How to Start a Journal: A Complete Guide on Self Care Journaling for Beginners

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my link, at no extra cost to you. For more information, please read the full disclosure here.

Have you ever gotten inspired to start journaling and abandon that after a couple of days? I know I used to be guilt of this – often leaving behind half-filled notebooks around the house. However, once you build a habit of journaling, it can have tons of self care benefits. This post is going to help you learn how to start a journal and stick with it so you can enjoy the benefits of self care journaling.

There are a lot of benefits of journaling. It can be a great tool to reduce anxiety and organize your thoughts.  Your journal is a safe space to record hopes, fears, worries, etc.  It’s also a great place to reflect on your past experiences and plan for the future by writing out to-do lists or goals for yourself. 

I started journaling a couple of years ago, and I have found it to be really beneficial for my mental health. 

By putting pen to paper, you can better process what’s going through your head and pin point those anxious thoughts you keep coming back to.  Once you identify those thoughts, then you can develop a plan to address them.

Whatever reason you decide to take up this habit, starting a journal will be a worthwhile investment of your time and effort. 

This post is going to show you how to start a journal as a beginner in self care journaling and stick with it.

Why start a journal?

The best way to stay motivated when starting a journal is to find your why. Your “why” is the reason you want to journal and what you want to get out of building this habit.

You might want to start a journal to work on your personal goals, inspire creativity, process your emotions, etc.

To help you determine your why, ask yourself: What do I hope to get out of journaling?

Here are some positive benefits of journaling to help you get started:

1. Benefits of journaling: Reduce stress and anxiety

Self care journaling is a great tool to reduce stress and anxiety. It is a safe place to record your thoughts and worries.

Journaling allows you to identify the anxious thoughts or stressors that are repeatedly going through your mind. By identifying these thoughts, you can better address them moving forward.

There is also something really freeing about putting your thoughts into written word and releasing them from your mind. It can feel easier to process stressful events or anxious thoughts by writing them down and letting them go.

2. Benefits of journaling: Dedicated time to relax

Another positive benefit of journaling is that it provides a dedicated time for you to relax. When you set aside time for journaling, you are giving yourself time for self care and self reflection.

With such busy lives, it can be really difficult to find time for you. But when you commit to journaling regularly, you’ll start that habit of prioritizing time for yourself.

3. Benefits of journaling: Process emotions

Journaling on a regular basis can also help you process your emotions.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by your feelings in a given moment? Writing down those emotions can help you work through them.

When you get in your head and keep your emotions bottled up inside, it can lead you to feeling overwhelmed, unsure, or even result in them exploding out at an inconvenient time.

However, writing them down can feel like a relief. You’ll also probably find once you start writing, it will begin to flow and you’ll feel more sure of your next course of action.

4. Benefits of journaling: Organize your thoughts

Another one of the positive benefits of journaling regularly is to organize your thoughts.

With a busy schedule where you’re running from one thing to the next, it can be easy to slip into disorganization and chaos. But through journaling, you can better organize your thoughts and ideas.

It offers a space to write down things to remember, to-do lists, etc. You can then refer back to what you’ve written in your journal and stay better organized.

5. Benefits of journaling: Reflect on your experiences

Self care journaling also helps you reflect on your past experiences. If you write about what happens to you each day, it requires you to really think through what your day looked like.

You might notice things like habits. For example, you might notice that you talk about exercising every day, reinforcing a habit you were looking to add into your day.

You might also reflect on difficult experiences that might be bothering you. If you had a rocky presentation at work and begin writing about that, you might find it easier to reflect on how to improve in the future or actions you can take to rectify what happened.

Use your journal to refer back to personal experiences and take time to reflect on what you’ve written.

6. Benefits of journaling: Record ideas before you forget

Another positive benefits of journaling is to record your ideas before you have a change to forget them.

Do you remember everything that happened to you last week? Last month? Journaling will provide you that log of your life to refer back to.

Do you often have a great idea, and then later kick yourself for forgetting your epiphany? Use a pocket journal to record your ideas in real-time as you think of them so you can’t forget.

Have an interesting dream you want to remember? Keep a dream journal next to your bed and write down your dreams right away after waking up so you don’t forget.

