3. The ‘Let Go’ Pile

Having a bunch of irrelevant, needless or negative thoughts taking up space in our heads is never fun.

Whether it’s that annoying voice telling you you can’t do something; a person or scenario that’s been irritating you lately, or just a belief you’ve been carrying around that’s proven to be more harm than help…as humans we’re prone to carrying around so much baggage, mentally and emotionally.

Sometimes, like in the previous example, there are things we can actively do to amend these bothersome feelings. In these moments, the responsibility sits with us.

Other times, however, there might not be anything we can do – like if the feelings are a result of someone else’s behaviour, for example.

We may not be able to change that person, behaviour, situation or thing…but we CAN control how we feel about them.

Therefore, if there isn’t anything we can actively do, the only option left is to let go.

Let go of those feelings….let go of that belief we know is utter crap…let go of caring about something we can’t control.

This might sound super simple – and it is. But it’s amazing how the majority of us forget that this is a legitimate option, the majority of the time.

The concept of ‘letting go’ might sound kind of vague and opaque…and that’s exactly why writing it down really helps make the process.

It goes like this:

Turn to a clean page in your journal/notebook. Make a list of all the things you need to let go of, or that you feel aren’t serving you right now. Optional step: burn the list.

This might sound kinda dumb and simple, but trust me – seeing a list of all the thoughts, worries or beliefs not helping you provides incredible insight into what you’ve been wasting your energy on. It can also be a strong sort of relief – relief from the realisation that you no longer need to carry around any of these things.

An optional step is to later burn the list, as I hear this an be incredibly cathartic and help with the ‘letting go’ process. However, just writing them down is usually a huge help on its own for me.

4. The Brain Dump

This one is so simple and straightforward; it pretty much is the essence of what journaling is all about.

You might actually wonder why I am even bothering to list this as an ‘exercise’, seeing as it’s something most people with a journal do anyway.

But I’m here to remind everyone – even those who may believe they can’t write – the benefits of putting pen to paper whenever you’re feeling unsettled.

The brain dump tends to work best when you’ve perhaps allowed your brain to become too cluttered; when you’ve been handling a series of stressful events, and/or haven’t been taking the time to process your wants, needs or feelings. I rarely use this format of writing, but I do need it sometimes, when I’m feeling distracted and overwhelmed. It’s like the ’emergency-break-glass-here’ act of journaling.

You don’t need to be going through anything big or serious for this to work. It’s YOUR list, so the things you dump can be as trivial or serious as you want.

Unsurprisingly, it works like this:

Turn to a clean page in your journal or notebook. Make a list, in bullet point form, of everything getting you down right now – the things niggling you; commitments and deadlines you need to remember; annoying things or thoughts, and generally just anything cluttering up space in your head that would be better off out of there.

Okay, so you’re not LITERALLY taking thoughts/worries out of your head and parting ways with them. But trust me, it’ll feel like the next best thing. Just getting these bothersome thoughts – no matter how large or small – out onto paper can feel like a huge relief and gives you the headspace to think properly.

Oftentimes, when you see something written down you’ll realise that it was actually nowhere near as bad as you previously thought. In fact, it might even seem kind of silly! It’s when our thoughts and worries stay bottled up that they tend to control us most. Simply getting them out in some way – by talking to a friend or by writing them down – can take the energy out of them and give us a clearer perspective. It can even help us see solutions we may not have thought of before.

Note that I suggested listing things out in bullet points. This is to emphasise that the aim here is to just get your thoughts out on paper in the simplest form – there’s no need to write tons of paragraphs in order to feel better. However, if you feel like writing more or adding some extra detail, do so. Write until you feel you have emptied out as much as you can, or as much as you need in order to feel lighter. And don’t worry about spelling or grammar – this is your journal, and you’re the one who will benefit from it.

5. The ‘Did It’ List

You’re probably already more than familiar with the ‘to do’ list.

You know, that little list that can sometimes feel like it’s running your life. It starts out as a well-intentioned guide (or maybe motive) to get things done, but it ends up being the bad guy. The items never get ticked off; the list only seems to ever get longer; you feel guilty about having fun because you haven’t completed your ‘to do’ list yet, or at the end of the week you feel a sense of disappointment and frustration, because you didn’t get done all those things you wanted to do.

If this is how you feel, then this exercise could really help. In fact, I began making it a regular thing in my weekly routine because I felt it really eased those pangs of guilt, frustration and urgency.

Sometimes, we don’t complete everything on our ‘to do’ list, and that’s okay. Life happens: you had an exhausting week; you had to make time to rest; something else came up, like friend or family or job-related, or maybe – as is usually the case – you underestimated how much you could realistically get done.

Instead of beating down on ourselves, however, or piling on the pressure to ‘make it up’, we should do this instead:

Turn to a clean page in your journal or notebook. Make a list of everything you did get done (that day, week, month or whatever).

This is different to just listing the things on your to-do list that you managed to tick off. Sure, these can be included, but the idea is to list all the tasks and accomplishments – no matter how small – that you’ve completed, which maybe weren’t on your list, but matter nonetheless.

Most of the time, we get distracted from our to-do list by other things, that are just as equally important. And yet we forget about them, or don’t count them, because they weren’t part of our original plan.

The thing is, most of us are achieving, doing, and being productive all of the time, but we just don’t realise it. Things like ‘Working out every day this week’ or ‘Finding time to cook all of my lunches’ are just as great wins as anything else. Maybe you didn’t get around to finishing that blog post…but instead you helped out a friend, caught up with family or meditated. Any action you make to make your own life/self better in the long term is, as far as I’m concerned, a great thing – even if it wasn’t on your list to begin with.

That’s why the ‘Did It’ list is a good exercise, to serve as a reminder of all the great things we are doing, even when we’re not thinking about.

(And, as an extra reminder: self care should always find its way onto your to-do list.)