It’s easy to get caught up in our day-to-day lives, letting ourselves get down and stressed over the little things that don’t even matter in the long run. It can be really difficult to take a step back and look at the big picture when there are so many temporary things that are bothering us now.
I know that I can be very easily discouraged by setbacks in life, whether they be minor or major. In August of this year, my mental health took quite a hit when my year-long relationship ended. After a carefree and happy summer with no major responsibilities besides my jobs, I was suddenly confronted with something that I would have to mentally push through. I could have just sat and wallowed in self-pity over this breakup, like I had the propensity to do with other problems, but this time I decided I was going to do something constructive for my mental health.
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Taking care of your mind is just like taking care of your body. You have to actively take steps to make sure you are staying healthy. No issue is going to resolve itself by just ignoring it. Everyone is used to the notion of eating healthier and exercising to stay fit, so why don’t we treat our minds the same way? To keep my mind on track, I decided that I was going to take up journaling.
Journaling is a very healthy way to straighten out your thoughts and to just word-vomit your feelings onto a piece of paper. I know that for me, once I can rationalize the thoughts buzzing around my head in writing, I begin to feel a lot better. Even for a few minutes, taking the time out of my day to write down anything or everything that was bothering me proved to be very therapeutic. However, the most effective way that journaling has helped me is when I ended each of my entries with something positive. Sometimes when you’re getting all of your thoughts out onto a piece of paper, you can get sucked into the negative things you are writing. When I was able to twist my negative thoughts and feelings into positivity, I was not only able to end my entries on a lighter note, but those positive thoughts would be what stuck with me after I finished writing.
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I found this positivity in the form of gratitude. Gratitude journaling was nothing new to me, as I heard before how it had helped other people to become more positive. I even tried it myself before. This summer was the first time that I took gratitude journaling seriously and got to see how much it changed my mindset. After each journaling session, I would sit and try to think about at least five things that I am genuinely grateful for. I forced myself to not just write five things down for the sake of writing them, but to truly reflect on the good things about my day, or in my life in general. When I did this, I noticed myself becoming a lot happier. Instead of focusing on the temporary things that were getting me down, like my breakup or a long and boring shift that I had to deal with that day, I instead reflected on the things that made me happy, like how much I love my friends and family or how nice the weather was. Focusing on the good over the bad helped me to not only cope with everything that was going on in my life, but to start to put everything into perspective and realize how temporary most of my issues really are. I started to appreciate the things that I said that I was grateful for, and value those things more than the negative things that usually populated my mind.
I very highly recommend gratitude journaling for the betterment of one’s mental health. For something so simple and quick to do, reflecting on what you’re thankful for really does help you to slow down the chaos of everyday life and truly reflect on the things that make you happy.