7. Benefits of journaling: Improve writing skills

A positive benefit of journaling that I hadn’t thought about before starting a journal is improving your writing skills. It may sound trivial – just writing about your thoughts or what happened that day – but you are still going through the act of writing every day.

You’ll notice that the more you journal the easier it becomes to craft your words.

Who doesn’t want an extra skill??

8. Benefits of journaling: Inspire creativity

Journaling is also a great way to inspire creativity into your life! Not only is writing a great creative activity to participate in, but it can inspire you to go beyond just words and add stickers, drawings, graphs, etc. into your journal.

You may also find that after you get into journaling regularly, you are inspired to engage in other creative activities such as drawing, painting, or crafts.

9. Benefits of journaling: Boost memory

The last major benefit of journaling is boosting your memory. As we’ve discussed, journaling is a great way to reflect on your past experiences or write down ideas in the moment. So it allows you to have a record to go back and reference if you want to remember something.

However, the act of writing itself also helps you remember. So by actively writing down what happened that day, you will be more likely to remember that it happened as opposed to not writing anything down about your day.

Now that you have your why, let’s talk about different types of journals…

There are a bunch of different types of journals, and it’s important to figure out which type of journal is best for you. There’s no right or wrong answer here – the type of journal you should start will depend on your lifestyle, personality, goals, and you guessed it…your why (good thing we just figured that out!)

Here are some of the different types of journals you can start to begin self care journaling:

1. Basic daily journal

Who you are:

• Straight-forward
• Traditional

Journal goals:

• Log your life
• Write out your feelings
• Reflect

This style is the simplest style that I’ve included in this post, and it is probably what first comes to your mind when you think of journaling. It’s a great type of journal for beginners because it’s so simple!

You can accomplish this through simply writing down a reflection of your day and how you feel about it. 

This log of your life will allow you to think about your experiences each day and get at the issues that come to the surface.

This style is perfect for someone who likes things to be simple and straight-forward. You may also be traditional and enjoy returning to a similar journal to one you may have kept when you were younger.

Additionally, this style of journaling requires very little preparation or mental effort, just let your thoughts flow.

2. Gratitude journal

Who you are:

• Busy
• Stressed or overwhelmed
• Tend to be a little bit pessimistic

Journal goals:

• Increase positive outlook on life
• Small time commitment that fits into busy schedule
• Decrease feeling of being overwhelmed

A gratitude journal can be a great tool to help you reflect on the more positive aspects of your life. 

Every day, write down three things that you are grateful for that day.  Some days these three things will fly on to the page faster than your hand can keep up…and some days it may take quite a bit of thinking.

This style is great for the pessimists who are looking to train their brain to think more positively.  It’s also a great way to mitigate stress or anxiety by focusing on a few things that help balance out those feelings. 

This style is also really manageable because by only writing out a few thoughts per day, you won’t need to spend a long time journaling.

3. Dream journal

Who you are:

• Difficulty sleeping
• Dealing with stress or anxiety

Journal goals:

• Develop healthy sleep patterns
• Remember your dreams and gain insight from them
• Reduce anxiety

Ever have a vivid dream but can’t remember what it was about? 

A dream journal is a place to record all of your dreams throughout the night.  Keep it by your bed, and then write down your dreams before you forget, so that you can read them later. 

This journaling style can be beneficial for someone who has trouble sleeping or recurring dreams because it will allow you to identify the repeated anxious thoughts that may be causing those issues.

In the morning, go back and read what you wrote. See if you notice any trends within your dreams that may point to the anxious thoughts or fears that are behind them.

Use the insights you gain from the dream journal to develop a plan to mitigate your anxiety.

4. Bullet journal

Who you are:

• Creative
• Goal-setter
• Organized list-maker

Journal goals:

• Relaxation
• Creativity
• Organization

Bullet journaling has become really popular lately, but what is it? 

Bullet journaling was created “to help you track the past, organize the present, and plan the future”. 

This style encompasses every aspect of your life – essentially a one stop notebook for everything you need – so it allows you to have all of your thoughts, goals, to-do lists, etc. in one place. 

It can act as your monthly planner, a sketchbook, and a place to remind yourself of the books you want to read or the travel you want to plan. 

