stuck to that pattern, starting with how I felt when I woke up, what thoughts crossed my mind, and whether there was anything I was excited or anxious about on that particular day.
If you relive your day like that, you may see sooner or later specific patterns in your behavior or thinking that you’d like to work on. Leave nothing out, no matter if there are any destructive thoughts in your journal or not.
Derek Sivers, a TED speaker, author, musician, entrepreneur, producer, and performer, once said:
We so often make big decisions in life based on predictions of how we think we’ll feel in the future or what we’ll want. Your past self is your best indicator of how you felt in similar situations. So it helps to have an accurate picture of your past.
How much should I write?
There will be days where not many things happen and others that will be full of conversations, meetings, or events happening throughout the day. In the beginning, it can be enough only to write down a few sentences. That will help you form a new habit of journaling. Over time, you will naturally begin to write more daily.
Consistency is key to the whole process, so it can be helpful to start with small steps first. It’s also ok if you don’t write daily at the beginning, but you should try to improve on that and develop a habit of writing your journal for self-improvement daily.
Helpful steps to journal for self-improvement
Of course, there are many different ways how to get started and how to journal for self-improvement. I provide you with the three steps I followed that helped me to get to where I am today. I hope my approach enables you to get into the habit and stick to it so you can get incredible results.
Step 1: Goal definition
When I started journaling, I had several personal goals I wanted to improve on. It was good for me to start writing down those goals without thinking about them, so I wrote down everything that came to mind.
Most of your goals can be divided into one of three categories: emotional goals, physical goals, or intellectual goals. It would help if you explored the three categories for every goal you set for self-growth.
Let me give you a few examples for every type of goal:
- Emotional goals: be more patient with your kids and partner, be more mindful about your relationship with friends or learn to love yourself.
- Physical goals: lose weight, get in shape, climb a mountain, or go to a gym four times a week
- Intellectual goals: learn a new skill, learn a new language, read more, improve your job-related knowledge, or adopt a new hobby
The reason I think that most of the goals consist of two or more types of goals can be explained by letting you know about one of my mid-term goals. I plan to walk the pilgrimage of the 88 temples on the island of Shikoku in Japan within the next two to three years in roughly two months. Therefore I need to prepare myself for it in different ways. I need to learn more Japanese (intellectual goal), increase my endurance and lose weight (physical), and know to love myself even more.
You may ask yourself why it’s vital to love yourself – and you’ll be able to read more about that in my article about why it’s vital to love yourself specifically about that.
Step 2: Understand what keeps you from achieving your goals
While setting most of your personal goals seems easy, understanding what keeps you from achieving your goals most likely isn’t. Sometimes, the reasons for not achieving your goals are hidden amongst other issues you might have, or they are just not as obvious.
There are two different types of blockers or things that keep you from something. The first ones, and less easy to discover, are internal blockers. The other ones are external blockers, so people, time constraints, physical distance, or circumstances keep you from achieving your goals.
Some are more difficult to overcome than others. For some, you will have to show a lot of persistence. As soon as you begin journaling regularly, you will quickly discover what internal blockers you encounter along the way. It will also help you understand those better than before.
Step 3: Work on your daily strategies
As with all changes in your daily routines, you need to constantly work on your everyday strategies to achieve self-improvement and self-growth by journaling. It’s crucial to understand your internal and external blockers while external blockers are often caused by or related to interior blockers. Don’t use the external blockers as an excuse not to work on your internal blockers.
With so many things in my life, I either lacked motivation or feared failure. But, as one of my favorite Zen quotes by Confucius says, “A man is great not because he hasn’t failed; a man is great because failure hasn’t stopped him.”
So failure is something you should not be afraid of. Try to imagine the worst consequences that can happen. If your life is at stake because you are trying something new or following your goals, you might want to reconsider them. If your life isn’t at stake, go for it and do your best because nothing serious will happen to you.
I created some more resources about how to overcome internal blockers and fears.
How to put everything together
This is where the magic happens over time. So, when you find your internal blockers, it’s important to define strategies to deal with them and implement them in your daily life. Each time you see a new blocker, you should look at your overall strategy and implement it.
Writing about it in your journal will help you achieve those breakthrough moments you are looking for. Looking back at what you experienced and how you felt at that time will help you gain a new perspective. I’ve already written about this in my article about resilience and how to overcome any obstacles in your life.
Evaluating my progress over time helped me stick to my new strategies and the habits that formed a plan to self-improve.
An example of self-improvement
Over a year ago, I set a new personal goal to get in better shape for several reasons. I wanted to achieve my Dan graduation in Aikido, and I needed to work on my stamina and strength. It was clear how I could achieve that within a year, and a few sub-goals emerged. Those were:
- Loose weight
- Build muscles and become leaner
- Start running regularly
Each of those sub-goals helped me achieve the final goal of my Dan graduation.
What goal-setting method worked for me?
I prefer to work with specific goals, have a measurable outcomes, are achievable, resourceful, and timed correctly. By using the SMART technique, you avoid setting unreasonable goals for yourself that drag you into a vicious circle of discouragement.
If I had not broken out the goal to reach my Dan graduation in Aikido into those three sub-goals, I probably would not have achieved it. I think that way because completing a Dan graduation is relatively unspecific, even if I’d put a specific timeframe behind it.
What blocked me along the way, and what were my strategies to achieve my goal?
Following the three steps from above that worked well for me in the past, I thought about what keeps me from achieving my goal. There were some “external” reasons, like time constraints and work, but also some internal reasons, like the fact that I did not believe in myself.
The importance for me was to make the habits that had to be a result of my goals to stick for a long time.
First, I thought about changing my diet to accomplish sub-goals one and two. I also needed to work on my training schedule and add regular strength training to my weekly schedule. Second I had to learn how to run to build up the endurance necessary for my graduation exams.
Another problem for sure many experience is that we always seem to have too little time for the things that are good for us. Because of that, I had to adjust and reshuffle my daily calendar to ensure I could work on my final goal. This made me get up at 4:45 am every single morning to go walking or running in the morning. Strength training was easier for me to incorporate in the evenings.
How a journal for self-improvement and self-growth helped me along the way
It was important to me to track my progress. Changes in your physique happen in subtle changes, and you will never recognize them, even if you only look in a mirror once a week. So I began checking my weight every month while taking pictures of my physical change once a month alongside it.
I also made notes about my eating habits and what made me feel good or bad after having a meal to adjust my diet over time to the best food for my body.
This process took five to six months, but I was in the best form.
Wrapping it up
As you can see, processes and new habits take a while to form for everyone. Working with a journal for self-improvement and self-growth certainly helps you stick to new things and improve on them.
In the comments below, let me know your opinion on some of your goals, blockers, and possible other strategies for dealing with them. I sincerely hope that this article helps you along your way to improve yourself and grow.
It’s crucial to take ownership of your life now!
