7 Ways Journaling is Self-Loving

Self-love may be challenging, but it’s worth your lifetime commitment.

If the pursuit of self-love sounds egotistic, greedy, and selfish, let it. It’s healthier to admit this dysfunctional belief now.

Because if you don’t honor all of your emotions and take care of your needs, then you can’t come close to honoring another’s — in that “perfect” or Soul Mate relationship, or rather, that healthy, loving, and functional one.

So start practicing self-love today, by giving yourself the gift of writing.

Pick up a journal and start writing from your heart each and every day. But not in the form of any old journaling — you have to unleash your journaling to make it worth it.

It’s only then that you accomplish the following seven that make for great self-loving.

1. Taking time for solitude

When you journal on a regular basis, you train yourself to set aside time each day to reflect, tune in, and rest. It’s in these precious moments that you restore yourself, or become aware of some ways in which you need to start. And it’s especially sacred time, these days, when it’s so easy to stay connected to the globe 24/7. So don’t be afraid of some quality alone-time.

2. Ditching perfection

Journaling unleashed never aspires to perfection. It’s done with the utmost disregard for rules or regulations, first impressions or petty appearances. Journaling is raw, real. It can be embarrassing to read out loud, but that makes it powerful. That’s the closest it will ever come to perfection. “Perfect” journaling delivers you to powerful realizations about yourself, “flaws” and all.

3. Letting your mind and your feelings roam

Self-awareness is the core of self-loving. You have to know who you are to know how to love yourself. You have to romance your inner world to learn your likes, dislikes, joys, fears, and so on. Journaling sets the mood. It gives you space to spill your thoughts and feelings onto page. When your thoughts and feelings roam freely, and when they take form in the physical world, then you can see them… then you can better know yourself.

4. Learning to be patient with yourself

Journaling is a piecemeal endeavor. There’s no end date, no goal, no stopping point. It goes on. Like the wind. Like the waves. Like you — who are constantly changing and growing. When you look back on your journaling, you see how natural it is to change and grow. It may take years to learn a lesson that was right before your eyes, but that’s life. Committed journaling shows you the true value of patience and trusting in yourself, changes and all. You may not be headed in any direction, but will arrive to your destination in due time.

5. Realizing your multidimensional nature

Journaling can often reflect drastic mood swings, especially the more unleashed you allow it to be. One morning, you’ll idolize. The next morning, you’ll tear down. You’ll curse out. Doubt. Shout. Hate. Be confused. Find clarity. Lose it. Go around in endless circles. Give up. Try again. Restore hope. Build faith. You’ll do whatever is natural, you’ll follow the tides of your feelings. Because you have so many, all at once. And to love them all, as they are a part of you, you need to let them be. To realize their beauty, and your multidimensional nature.

6. Learning more about your boundaries, or need for them

A page journalled is a page bound. It’s contained. It’s constant. It has order, even if the content is chaotic. And the thoughts and the feelings are contained, by words, or maybe even scribbles and tear stains. When you make something intangible concrete, it gives you the power to look more closely, and understand. And when you can understand your true thoughts and feelings, you are in a much better position to implement strong and healthy personal boundaries in your life — which are the bread and butter for any balanced relationship.

7. Not caring what other people think

Journaling is a brave act. You risk being discovered, revealed. You risk being bathroom material for your worst enemy, if they happen upon your sacred bundle of words. The risk is all part of the fun. It tests you — it dares you to bare it all despite to possible consequences of exposure. If you can’t bare it all in private, how can you ever? There’s something grounding about the act of writing. It makes the ideas concrete in a way you can’t deny. Don’t let fear take that opportunity away from you. Because in the end, if someone reads your journal, it will just be another opportunity for self-love, where many of your personal boundaries are put to the test.

Journaling is only a part of self-loving

Journaling is a great way to teach yourself to self-love. And the best part is, you can start right now!

But journaling does come up short in many ways… because the art of self-loving, is, well, a lifetime commitment that requires a lot of practice from many different angles. Journaling can’t do it all.

Mindful Construct will explore the art of self-loving more in the future, and your help is needed.

What’s one way that journaling comes up short in teaching self-love?

Post your ideas below… let’s start brainstorming on this complex and not-talked-about-enough art of self-loving.

Let’s see what we can come up with so we can better love ourselves.