In this present day and age, journaling is considered a quaint hobby at best, a waste of time at worst. We live in an era dominated by audio-visuals and writing is an increasingly specialized endeavor, reserved for and delegated to professionals.
And yet we find, all through history, scores and scores of successful people, inventors, artists, entrepreneurs, and presidents have all kept their own journals religiously. What is it that connects the keen and creative mind to journal keeping?
A lot, actually. Turns out, our ancestors figured out long ago what scientists have gathered verifiable evidence for only recently – journaling has incredible benefits for your brain, as well as your overall physical and emotional health.
Whether you are just jotting down useful information, keeping tabs on your goals, or simply pouring out your thoughts as they come – the very exercise of writing down what’s in your head helps you to unlock a lot of potential your brain would otherwise leave untapped. Read on!
What does journaling do for our brain?
Strengthens memory
Writing does wonders for your memory. It helps you build better comprehension skills, thereby leading to better recall. Also, it has a direct impact on your working memory. When you record your thoughts in the written form, you are going over them again and again in your brain as your thoughts are much faster than your writing speed could ever be. This builds a better capacity for working memory and instant recall.
Better IQ
Several studies claim that writing regularly can have a direct correlation to improvement in your intelligence quotient. Among other things, writing forces you to think and express in established language forms, and that requires new vocabulary acquisition. Turns out, one of the biggest indicators of your IQ score is the breadth of your vocabulary.
Increases focus
Journaling is one of the best ways to sharpen and streamline your focus on anything – be it a long-term goal or the study material at hand. Here’s a tip: get into the practice of scribbling down any idea, information, or thought that you think may come in handy at a later time. Writing it all down embeds it deeper into your brain. You’ll remember why you need to do this thing or that a lot more easily, thereby keeping you focused.
Cognitive processing
Writing has incredible benefits for our cognitive processing and decision-making capabilities. Writing down your thoughts forces you to articulate them in a different medium. You have automatically started processing information when you write it down. It adds to your understanding, and helps clear up any vagueness those ideas may have had while just running through your mind.
Relieves stress
We live in the Information Technology era, and our minds have to take in a mammoth amount of information every day. It is truly a challenge to take in such an amount of information and then to process it and put it to work. The discord between our information-retention capacity and processing speed can lead to huge amounts of stress and poorer decision making on our part. Writing can help you to offload extra information from your memory, keep a lighter head, and to have the luxury of revisiting information or thoughts from some time ago. This significantly relieves the stress and anxiety associated with multi-tasking.
Boosts creativity
Writing is inherently a creative function, but it helps you to unlock your creative potential as well. Journal keeping helps us with lateral thinking, and allows us to see and make connections between different ideas which we wouldn’t be able to see in our heads alone.
Improves your mood
Journaling makes you happy. Especially, writing down your trauma and negative experiences goes a long way toward identifying and facing the issues you are struggling with. It gives us an outlet, thereby lightening our minds and improving our moods. It also helps us look at our emotional issues from a different perspective, thereby improving our emotional intelligence.
Conclusion
Journal keeping gets a less-than-favorable reputation, as though it is only for overly emotional people. But the habits of many illustrious people all over the world and recent science-based evidence tells us that this is one of the best ways to keep your brain from burnout, process your emotions and decisions, and make sense of the world around you. So take out your beautiful stationary today, and set to writing down your thoughts. Your brain will thank you.
