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THE JOURNALING LIFE21 Types of Journals You Can Create

to Express Yourself and Record Pieces of Your Life

shery russ

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Copyright © 2008 by Shery Ma Belle Arrieta Russ

iMusePub.com

PO Box 459, Strathmore, CA 93267

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, storedin a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without theprior written consent of the copyright owner.

ISBN 1440452733 EAN 9781440452734

Cover design: Zara Augustine Arrieta

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For DT.

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Also by Shery Ma Belle Arrieta Russ

THE AUTHENTIC SELF:Journaling Your Joys, Griefs and Everything in Between

www.theauthenticselfbook.com

Weekly Writes: 52 Weeks of Writing Bliss!www.weeklywrites.com

Journal Sparks: 300 Questions to Journal Aboutwww.journalsparks.com

Journaling Kitwww.journalingkit.com

Journal in a Jiffy:Creating Meaningful Journal Entries in Just 10 Minutes

www.journalinajiffy.com

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Table of ContentsJournaling and Its Benefits...........................................................................7Guided Journaling Techniques: A Brief Overview.....................................9The Affirmation Journal.............................................................................11

The Affirmation Journal Jump Start............................................15The Bible Journal........................................................................................17

The Bible Journal Jump Start........................................................21The Couple's Journal...................................................................................23

The Couple's Journal Jump Start..................................................27The Dream Journal.....................................................................................29

The Dream Journal Jump Start....................................................33The Family Journal......................................................................................35

The Family Journal Jump Start.....................................................39The Food Journal.........................................................................................41

The Food Journal Jump Start........................................................45The Friendship Journal...............................................................................47

The Friendship Journal Jump Start..............................................51The Gratitude Journal.................................................................................53

The Gratitude Journal Jump Start................................................57The Health Journal......................................................................................59

The Health Journal Jump Start.....................................................63The Hobby Journal......................................................................................65

The Hobby Journal Jump Start.....................................................69The List Journal...........................................................................................71

The List Journal Jump Start..........................................................75The Love Journal.........................................................................................77

The Love Journal Jump Start........................................................81The Memory Journal..................................................................................33

The Memory Journal Jump Start..................................................88The Mood Journal.......................................................................................91

The Mood Journal Jump Start......................................................96The Nature Journal.....................................................................................99

The Nature Journal Jump Start..................................................103The Prayer Journal....................................................................................105

The Prayer Journal Jump Start...................................................109The Reflective Journal..............................................................................111

The Reflective Journal Jump Start.............................................115The Travel Journal....................................................................................117

The Travel Journal Jump Start...................................................121The Unsent Letter Journal........................................................................123

The Unsent Letter Journal Jump Start.......................................127The Vacation Journal................................................................................129

The Vacation Journal Jump Start...............................................133The Visual Journal....................................................................................135

The Visual Journal Jump Start...................................................139

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Journaling and Its Benefits

Journaling is nothing new. Did you know that in the 18th and19th centuries, journaling was not only fashionable, but very prevalentamong those who were able to read and write? In fact, ladies of theEuropean aristocracy kept journals. They documented their socialengagements and personal encounters, as well as comments on fashionand politics, in their journals. Much of what is known about the earlyyears of America is owed to the fact that we still have access to thepersonal journals of men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, andJames Madison. Nathaniel J. Wyatt, Captains Meriwether Lewis andWilliam Clark, and many others documented their explorations of theNorth American continent. Almost every milepost in the growth ofAmerica was described in the journals of men and women whose liveswere intimately affected by these events.

In modern times, journaling has become something of a lost artalthough a strong case can be made for keeping a daily journal rightnow, in the 21st century. The benefits of writing daily in a journal canhardly be counted! You may choose to write with a pen or pencil in aregular, notebook-style diary; a dizzying array of styles, colors, andpatterns is available in stationery stores. You may sit for five or tenminutes at your computer each day and log your thoughts and feelings.(You can always print out your pages and keep them in a binder forfuture reference.) Either way, here are some of the benefits thatjournaling offers.

Small Cost, Terrific Return. When you approach it with anattitude of commitment and curiosity, journaling can be extremelyrewarding. You can learn a lot about yourself through journaling. Andit won't take up much of your time either, just a few minutes.Journaling is not a complicated activity at all; you can simply writedown whatever it is you are thinking or feeling at any given time. Youcan vent your anger, get rid of stress, and express your gratitude for thethings that are beautiful in your life.

