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Journaling is an important part of your self care routine, especially if you’ve not been feeling all that confident lately.
Putting your thoughts down on paper, either through words or images is extremely therapeutic.
So today I thought we’d look at four different ways you journal can give you a confidence boost.
You can express gratitude
An easy way to start feeling more confident is to show gratitude for the amazing things in your life and write about what you are thankful for.
You might start by looking outwards and thinking about how grateful you are for other people in your life, experiences you have had or things that you own.
The more difficult challenge is then to look inwards and think about the parts of you that you are thankful for. Think about your talents, how hard working you are, how supportive you are to friends, your personality traits, anything you really love about yourself.
If you need help feeling more confident about your body this pretty journal is filled with journaling prompts to guide you towards body positivity.
You can take time to focus on your strengths
Everyone has strengths, including you!
So be sure to spend some time writing about your strengths in your journal. It’s often frowned upon to “big ourselves up” but reflecting on what makes you amazing is an excellent way to boost your confidence.
What are you good at?
What have you endured to become where you are?
Where do you excel?
Write these down in your journal.
You can explore the triggers for your negative feelings
Another way your journaling can give you a confidence boost is to think about your negative feelings and try to get to the bottom of what is actually triggering them.
Is it coming from you, or an outside source?
Why do you lack confidence?
What is making you feel vulnerable or judged?
If someone has been criticising you, then you know your negative feelings are from someone else, and not yourself.
It is important to understand the difference between what you get from your own mind, and what other people are trying to convince you of.
If the negative thoughts are coming from outside you can look back at your list of personal gratitude and strengths to see examples to prove to your mind that those criticisms are not true and you can ignore them.
And the same is true of the internal criticism. Look over your lists of strengths and gratitude to find examples that show that you mind is being unfair to you.
You can practice positive self-talk
When you are writing or drawing in your journal it is important to practice using positive self talk. Writing down, or focusing on the negative aspect of things can send you into a downward spiral.
I’m not saying don’t think about negative things when writing in your journal because one of the things your journaling is good for is working through the thoughts and feelings you have about negative situations.
Instead you need to try and reframe the thoughts and write them down in a more positive and optimistic way.
You can turn anything into a positive, even if the only positive thing about it is that it is over or you were able to learn an important lesson from the experience.
Even the most traumatic events in your life can be turned around in the opposite direction.
It might not be easy to do this every time, but the more you practice positive talk, the happier and more confident you will be.
Fill your journals with thoughts of positivity and motivation.
Of reminders of what makes you wonderful.
And then on the rough days you can look back through your words and images and know that you got this!
