Roberta Rogers: Hello, everyone. This is Roberta Rogers here with you today. I'm so happy to be here to share some thoughts with you on the benefits and the power of journaling. But before I do that, I wanted to say just a few words about our Compass Podcast.

This podcast is designed specifically for you, our caregivers. And our purpose and intent with this is to deliver podcasts to you that encourage you and uplift you. So, I hope that's what you're finding with these podcasts as you listen, I hope that you're able to come away with maybe one or two things that you can implement pretty quickly after listening, just to better and improve your life and make it more enjoyable.

We most recently had some topics on financial hacks for 2024. How to keep a positive attitude was another one. And most recently, one of my favorites, the healing power of pets. Animals are such a blessing and a gift. I hope you're enjoying these podcasts and the topics that we're selecting for you. But if you have any ideas or topics you would like to hear, please feel free to reach out to me. You can email me at rrogers@sjrmc.net. And I will work to make it happen. We want these to be enjoyable for you.

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So on to my topic for today for you and I've selected to share some insights on the benefits and power of journaling. And this is a topic that is dear and near to my heart. I've benefited a lot from journaling. I love journaling. And through this podcast, I'll share some of the power of journaling that I've experienced personally.

So to start off, the benefits of journaling first, and then going on to the power of journaling, because I do believe that the power of journaling is really in the experiences that you get from this. So, it might be helpful though if we just take a step back and define what journaling is so we all know what we're talking about.

So, journaling is just simply keeping a written record of your thoughts, maybe your feelings, you might include goals, or just reflections on things that you've been thinking about. That's as hard as it gets. That's journaling. So, people use journaling for different things. Maybe it's a record of memories or observations to visit later. Maybe it's to practice your writing or explore ideas for maybe a book or stories you want to write, poems, that type of thing.

So, the most popular types of journaling, one that I use is really just taking pen to paper, but there's other ways. You could keep an audio journal or a video journal or record your thoughts by typing them on a computer and preserving them that way, getting them out, and reflecting on those things. My personal preference, however, is writing things down on paper with pen, but that's just my personal preference.

Keeping a journal is, I think, a really effective way to really track your thoughts and feelings. To me, doing it daily is really a benefit to me. Just taking that opportunity to explore what makes me feel happy or unhappy and think about experiences that I really treasure and look forward to or goals that I want to achieve. Journaling can help us create really a healthy and more meaningful connection with ourselves and allow us the opportunity to explore and better understand who we are as individuals. And really what we want and need in our lives. So really, a lot of well-being benefits.

I think one of the most beautiful things about keeping a journal is that it's raw and unedited. You don't have to worry about all the spelling or the arrangements of the words. If you make a mistake, it's not any big deal. It's just for you personally. And there's a lot of studies about the benefits of journaling that we can look up and read about really demonstrating on how journaling can lead to this feeling of feeling more focused, more relaxed or less stressed. And those are all things I think we all want in our lives.

No matter what our age is, journaling can be powerful and there are evidence-based strategies that help us find that it can help us manage our stress or anxiety. I enjoy journaling every day, like I said, sometimes more than one time a day. I find it to be a really good technique to let things go and to make plans, really letting go of things personally that I'm holding on to. So, I think it's a really powerful tool. So, clarity and reflection is one of the benefits truly of journaling, really clarifying your thoughts and emotions. Like I said, stress reduction, it provides an outlet for really processing difficult emotions and situations, and helps us problem solve as well.

Goal setting, I've written down in my journals a lot of goals, and I love going back through my journals and seeing the goals that I've achieved. I'm a list ticker, so if you are, you know, that gratification of just checking things off a list. So really, goal setting and achieving can be a benefit of journaling and seeing what your accomplishments are. And then, the creative aspect, really journaling can boost our creativity and really help us tap into our emotions and imaginations and explore new ideas. It helps us really stimulate that creative thinking side of our brains.

And then, of course, we talked about the mental health. Just releasing anxiety and a lot of people keep gratitude journals, writing all the things that they're really grateful for. It really can boost your mood once you start thinking about all the good things in your life. I think those things tend to be seen more clear once we start writing them down and we see even more things to be grateful for. So, self-discovery and personal growth are a benefit of journaling. Really, the opportunity to just have some introspection and self-exploration, uncovering what are our values? What do we really want to aspire to do?

So overall, journaling is really versatile and it's something that's accessible. So, we've got a lot of benefits for doing it. If you're looking to reduce stress or enhance your creativity, you might think about journaling if you aren't already doing that.

