An increase in negative thinking, a lack of concentration, tempers flaring and a lack of sleep are all early warning signs of stress levels increasing. Stress can trigger us to keep running a negative cycle over and over in our heads. We don’t seem to get a break from those negative thoughts when we try to relax.

There is nothing worse than keeping things locked in our head. When we enter that negative think cycle we end up damaging our self-confidence and we start to feel stuck. Those same symptoms only add to increase our stress and anxious levels. We know that getting the negative rumination out of our heads helps to reduce our stress. Using a stress journal on a daily basis helps with this process. But what is a stress journal?

What Is A Stress Journal?

Stress journals are simple dairies we can keep where we note down all our thoughts, behaviours, interactions, etc., all in one place. We can then go back and analyze these. This can help us see patterns in our thinking, emotions, behaviour and various interactions we are experiencing. We can then take action to change what is happening and introduce targeted stress reduction methods we need.

Why Use A Stress Journal?

A stress journal will enable us to identify precisely when we feel stressed. We can see what causing our stress, plus the frequency of these causes or triggers and how they affect our life/work.

A stress journal will help us to control our symptoms and improve our mood in a variety of ways. It can help us to prioritize what problems we need to deal with. Shows us what fears and concerns we have and if these follow a specific pattern. We can also track any symptoms and triggers so we can learn how to better control these. We can also use it to counter any negative thinking patterns with more positive self-talk and behaviour.

A Simple Stress Journal Exercise.

An exercise that helps at any time during the day or night is a simple brain dump. A brain dump is an exercise of writing everything we can think of down on a piece of paper or in a word document. We can then use this exercise to help us go back to sleep better if we do it before bed. Or to pick the next quick step (short task) that is important to achieve. Try to pick a 5 minute task to begin with then move on to the next quickest task. We can also use the brain dump to see where, and with what, we might ask for help. Or delegate or delete items off our “to do” list.

It’s okay to use this technique at any time of the day. Even if you have things planned out in a diary. Doing a brain dump gets everything out of our heads so we don’t need to hold on to them. We realize we don’t need to carry everything around in our heads and enter the rumination cycle which destroys our self-confidence.  We can let them go and focus fully on what we want to do next.

Firstly, start to get all you thoughts, to do’s, shopping list items, phone calls and emails you need to send, etc., out of your head. This will afford you some sense of relief as your mind will begin to relax and realize it doesn’t have to keep everything to the fore. If you do this each night your mind can begin to know these items/things don’t need to be solved while you’re sleeping.

Secondly with over thinking we need to start seeing the patterns. So by using the nightly brain dump to get everything out of our heads each night we can also start to see any patterns in our thinking also. When we see the patterns we can use this information to raise awareness and then we accept our present moment. Finally we can take positive action to change the situation or our response if needed.

As with all new habits using a stress journal regularly takes time to implement. Remember too it doesn’t have to be perfect. No one will see it but you. Give it a try and see how you can benefit from its use.

My Books.

The topics and tips I give in my workbooks The Building Blocks Of Self-Care and Building Acceptance Into Your Life will all help you build your own self-confidence. You can purchase them on Amazon or here.