A Gift from You to the Future. Are you into writing? If so, yourjournal can serve as a memento of you and your life. Your children andgrandchildren would undoubtedly love having your journals someday.Your journal is a wonderful heirloom that will give your descendantsmore insight into who you were. Or perhaps when you are a lot older,you might want to re-visit your journals and remember the person youwere in youth, and see the changes and growth you have gone through.And possibly, just possibly, your journal might give a future generationa view of the 21st century that would be historically valuable!

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Your Personal Forum for Self-Expression. Your journal is thatone place wherein you can express your opinions about everything andeveryone you meet in life. You can say anything you want without fearof retribution. Your journal acts as your forum; it's where you havefreedom to say whatever you like about whomever you like. Our societyis so nervous about identity theft: a journal is a place where you canput your true identity on the page.

Very Cheap Therapy. Often people truly have no idea what theyare thinking or feeling. This means they do not know who they trulyare. A journal can help you organize your thoughts and bypass thebuzz of information constantly filling your head. You can get to knowyourself better through journaling. When you read back your journalentries, you may see things that surprise you. Read, and think aboutthose things – to understand yourself, you need to ponder the surprisesas well as the expected. Maybe you’ll discover what you really want outof life by reading back in your journal and seeing what moved you,what made you happy, what made you uncomfortable. Likewise, yourjournal can be a way for you to get rid of your fear and stress, anxietyand pressure, right when you are feeling them. This is a good way totake care of your health. You’ll be able to see what solutions work foryou, and then you’ll be able to use them in similar situations down theroad. By using your journal to learn how to cope with problems whenthey appear, you are taking steps to make a better life for yourself inadvance.

Fun with a Friend. A journal is like an old friend in whom youcan confide anytime. This friend is always happy to listen to you rantabout your frustrations or talk about your love life. It’s actually fun towrite in a journal, after you get into a habit. Try it, and see if it doesn’tmake a difference in your life!

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Guided Journaling Techniques: A Brief Overview

You may have thought from time to time that you’d like to keepa diary or a journal. You may even have started one... or two... or whoknows how many, over the years. Perhaps you are one of those peoplewith enough self-discipline to write briefly in a diary every evening,year after year, and start a new volume each New Year’s Day! In thatcase, you have a pretty good record of your doings and maybe evenyour thoughts about them over time.

There are, however, many possibilities for journaling usingvarious “guided” techniques. To get you started, you may want to givesome thought to what you want to get out of journaling. Do you justwant to record your memories, as days and months go by? Then anormal diary, or journal, is probably just what you need – that, and apen. But if you want to get to know yourself better, find the source ofsome ongoing problem in your life, or give yourself a nudge towarddoing some creative writing, then you might consider one of the manyguided journaling techniques that have become increasing popularover the past several decades.

You can expect a certain amount of structure from guidedjournaling techniques. Each has been developed to meet a particularneed. Their very nature makes them excellent tools for people seekingsomething specific – an increase in self-confidence, perhaps, or insightinto the reason you keep choosing friends who turn out to be totallyunsuitable in the end. Here are some techniques you can use to findanswers to questions.

Stream of Consciousness. With this technique, you first clearyour mind then begin to write whatever may come into it, with noconscious thought at all. Don’t edit, don’t worry about spelling orpunctuation or sentence structure. Just put down whatever you think. Itmay be useful to set yourself a time frame in the beginning, perhaps tenminutes a day. Of course, if you want to keep writing after ten minutes,go ahead; but commit to writing for the ten minutes, no matter what.After a while, as you look back over your daily entries, you may seepatterns emerging, and you may find those answers you were hopingfor.

Question and Answer. When you use a question and answerformat for your journaling, you will usually ask yourself the samequestions on a regular basis and record your answers. Sometimes,depending on the reason for your guided journaling, these questionswill be given to you. For example, Alcoholics Anonymous may suggestthat members use guided journaling to keep track of their progress and

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assess themselves regularly. AA provides a set of questions for you touse in this situation. Or you may be able to create your own set ofquestions, and seek your own answers to them daily, weekly, ormonthly.

Periodic Reflection. You can keep a regular diary or journal,writing something in it daily, and then look back on your writings atthe end of each month. Your reflection on these writings enables you toevaluate your state of mind over time, your progress in any area, oranything else you want to review. Studies have shown that interactivejournal writing – you, having a dialogue with yourself – stimulates boththe process of reflection and the personal learning process.