Some tips to just getting started if you haven't started a journal and you want to try to just write every day. Set a goal of taking a few minutes and deciding when during the day you want to do that, make it easy on yourself. Have a pen handy and paper ready. I know for me personally when I put my journal away after I'm keeping house and cleaning things up, if I don't have it right there, then I tend to not do it as frequently. So, having it available right there for you makes it a little easier for you to be able to do that quickly. And just use the journal as you see fit. It's all about whatever the benefit is to you personally.

In terms of the power of journaling, I want to share a few personal experiences that I've had that have had a profound effect on me in my own life and my family's life because of journaling. So, one story in particular is one about my grandfather, Louis John O'Loughlin. He served in the Boer War in South Africa, this was in the early 1900s, and he was about 19 years old serving in the war. And he kept a small little journal. He wrote in it almost every day, every day that he could. And he wrote about his daily life as he served.

During a very integral part of my life, I began translating his written word from his journal because he had written everything down in pencil. And I was afraid that as old as it was at that time, his words were going to be lost, and I didn't want those words lost. So, I began translating it. And it was such a powerful experience to hear his words. Now, I never got to meet this grandfather because he died at the end of World War II. And so, I came to know who this wonderful grandfather was by the words he wrote down long ago. He had been shot down and left with the other injured and those who had passed for a couple of days. And then, he was brought to a hospital and spent about three months, no anesthetic at that time either, so a very difficult time for him indeed. He realized at that time because of his injury, he wasn't going to be able to continue serving in the military, which was something very important to him.

And so, it was, I can imagine, a very difficult time in his life. But he wrote in that journal about this time. He wrote, "With all the indecision and uncertainty in my life, I hope I can look back on this time with a smile." And when I read those words, they just touched me so much. It felt as if my grandfather was just sitting right next to me talking to me. It made a huge impact on me, because how I saw it is we all have difficulties in our life. My grandfather had difficulties at that time. I've had difficulties in my life. And we all want to be able to look back on the tough times that we've had and know that we did our very, very best. And to me, that's what he was talking about, that he wanted to look back on this time that was a struggle and be able to smile knowing that he made it through it, and he did okay.

And so, for me, I think one of the most powerful things in journal writing is the written word that I've been able to benefit from my family members, my grandfather, and others who have written things down that I could benefit from today. So, our posterity and sharing it with those others who might be inspired by our words. So, that might be a motivator to you, is writing things down.

Now, when my oldest son was little, I bought a little journal and I began writing in it for him, so he could know a little bit about himself and what he was doing when he was younger and things as he grew up that he liked and did. And one particular day, I remember vividly, we were at the park. He had his little toy fishing rod and had a little hook on it. I sat down on the grass near him as he fished and I had the journal. And I was going to take that opportunity to write some things down in his journal that we could all remember. And no sooner had I sat down to put the pen to paper, my son swung the fishing rod back towards me and the hook caught on the journal, and he went to cast the rod out and took the journal with him. And the journal went in the pond, and I was able to get it out, but it was forever wrinkled after it had dried out and everything. But that was a story that we could tell about that journal. My son, as he grew up, he loved that story, and the journal meant a lot to him. And now, it means a lot to me because he's since passed and I have that journal to remember. And at that time, long ago, I was writing that journal for him, never knowing that that journal was going to mean so very much to me.

So, journaling can be very powerful. This last Christmas, I made a few journals, leather journals that I cut out and made for the people that I care about and gave them to others. I patterned it off of a journal that my oldest son had given to me from Ireland. And that journal means the world to me. One person in particular that I gave the journal to sent me a little thank you , he said he was going to use his journal to record leadership and values, memoirs to remind him of himself and what was truly important. I thought that was really neat and a great way to use a journal. I thought that was pretty cool.

And the great thing to me about journaling is there's no rules at all. You can write a little or as much as you like. You can write it words about different topics of your choice. And you can turn your journal into a story or unload things to get clarity. It just doesn't really matter. It's whatever benefits you the most.

And I hope that if you're not journaling right now, you might consider it as something that might be helpful to you and beneficial. And if you are journaling, you might consider, how do you want to step it up? What do you want to change to further benefit yourself? But either way, I hope that thinking about journaling and maybe making a plan to journal is something that you might consider. I sincerely hope that you discover the profound power of journaling and think about those in the future who might read your words and be inspired by them. So, thank you for listening today. I hope you enjoy your day. Until the next time.