5 Ways Keeping a Journal Can Help You Become a Better Parent
There’s no better way to grow as a parent than to keep a journal. We tend to forget that we are always learning, even as parents. Our kids have their own unique personalities, our time is limited, and sometimes our personal struggles get the best of us. The practice of journaling, which is the process of writing down your thoughts and feelings, can help you relieve stress, reflect on your mistakes or achievements, and grow as a person. Let’s look at how journaling can help you become a better parent.
Stress Reduction
Living by itself can be stressful, but with the added responsibility of being a parent, stress is unavoidable. Thankfully, the therapeutic effect of journaling can reduce that stress.
Spending quiet time reflecting and pouring the inner turmoil on paper is refreshing. Writing down challenges and struggles and then reflecting upon them brings clarity to your situation, and you could stumble upon unexpected solutions.
Shift in Attitude
An irritable attitude does not bring joy to either the parents or to their children. A quick way to make a positive change in attitude is to pick up your journal.
You could make a long list of things you are grateful for or browse through previous journal entries and smile at the fact that earlier dilemmas did not turn out to be as bad as you have expected them to be. You could reflect on past successes and feel proud of your strengths and capabilities.
Journaling can cool down your temperament and help you unwind in a matter of minutes.
Personal Development
You can analyze your thoughts and behavior while reviewing journal entries and identify patterns that would not have been otherwise obvious. Even patterns unrelated to parenting are relevant.
Chronic negativity, unhealed wounds, or lies you keep telling yourself can impact your effectiveness as a parent. You can unintentionally pass down such hurts or issues to your kids.
Taking care of your relational, emotional, and spiritual health and growth is crucial to your success as a parent, and journaling enables you to do just that.
Goals, dreams, and priorities
Journaling unmasks what is important to you in life, and what you want to achieve. You can then plan for your goals, dreams, and priorities, and start putting it into action.
Examples of the types of journal entries that help identify these objectives are ways to reduce expenses, things that make your children feel loved, romance ideas, what you want your life to look like five years from now, life lessons you want to pass along to your children, etc.
Health Benefits
Journaling reduces stress and strengthens immune cells, resulting in improved physical and mental health. Other health benefits include improvement in fatigue, pain management, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and fibromyalgia. A healthy person makes a better parent.
Being a parent isn’t easy but journaling has helped me understand situations better and become my best self. I would encourage you to give it a try!