Dream Journal: Some people say they never dream, others saythey never remember their dreams. The fact is that everybody dreams.Keeping a dream journal can not only make you more proficient inremembering your dreams, but can reveal patterns in your dreams overtime that can lead to interesting self-discovery. One popular way ofkeeping a dream journal is to have your journal next to your bed with apen handy. If you wake up after having a dream, write it downimmediately, as much as you can remember. If you don’t wake upduring the night, in the morning you can record whatever you recall ofyour dreams. Some individuals who habitually get up several times inthe night to use the bathroom keep their dream journals on the counterthere!

Any of these guided journal techniques serves a purpose,whether that purpose is to understand yourself better, answer yourown questions, or preserve your memories. You can find a myriad ofwebsites on the Internet that will share other guided journaltechniques, or even offer courses – free or not – on how to use suchtechniques. Whether yours is a pen-and-paper journal or an onlineblog, if you want to get the most out of your journaling efforts, you willneed to remain committed to regular journaling.

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1The Affirmation Journal

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The Affirmation Journal: It Can Change Your Life!

An affirmation, according to the Merriam-Webster Onlinedictionary, is “a positive assertion.” For the purposes of yourAffirmation Journal, let’s make that a little more personal. Theaffirmations you create are positive things you tell yourself, phrasedpositively, preferably written down as well as spoken out loud andrepeatedly. They are concrete references to specific persons, beliefs,feelings, or thoughts. And each affirmation reflects a particularemotion.

Affirmations can help you change the way you think aboutsituations that are difficult for you, or people who are part of thosesituations. If you deliberately change the way you think, you willautomatically change the way you feel, and the way you react to thesituation. You will feel differently about issues affecting you, and thatwill change the quality of your life for the better. The future is in yourhands: affirmations state that the future is, in fact, already here.Affirmations are always phrased in the present tense, so when yourepeat them, you are telling yourself that things are as they will be.

Choose your affirmations to be relevant to you. In yourAffirmation Journal, you will be working through various issues thatare important to you and your life. You may wish to identify theseissues by using the “stream of consciousness” writing technique. Clearyour mind and just write, without thinking about what you are puttingonto the paper. Don’t edit, don’t worry about punctuation or spelling orgrammar. Just let it flow. When you read back what you have written,you may discover that certain issues have presented themselves. Youcan then form your affirmations around those issues.

The trick to creating useful affirmations is using your ownnegative thoughts, beliefs, and feelings to find what you want to changein your life. You take a negative statement – let’s use “I always havetrouble getting to know new people” – and figure out how to state theexact opposite. It might be, “I always find it very easy to get to knownew people.” And then, you practice. You say the new affirmation overand over and over, out loud, several times each day. You write it inyour journal, over and over. It will feel strange at first because youhave believed its opposite for so long. But it will eventually change theway you think and believe about your capacity for getting to know newpeople. You will perceive yourself differently after repeating theaffirmation over time; and then you will find yourself making newfriends without even thinking about it. That’s how affirmations work inyour life: by changing how you think, believe, and feel about yourself.

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Here are some issues you might deal with in your AffirmationJournal:

Self-esteem. Most people, even the ones who seem to be quitefond of themselves, are actually lacking in self-esteem! Perhaps whenyou were a child, your parents, or other adults, made you feel a lack ofconfidence in your own abilities. To be completely happy as an adult,you need to restore that self-confidence. Affirming that you are a strongand capable person may need to be one of the first items on your list.

Relationships. Perhaps you need to work on some of yourrelationships to improve them. Perhaps other relationships ought to bediscarded. It’s your task to figure out whether a particular person isgood for you, or whether that person has a toxic quality that should beeliminated from your life. Then you’ll need to discover the reasons whythat person is with you, and create some affirmations either way.

Outlook. Many people have a negative outlook, but just asmany people have a positive outlook. If general negativity is a problemfor you, you will be able to figure out why through journaling. Createaffirmations that will allow you to change your outlook to a realisticone, neither pessimistic nor too optimistic. Optimism is alwaysanticipating the best possible outcome, and we know that cannotalways be the case. However, no matter the outcome in a particularsituation, you can always react to it in a positive way, if youraffirmations focus on that.

Your own Affirmation Journal can serve you as a self-helpbook. Through affirmations, you can take your future into your ownhands and reinvent yourself as a better person. Remember, you are theonly one responsible for what you think, and you are the only one whocan change what you think.

