I've been journaling for years now. Twelve years to be exact. When I sometimes tell people "I journal" some assume it has to practise with my job equally a journalist–reporting on mean solar day to solar day life. Others tease me that I'm doing the same thing teenagers practise—"Dear Diary, these are my feelings" and all. When I first began writing even a single page was excruciating. But now journaling is the favorite part of my day: I feel better both mentally and physically in the days and weeks after writing down my thoughts.

Surprisingly, though, journaling's feeling of well-being isn't just psychosomatic. The practise has very real physical health benefits for the people who do it. According to Dr. James Pennebaker, a psychologist and leading expert in the field of Expressive Writing—a type of journaling that usually involves exploring issues that tin can literally right the grade of your life—journaling strengthens immune cells chosen T-lymphocytes and has been shown to exist associated with drops in depression, anxiety, and increases in positive mood, social appointment, and quality of close relationships.

"The nearly striking enquiry on EW has been washed with markers of physical health and biological changes," says Pennebaker. "We know from multiple studies that there are enhancements in immune function, drops in blood pressure, improvements in sleep, and drops in other markers of stress. People get to the doctor less in the months subsequently EW. Other studies find faster wound healing, greater mobility among people with arthritis, and the list goes on."

What does journaling entail? It's an amalgamation of personal, rational fact-based reporting forth with an exploration of your sometimes-irrational, ever-important inner feelings. There are some weeks where I'll periodical every day and so there will be some stretches where I go a month without writing a single word. The thing most expressive writing and other types of journaling is that it'due south not just the human activity of processing your thoughts—something y'all could simply do by thinking most them–that brings about these massive benefits. It'southward the human activity of writing itself that seems to produce these results.

"Writing accesses you're the left hemisphere of the brain, which is analytical and rational," says Maud Purcell, a psychotherapist and journaling skilful. "While your left encephalon is occupied, your right encephalon is costless to exercise what it does best, i.e. create, intuit and feel. In this way, writing removes mental blocks and allows united states of america to utilize more of our brainpower to better understand ourselves and the globe around us."

Intrigued all the same? I thought so. Just maybe you're like me when I first started journaling 12 years ago and don't know where to start. Here's eight tips from Pennebaker and Purcell that volition meet you journaling in no time.

1) Effort to become used to the pen once again.

In today'southward world it'southward all keyboards and bear on screens. Few write past pen anymore. Only when it comes to journaling pen and paper can have measurable benefits over the keyboard.

"I find that almost of my patients intuitively know that paw-writing their thoughts in a journal is more constructive than composing them on a laptop," says Purcell. "That said, there'due south research to support this. It appears that writing stimulates an area of the brain chosen the RAS (reticular activating system), which filters and brings clearly to the fore the information we're focusing on."

An added benefit of writing by pen is that it keeps usa from editing our words over fourth dimension. Notwithstanding many people, especially those in our 20s and 30s, take lost the muscle memory of cursive writing, which can brand it experience deadening and uncomfortable when we try to bound dorsum into it. Know this is temporary. In short time you volition feel comfortable writing by hand again.

"Particularly for the 20- and 30-somethings," says Purcell, "when I tin convince these folks to give proficient old fashioned cursive a effort they're amazed by the results; how much more chop-chop their handwritten journaling brings them peace and problem resolution."

2) If you can't stand up cursive, and then choose the medium best for you.

Try as you might, maybe you but can't get into journaling by pen. That's okay.

Thankfully today in that location are a huge number of mediums to choose from. I personally similar writing past hand with a V5 Hi-Techpoint ink pen with a 0.5mm tip (about $three at any office supply shop). Yes, that's specific, but it'due south the perfect pen for me that allows my cursive to period smoothly over my Moleskine notebook pages. Simply if pen and newspaper doesn't work for you lot at that place are excellent digital options including full general word processors similar Microsoft's Word or Apple'south Pages, or more specific "distraction costless" writing apps like Ommwriter.

Or mayhap the all-time medium for yous is the touch screen. There are literally hundreds of writing and journaling apps bachelor on iOS and Android.

iii) Choose a reasonable fourth dimension limit.

It used to exist brash that people prepare a page limit–for case 3 pages–for every solar day they write. But both Pennebaker and Purcell concur that more effective journaling comes by setting a time limit for each day y'all write.

"My bias given everyone's hectic schedules is to cull a time limit to which yous tin reasonably adhere, even if it'southward just 5 minutes to start," says Purcell. A fourth dimension limit gives the writer an incorporeal goal, which tin greatly aid people when they commencement journaling. Seeing three bare pages ahead of you can exist daunting, but an invisible fourth dimension goal seems much less challenging.

