How I started Journaling
~How I started Journaling~
"Journaling is paying attention to the inside for the purpose of living well from the inside out."
- Lee Wise.
Last week, I shared about my experience with journaling this past year in my instagram stories [].
It all started in January 2021, when my fellow classmate and Mind Body Medicine friend and I were catching up before the Spring 2021 semester started. We both agreed the long break was much needed but that as our final semester , we wanted to finish off well but also maintain our sanity. We casually brainstormed things we wanted to hold ourselves accountable for to nurture wellness throughout the semester. My friend, who is an avid journaler stated that she had a really great journal session recently and wanted to make more time for journalling consistently during the semester. I, not being much of a journal or at least not very consistent one, was intrigued and saw an opportunity. I had this idea that something we could both do and also, keep one another accountable was to journal together! Of course she agreed.
So we decided that every week or so we would each share 2-3 journal prompt ideas and decide on 2 prompts to do together. Since time is of the essence during the semester, we also decided would spend about 5-7 mins on each one and then share what we wrote about in each prompts. And the rest as they say, is history…well more like a few week ago, haha.
Each time was such a great and thereapuetic experience. I was nice that my friend and I could hold one another accountable in maintaining our respective wellness practices. It was a nice to see a familiar face as we had now been remote-learning for almost a year. While I had journaled infrequently in the past, I must say doing it as a pair 1) meant I actually follows-through with my plan for journaling. 2) Journalling with someone else truly the elevated the experience for me. In the past I would just free-write so writing to a specific prompt was also nice change and it meant that I had to dig deep to answer the prompt. Also, I loved that I could then share my reflections in a safe space, which I found very therapeutic - yes, there were tears. And thanks to my friend’s probing, it was also very productive as I often took away actionable goals related to what we discussed/shared.
"Journaling is paying attention to the inside for the purpose of living well from the inside out."
- Lee Wise.
Highly reccomend pair/group journalling if that strikes your fancy.
Given my positive experience with journalling with my friend, I thought it would be a cool to share with you guys and inspire more of you to journal. So I poll’d you guys in my stories and many of you were keen on me sharing journal prompts for #WellnessWednesdays for you to try.
So whether its here on the blog or instagram. There shall be 2 journal prompts shared for #WellnessWednsays.
Adedayo 💛