Journaling don'ts - Journaling Guide: part 4

In the previous article, we’ve gone through all the things you can do to help your journaling practice. In this article, we’ll do the opposite, looking at the things you probably shouldn’t do or expect from journaling. Keep in mind that this is my opinions, and these are the things that don’t work for me, but they might for you.

Falling into perfectionism

Whenever we pick up a new hobby or pratice, it’s common to want to go all in and master this new activity immediately, stretching ourselves too thin and feeling discouraged when the results aren’t what we expected. It’s important to not put too much pressure on ourselves. Remember, the goal is not publish your journal (or if it is, you will have time to edit it in the future). It’s ok to mess up, it’s ok to ruin a page of your journal. Everything you write doesn’t have to be an incredible mental breakthrough. You are not “wasting” a journal if you write mundane things. That why it helps to not use a notebook that is too expensive or valuable to us, because we don’t want to make our journal an object that is too precious to actually be used.

Writing for the wrong reasons

Remember why you are doing this: is it to process your emotions, to have a reminder of what your life was like at a certain point? Don’t try to write every single detail of your day: having a minute by minute log of what you did that day is probably not the most rewarding thing to write or reread. Try to focus on things that actually mattered to you, even a small thing, but one that actually has some meaning to you.

Writing every day

It is helpful to make journaling a habit, because that is how you complete a journal and make progress: not by writing 20 pages in one sitting, but one day at a time, page by page. Pressuring yourself to write every day, can make journaling feel like a chore. You can easily fall into the trap of seeing that you missed a day and thinking that you have to give up because you can’t keep up with it. There are plenty of days in your life, and it’s always ok to come back to writing after a long time. Ihave often gone more than 6 months ithout writing, and it doesn’t make me a failure or mean that I can’t keep up with journaling: what’s important is that I come back to it, once my life has settled to a calmer rythm.

Trying to make your journal a work of art

There can be a pressure for your handwriting to be good, for everything that you write to be easily readable, and your prose to be a work of art. You don’t have to write perfect sentences with perfect grammar and punctuation. What matters is the content of what you write, not how it looks or how well-written it is. If you make it a hassle to write and take the joy out of it, you probably won’t keep writing. Keep in mind that when you’ll reread your journal, you will not care about the grammar you used or the way you wrote certain letters: you will be happy to relive memories or find things you had forgotten. Writing badly is way better than not writing at all.

Writing for external validation

This one ties in with the previous point: if you look online, you will find endless feeds of beautiful, ornate pages with collages, paintings, drawings, colors… You may feel a pressure to make your journal look just as good. But remember, you are not doing this for external validation.Journaling is your one place to be free of outside expectations and constraints.

I would suggest not sharing your journal on social media or with other people (or at least a long time after you’ve written it, when you feel distant from the version of you that wrote it). That is because if you write with other people in mind, it will be harder to be honest in your journal. If you try too hard to make it pleasing to the eye and interesting to read, you won’t give yourself the freedom to actually experiment and not overthink what you are writing.

Using journaling as an excuse to buy new things

One last important thing is to try not to fall into consumerist traps: for every hobby you pick up, you will see a thousand products that promise they will help you do it better. Yet a lot of us know the looming feeling of too many empty notebooks waiting for us on our shelves. When I have too many notebooks in advance, I feel like I will never complete them and want to give up. Or I feel a pressure to write more so that I don’t waste them. Beautiful notebooks will always be around, and I promise you’ll have no trouble finding one when you need it. While getting a beautiful journal and colourful pens can help you and be motivating, ultimately it’s not what matters. It’s the act of putting pen to paper that really counts.

The common point in most of these don’ts is pressure: for journaling to remain enjoyable and motivating, you will need to let go of some expectations and standards that we tend to set for ourselves. I promise the feeling of the completed notebook in your hands, and the feeling of rereading it many years down the line will be worth letting go of your inner perfectionist for ten minutes every few days.