Pennebaker says he has people write for a flat xv-to-20 minutes a mean solar day. "The only dominion is to write continuously."

four) You lot needn't be Shakespeare.

About beginning writers, whether they are journaling, journalists, or writing a novel tend to autumn into the trap of feeling they need to be profound in their writing with bang-up insights into the human condition. When it comes to journaling (and almost forms of professional person writing) trying to be profound is self-defeating. Information technology's an human activity yous put on for others—or in personal journaling, for yourself. True profundity comes naturally, fifty-fifty accidentally. Pretentiousness is what results when people fix out to be profound.

Shakespeare was profound due to genius and careful observance of human nature over a period of decades. Good for him, but when it comes to personal journaling y'all don't need to exist profound. You but need to write.

"I tell my patients to forget spelling, and punctuation, and just make information technology a 'stream of consciousness' exercise," says Purcell. "Since journaling can bring to the fore, data that is but below the level of consciousness, let information technology menstruum!"

five) Don't edit.

Related to the above…Journaling is meant to get your thoughts down and explore areas of your mind you possibly didn't desire to go. Journaling is not a term paper. No one is grading y'all on spelling, grammar, punctuation, or structure. If you edit, y'all stop to call up, which is when yous cease to naturally explore and reveal the thoughts in your caput.

"The object of journaling is to write, non think," says Purcell. "Thinking gets in the manner of what nosotros know, intuitively, and therefore defeats the purpose of journaling all together. Journaling also allows us to explore avenues nosotros may not consciously desire to explore, so if we stop to think, nosotros may run from the very topic our journaling has just uncovered."

6) Journal in the aforementioned place every mean solar day.

Y'all don't need to lock yourself away in a secluded ivory tower to get your thoughts on paper, merely both Pennebaker and Purcell agree that having one identify where you journal is more than conducive to good, introspective writing.

I accept a favorite buffet in London I similar to write in. Even though information technology can get noisy with the clinking cups and the murmurs of background conversation, I discover this background noise soothing and information technology speedily lulls me into a state of heed where I'one thousand engrossed in my pen flowing across my paper. If a cafe isn't your thing, locking yourself in a quiet room in your house or even writing on a park bench could work simply every bit well.

The important thing, says Purcell, is to "make it an appealing spot; i that'southward cozy and has objects to see, smell and touch that inspire y'all: flowers, sentimental photos or memorabilia, and a wonderful beverage of your choice."

7) Leave room for a TOC.

This bit of advice is something I've been doing for years. Whenever I get a new Moleskine notebook I leave the starting time two double-sided pages blank. When I reach the end of that notebook—commonly a year afterward‚ I'll expect a while earlier I reread annihilation in it to put some distance between me and past thoughts.

Simply when I practise reread it, I highlight passages or thoughts I think are of import and will note them and their folio number or journal entry engagement in the commencement of the periodical. This creates a Table of Contents I can quickly refer back to to find important entries. I detect this helps when I'm currently upwards against a challenge. I can observe challenges in my past that seemed insurmountable, but that I concluded up overcoming anyway. The of import affair to remember if you practice do this is to not edit your journal entries every bit y'all reread them.

The TOC approach was an thought that caused differing views among our experts.

"Some people like this kind of construction, some don't," says Pennebaker. "Some similar to become back and revise what they've written, well-nigh don't. Some like to go back read what they have written; some don't. The indicate is, you need to figure out what works best for you."

As for Purcell, she says "I beloved this thought. Surely, upon reflection, certain portions of the journal will seem more than relevant to your life as a whole, and piece of cake admission to these areas will be helpful, especially during times of life defoliation or distress. It's wonderful to be reminded that yous've gotten past seemingly hopeless situations of the by."

8) Keep information technology private—and secure.

Unless you are working with a clinical psychologist who is specifically request yous to journal so yous tin can talk over your thoughts at your next session, both Pennebaker and Purcell stress that information technology's of import to keep your journaling individual and keep the journal itself in a secure identify.

"Notice a safe and secure spot for your periodical," says Purcell. "In order for it to exist completely effective you must feel complimentary to write the things you wouldn't fifty-fifty tell your best friend."

"This is not a letter to someone else," agrees Pennebaker. "This should not be a certificate for others to judge you. If you lot desire to write a book, fine. Write a book. Expressive writing is for you and you lonely. If your writing could injure other people'southward feelings or their or your own reputation, destroy it when y'all are finished or hibernate it in a very secure location."

"The important thing is that your writing is for you only."