This format is great for all the planners and list makers out there.  This format is also a good fit for creative people who love to sketch and create their own notebook.

Bullet journaling is also a great activity to relax and have some quiet time.

5. Stream of consciousness journal

Who you are:

• Stressed or anxious
• Tend to have racing thoughts

Journal goals:

• Calm thoughts
• Identify anxious thought patterns

A stream of consciousness journal is essentially what it sounds like. You might have heard of “morning pages” which has become a popular type of journaling where you write three pages about anything that comes to mind in the morning. However, you don’t need to focus this effort only in the morning if that doesn’t work for you.

Set a timer for ten minutes (or however long you want to write) and just continuously write.  Don’t think about how you word your thoughts or what to write about, just write and write and write whatever comes to your mind. 

This style will allow you to record your thoughts without judgment and identify what anxious or repetitive thoughts keep coming to your mind naturally.

Similar to the dream journal, go back and read what you wrote later. Notice any patterns that come up consistently in each entry.

Those patterns will give you some insight behind what thoughts may be driving your anxiety or stress.

6. Guided journal

Who you are:

• Struggled with journaling in the past and “never know what to write” or…
• Brand new to journaling

Journal goals:

• Write regularly
• Reflect on specific ideas each day
• Never have to think “what do I write about”

If you aren’t the creative type or struggle consistently with “what to write about”, a guided journal could be a good fit for you. 

A guided journal is especially a good fit for someone who experiences writers block when trying to journal or someone who is a beginner and doesn’t feel sure what they want to write about.

7. Pocket journal

Who you are:

• Busy
• Always on-the-go
• Can get impatient with long journaling sessions

Journal goals:

• Journal anywhere, any time
• Write in small increments
• Get thoughts to paper in the moment

The next format of journaling were going to talk about today is a pocket journal. 

This is a small, pocket-size journal you can throw in your bag or jacket pocket and carry around with you.  You can record your thoughts real-time so you don’t forget what you want to say. 

If you tend to get impatient with sitting down for a long time and writing all at once, a pocket journal is a great way to note your thoughts a little bit at a time throughout the day. 

This type of journaling is also great when you are constantly on-the-go and don’t know when to fit in journaling.

8. Food journal

Who you are:

• Focused on nutrition and diet
• Struggling with issues such as weight, physical health, understanding what you eat, etc.

Journal goals:

• Improve physical heath
• Build healthy eating habits
• Identifying food allergies or intolerances
• Become more mindful of your food choices

The last type of journal you can start is a food journal. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like – writing about your food.

Log all of your meals, what time you eat, and any thoughts or feelings you have at that time. This food tracker will help you figure out trends such as when you skip breakfast your mood slips. It will also help you identify areas of your diet that might be lacking.

For example, when I went to see a nutritionist for the first time, she encouraged me to keep a food journal so we could see what type of food choices I was making. After keeping a food journal for a week I quickly noticed that I was eating tons of healthy stuff – but really lacking in protein. That knowledge helped me make more informed food choice and increase my protein throughout the day.

Journal supplies

Purchasing journaling supplies is one of the most important steps for starting a journal – because without them you literally can’t get started. There are a couple of ways you can start a journal: Digital printable PDF or physical notebook.

If you prefer to print out your own guided journal pages, I have created the best self care journal that includes a daily affirmations page, a positive thinking page, a sleep tracker, a mood tracker, 60+ journal prompts, and plenty of space to write! Using the guided prompts is a great way to journal for beginners because it can help inspire you to get started with self care journaling.

Click here to get the best printable self care journal.

If you want to go the physical notebook route, I personally recommend a faux leather journal like this one below. It has a fabric bookmark so you can easily identify your place when you come back to your journal the next day. It also has dotted lines so you can easily draw, make lists, etc.

Alternatively, if you’d like a smaller journal to keep in your bag or pocket on the go, I recommend one like this. Still plenty of space to write in a more compact space.

I also suggest getting some journaling pens, like these. I like to get creative and have fun with my journal so I use multiple colored pens.

Other optional journal supplies I like to play around with are stencils and stickers. These let you add drawings or more detail to your pages. They really take your journal beyond just pen and paper and make it fun and a creative outlet.