Journaling has experienced increasing popularity over the last few years and particularly since lockdown. Many people have experienced the pleasure in taking a break from their busy lives and the distractions of technology to spend some time in reflection and creativity, that a bit of time out spent sitting with a pen and a notebook brings.
You can use a planner or diary on a phone or tablet but may find you are constantly distracted by emails. Facebook posts or other distractions from your mobile device.
Creativity is a form of mindfulness that can be a practice that gives our tired constantly whirring brains a rest and takes us away from worry and rumination helping us to focus on what we want and what is important to us. Many people find this in the form of doodling, drawing painting, making jewellery or other creative hobbies. Just setting aside 15 minutes a day to focus on this helps our wellbeing focusses our minds and aids us in creative problem-solving. Why is it you can worry and think about a problem turning it over in your mind for hours and the solution just pops into your head when you are going for a walk or colouring a picture? The human mind likes to time travel worrying that the past will repeat itself or what will happen in the future. Concentrating on the here and now is difficult and many of us feel guilty for having some me-time out to do something creative.
Do I have to be artistic to do journaling?
Bullet journaling in its most basic form can be quite minimal and is just basically creating your own planner or diary to suit your needs with different daily weekly or monthly layouts and introducing trackers to monitor things that are important to you like for example your sleep, steps, water intake, moods. You can also include wellbeing related pages such as a gratitude log or inspirational quotes and make it as artistic and colourful as you want or keep it basic if that is what you prefer.
I have been teaching classes in wellbeing journaling and wellbeing related crafts for the last four years and although I’d never call myself an artist. I couldn’t draw you a horse for toffee and my seal drawing which I was very proud of my husband said looked like a slug!
However, I do love a bit of colour some mixed media (pens paint and washi tape ahhhhh!) and some great inspirational quotes. I also love playing around with a bit of doodling, colouring cutting out and using different layouts. The benefits of wellbeing journaling in a group are spending time focussing on being creative with support lots of laughs and like-minded people. Our courses at Chapter are also very informal and you can get as involved in conversations as you want or just stay quietly getting into your crafting and journaling….. It’s completely up to you.
As well as the creative side, journaling can help you to focus, identify what is important to you and set clear wellbeing goals for the future that you can track your progress to on a regular basis. It also helps you to be more organised and less distracted.
Creativity for Wellbeing – Online craft & journaling course
Our next crafting/journaling course will be taking place online on Monday afternoons starting on the 30th November. Sign up and follow along on the teams’ app on your computer, tablet or phone. We provide most of the materials sent to your home you just need a few basics like a pencil, scissors and something to draw around to make circles we will provide the rest of the materials needed for the session as well as instructions tutorials, videos and links to further information on journaling.
Any questions give Sally a ring on 07853026526