Happy&Healthy: journaling

Happy%26Healthy%3A+journaling

Before this year, I honestly didn’t really care about my emotional well-being very much. It sounds weird, but I like to help other people so much that sometimes I forget to take care of myself first, which I think is a struggle for me and others who are people-pleasers.

Last month, I ended a toxic relationship, and it showed me a lot about myself. I realized that I cannot help other people and be there for other people unless I’m there for myself first. I had been caught on a never-ending emotional rollercoaster, and I knew I had to stop letting myself feel this way.

When we broke up, I tried to just push my feelings to the side. I thought that if I didn’t really deal with the issue then it was like it never happened in the first place. I had gotten really good at the concept of pushing away my emotions, but one day I completely fell apart.

I realized I have to take care of myself, and if I don’t then I can’t take care of others which is something that’s important to me. The problem was that I didn’t know how to take care of myself, so I started the search for methods to try.

I stumbled upon a girl on Instagram named Sophie Gray, which ironically is also my sister’s name, and I was hooked. She’s a twenty-something year-old that loves yoga and meditation, which are two things that I’ve never really had experience with, but she seemed to have an inner peace that I wanted to have, so I gave it a try.

Sophie’s biggest method of meditation is journaling, and since I love to write, I thought it’d be worth a shot. I started with an email that Sophie sends everyone who signs up everyday with a prompt that you write about that’s supposed to help you gain control and achieve balance in your life, and let me tell you, it works.

Within just a few days, I already noticed myself writing things on the page that I’ve never realized before, and I think it’s because I was finally allowing my subconscious feelings out onto a page. I’ve never been so at peace in my life, and I think journaling is what’s helped me to achieve that harmony.

Whether you like to write or not, journaling is worth a try. It can be whatever you want it to be, from writing pages and pages to drawing a little sketch. Journaling is what helped me find my inner peace, and I think it can help anyone who feels uneasy in their lives.

If you want to try journaling using Sophie Gray’s prompts like I did, you can visit her blog, Way of Gray, and sign up for her journaling mailing list. If not, just give it a try by writing down anything that comes to mind, and see where it takes you. Journaling, regardless of if it’s guided by a prompt or not, can help you to find balance inside yourself and it allows you to value who you are.