It helps you to self-reflect and learn from your experience from the past days. You can write daily on your journal so the thing would be missing which needs to be noted down. But most people ask, how to write a reflective journal and how it helps ourselves?
Why do I need a reflective journal/diary?
It seems to be meaningless to write down the things on a diary to remember. But it really works when you need help in a good or bad situation to make a decision or take action. Your reflective diary helps you to save the important and learning events in your life. Whether it’s about your career, relationship, studies, or something else. If you write down these events that are happened to you, you would be able to reflect yourself to define who you are today and what changes are needed.
- There are some important reasons to write a reflective diary or journal in your lives.
- Reminds you of the happenings in your life either good or bad
- Explains the reasons why it happened to you
- Enables you to take actions and decisions on similar situations learning from your past experience
- Helps you to share your thoughts that you need to tell someone and lighten your mind
How can I make my reflective journey effective?
Focus on “What”, “So what”, and “What’s next”, you will get an effective journey with your own words. When something is happening with you either good or bad you need to identify what is just happening? Write down the event and also the all possible reasons behind this happening. Then come to the next step which is “So what”. Here you can reflect and interpret the event to identify the most relevant, interesting, and important aspect or part of the event. Write down, how you can explain it to find out something important in it? What is the thing that distinguishes it from the other happenings and events in your life?
The third step is the most important that is the output of your writing down the event. Here you come to know what you have learned from this experience and how you can apply it in the future. In this way, the things become so easy and comfortable when you have explained something, interpret it, and then got the output from it.
When I may write something in my journal?
Here are two important stages that are “happening” and “happened”:
Happening:
This is the stage when something is happening to you and you can write it down onto your journal/diary. It will help you to determine the reason and take quick actions to let it happened as it should be.
Happened:
What would you do when something has happened to you either good or bad? You can change it now, but prepare yourself for the next time. You can write down what happened, why happened, and how you can act differently next time.