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The Affirmation Journal Jump StartBegin your Affirmation Journal by thinking about one thing

you would like to change in your life. This should be very specific, andshould relate to how you feel about something. For example, have youbeen feeling upset because your boss has been very crabby and shortwith you lately?

Write it down: “My boss has been really crabby with melately.” Then write some more, describing what has happened, why youthink it might have taken place, how you feel about it. Write until youend up with a statement describing those feelings: perhaps, “I feelafraid when my boss is crabby.” Whatever you feel, just feel it, andwrite it down.

Now try to make a general statement from what you havediscovered. It might be, “When someone is angry with me, I feelafraid.” Then turn it around to its opposite. Be sure not to use negativewords; for example, “When someone is angry with me, I don’t feelafraid.” Instead, use positive words, like “I feel calm.” And there youhave your affirmation: “When someone is angry with me, I feel calm.”Write it several times; say it out loud several times.

Create three affirmations using this technique and this pattern.

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2The Bible Journal

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The Bible Journal: Keep Your Spirituality Alive!

Most people are familiar with journals, and many with theconcept of journaling for specific purposes. You may have heard aboutjournaling to reduce stress, to increase your self-confidence, or toimprove your relationships. You may even have kept a journal yourselffor one or another of these purposes. However, you may not have heardof Bible Journals. These actually do exist, and have been found helpfulto those who are looking for answers to life’s problems, as well as thosewho want to discover their true selves through journaling.

You may consider yourself to be a religious person. Thepractice of your religion may be an important part of your daily life. Oryou may be someone who is uncomfortable with organized religion,and yet you assuredly have a spiritual focus in your life. In either case,a Bible Journal may be what you need to help you access the spiritualside of yourself on a regular basis.

Sometimes it’s difficult to put yourself into a spiritual “place”amid all the daily hustle and bustle. With your many responsibilitiespulling you one way and another, how can you find that quiet spacewithin yourself and focus on your spiritual center? A Bible Journal canbe a good tool for finding that focus.

What is a Bible Journal, then? There are many varieties of BibleJournal; perhaps not so many as of regular journals, but there aredefinitely many options for your choice. There are even Bible Journalsdesigned especially for children! You can make your own Bible Journalby using an ordinary notebook. You can buy a specialized Bible Journalfrom a store that carries products of a religious nature, or from anInternet site that offers them. Your selection will depend on what youwant to do with your Bible Journal. Perhaps you want to describe andwrite about your own spiritual experiences. Or maybe you’d prefer tofollow a more traditional Bible Journal path, and use your religiousfocus to analyze parts of your life.

Some Bible Journals are organized so that you read through theBible in a year (or two). These are actually guides to your journeythrough the Bible, and you add your own thoughts and questions eachday. Sometimes this kind of journal is called a “discipleship journal.”Others contain quotations and passages from the Bible that are there toserve as inspiration to you. These may help you to apply lessons fromthe Bible to your own life. You’ll find space to write your own thoughtsand feelings about your everyday life, as well as about specific events inyour life. Life is about learning, after all, and with a Bible Journal you

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are learning about yourself. You are documenting your whole life andyour entire being within the pages of this journal. The process can helpyou to find the answers you are seeking, and grow closer to Himthrough the seeking. Hopefully, you’ll learn to analyze your life inrelation to God as you read about answers God has provided in variouspast circumstances.

Some people like to copy favorite Bible passages into the BibleJournal for analysis. You may decide to include analysis that you havedone at church, perhaps in a study group; or you may prefer just tothink about the passages as you write, and analyze them at that point.This may be helpful to you, because you can refer back to your earlieranalysis of different passages for guidance at a later date. If somethinghappens in your life that upsets you, look back at all your previouswork in your journal, and you may very well find what you’re lookingfor right there.

Another way you can use a Bible Journal is to include in itstories and anecdotes that inspire you. Perhaps someone has donesomething special for you, or you’ve heard an inspirational story aboutsomeone else. Placing these stories between the covers of your BibleJournal allows you to recall them, to use them as inspiration to helpothers and to keep your faith despite the twists and turns in your life’spath.

Finally, you can ask your Bible Journal questions. Rememberthat your Bible Journal is your way of communicating with God. Neverbe afraid to ask Him questions. Whatever the subject – religion, GodHimself, or something in your life – God may well provide the answerto you through your journal. Asking questions allows you to learn, andreminds you that the answers are often already within yourself.

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