3 Types of Journals That Help Me Stay Grounded and Creative

Today I would like to talk about the three types of journals I kept last year. I was going to do a yearly reflection and I just wanted to look back over the last 12 months to see what I did, in my life and my business. And to find out more about this, I looked through my journals.

Watch the video here:

I have my morning pages, my regular journals and then I have my idea books.

I’m going to talk a little bit about each of them and how I set them up and how I use them.

Planners

One thing I wanted to show you first are these planners that I made a year ago.

I made a 30-day self-care planner and a monthly goal-setting planner.

There are thirty days that you can tick off and every single day has all the things that I find helpful to keep track of. Of course you can customize these as well and just add your own things that you want to do daily.

Sometimes i find it easy to to have something like this – a checklist to keep on track with certain things and know that I just fill up my water bottle in the morning for example or that I try to eat greens as much as possible, have a meditation, things like this. So it can be really helpful to have a place where I can check those things off.

And then my goal setting planner, that’s something you can always do at the start of each month if you want. You can look back over the last month and then set a few goals or intentions for the next month. I find that also quite helpful to stay focused on my goals and what I want to do. I don’t use this every month but sometimes I feel like doing this and it has been quite helpful in the past.

Or if you want to look at the seasons, you can also read my other blog post about seasonal reflections. There are also some journalling prompts that help you to look back over the last season, the last three months, and look ahead to the next three months.

Morning Pages

So here are my morning pages and I just like to use a cheap exercise book to write my morning pages in.

I usually write three pages in free writing style, without stopping. I begin with the date and then I start writing, writing, writing without stopping, no matter what comes to my mind. It’s really to get past the censor, the inner censor and just get everything down on paper like a braindump.

It clears your mind, helps you process emotions, and can spark your creativity as well. The best thing is to do them right after waking up in the morning, but I don’t always do that. I sometimes write them later in the day or even in the evening.

But usually the best time to write them is right after waking up because you are in a special state of mind.

And what can you do with all this writing? Check out How to Turn Your Morning Pages into Blog Posts or Podcast Episodes.

Regular Journals

Next, these are the two journals that I had this year. There’s actually a third one. This first journal only starts in April, but I couldn’t find the other one. I filled this one all the way through this year, that’s my Bee Journal, nice summery Bees.

And then I started this one with a map, just when I went to Portugal, which was also suitable, because I went on holidays, and that’s the one I’m writing in now.

And for journalling I don’t really have any rules; I just write when I need to process things and think about things. I kind of really think on paper because I find it difficult sometimes to just think in my head. So I need to write things down.

It can be really nice to look back over them afterwards.

Sometimes you remember certain experiences or certain things that happened, and you can see how you grew over time, how you changed.

Regular journals are good for self-reflection, documenting your life, or practicing gratitude as well. So if you have a gratitude journal, you can just jot down things, or you can just weave it into your journalling and look for things that you’re grateful for, if that’s something you would like to do.

I write nearly every day, but I don’t put any pressure on myself to write. It’s just something that I have to do. If I don’t write for a few days, I feel a bit off, the same as if I don’t go for a walk.

I feel like journalling and going for walks are my daily maintenance, I just need to do this to feel good and happy. I can miss a day or two sometimes, and that’s okay, but not much more than that.

It really helps not to have any expectations on you when you’re journalling, just throw out the rules, just start writing whatever comes to your mind, and see if it helps you, and you will find your own journalling style over time.

Read next: 5 Ways Journalling Can Help You Find Your Life’s Purpose

Idea Books

And then the third type of journal are my idea books. And I have a whole post/ video on this which I link here as well.

But just in a nutshell, there are spaces for brainstorming, jotting down creative ideas, planning, like anything that you want to remember, lists, recipes, little drawings.

I often draw something that I want to visualize, and I write down ideas for my videos and blog posts and things I want to do with the kids or travel plans. Anything really that comes to my mind and that just kind of things and pieces that I want to keep somewhere.

So these idea books can really help to capture ideas and also organize projects. You can do bullet points, sketches, mind maps, everything. If you’re interested to hear more about this, just check out the video I made.

So these are my three types of journals that I used this year.

I’m not sure if I will keep up with the morning pages because sometimes it annoys me a bit if I write things in my morning pages and then I write in my journal later and it’s all scattered in different places.

I’d like to keep it a bit more together. After a while my morning pages can become like my journals as well.

But the thing that I like about morning pages is the free writing, especially if you’re blocked from writing. It can be really, really good if you just make yourself write through the judgment and everything. Just writing, writing, writing, without judging anything.

So that’s what it’s good for.

I can do this whenever I need it, even in my idea book. And then I just set a timer for 10 minutes and start free writing. And I think that’s what I’m going to do going forward at the moment.

I will have my idea books and I will have my regular journals.

So I would love to hear what type of journals you have or you would like to have. What do you think about these ideas and what are your own experiences with journals?

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