Practical Tips for Writing Diary for Beginners

Writing a diary is an ancient practice. Since the dawn of history, people have recorded their thoughts and feelings. It is common to all cultures and has been used for various purposes, including expressing oneself, coming up with new ideas, thinking about social issues, or tracking curiosity and questions.

Writing a diary encourages reflection on your days and life. By keeping a diary, you learn to follow your intuition, meet your own needs, see yourself in a fresh light, listen to your inner voice, and develop empathy for yourself. You also start to treat yourself with kindness and become your best friend. You are also aware of your shortcomings and errors that you might have missed otherwise.

Writing a diary does not have to be perfect. It's a mirror where you can see your true reflection without anyone else seeing it. It is a place where you take off masks, see your weaknesses, and love yourself as you are.

Benefits of writing a diary

The first tip about writing a diary is to know its benefits. Some of its benefits are that it may help relieve stress, depression, anxiety, and emotional distress; as a result, it is a significant way for your mental and psychological health.

Many people write their diaries only to record their daily events and refresh their working memory. By analyzing your thoughts, you practice mindfulness. That may help reduce excessive thinking and help calm you down. Your communication and writing skills will begin to improve. Keeping a journal doesn't have to be flawless. It is a mirror that shows you as you really are when no one else can see you. You will master problem-solving skills, and you will find yourself working better in general.

Writing a diary also helps to improve the quality of sleep. After you free all your thoughts from your mind before you sleep, you feel relaxed, which will help you calm down the hasty thoughts and reduce insomnia.

After you feel this improvement, you notice how journaling has helped you and provided you with more benefits over time. You find yourself living in the present moment because you organize all your ideas, set everything that weighs you aside, and give your soul some rest.

Diaries certainly don't replace treatment or medications that help improve mental and psychological health, but they do help along with any other treatment.

Why should you write in your diary?

After a long, tough day, you can continue to feel stressed or find meaning and purpose from everything you have gone through. Writing a diary is a way to help you clear your mind and focus on the most critical things in your life. In addition, by writing a diary, you will not allow emotions to control you and eliminate negative thinking patterns. In other words, you can regain control over your entire life.

Whether you write down your goals, the things you're grateful for, or the daily events you live, journaling is a valuable gift to give yourself. Journaling is a kind of self-care that anyone can do, and learning to cope with things. You don't have to be a writer to write down your diary, and there are no strict steps you have to take to get started. Journaling is a way to maintain your progress in any area of life.

Later, you can look at your journal and see how far you have come or only enjoy the memories recorded. You can open it at any time and read what you have done or exceeded, and if there is something you do not like, you can get rid of it; it is totally up to you what you do with it.

It's also up to you to decide who sees your diary; you don't have to tell anyone what you write unless you want to, and you can share your diary with a psychotherapist, a close friend, or anyone you want to share your diary with if you need to.

Journaling can help you organize what you want to say. It is preparation and practice for communicating with yourself and a way to release your ideas. But remember that sharing it with anyone is entirely up to you.

What you need to start journaling?

Start writing your diary now to reap its benefits. You should only follow the tips of writing a diary to help you get started, and if you can get it into your busy schedule, you will find yourself achieving more results, not less; even if you are just writing your mood, this is better than nothing.

It's up to you how often and how much you type. There's no standardized way to do this:

Five simple tips to get you started

1. Whether it's a real notebook or a mobile app, make a notebook with your diary.
2. Set aside space for journaling, and decide whether to write it down in private, at work, in the morning, at night, etc.
3. Eliminate all distractions.
4. Just write; it doesn't matter how long or how much you write.
5. Keep writing and try to write at the same time or the same amount every day. If you make writing a daily habit, you will likely keep doing it. In his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King says how he used to dedicate a specific time daily to writing to train his mind to be productive in these times.

Different types of diaries

Another tip for writing diaries is to know the different types of diaries. Here are various sorts of diaries, and you can choose the best one for you:

1. Destruction diaries

These diaries give you tasks such as coloring, writing something down, or even ripping up a page and throwing it away to get rid of stress.

2. Goal list diaries

You can track the progress of your goals and set deadlines for any area of your life.

3. Gratitude lists a diary

where you write down what you are grateful for daily.

4. Bulleted diaries

This is a way to organize your ideas using the start index, page numbers, and pages organized to plan for different periods that help you manage time, and you don't need to stick to one type of diary writing in this type.

5. Free writing

You can write spontaneously. It relies on conscious writing. You write anything you want without organizing your ideas, but allow them to flow smoothly.

6. Planner diary

As the name implies, a planner diary combines journaling and planning. It may appear as a standard planner, but it has sections where you can write and reflect in depth.

7. Vision diary

This diary is very similar to the vision board. You can write a vision of what you want to do and put it in specific boxes, but you can only put “one goal a day.”

8. Morning diary

Write down whatever comes to mind when you wake up. These could be plans for the day, like what you want to accomplish, daily objectives, or just some free writing. The point of this exercise is to write as soon as you wake up and assess how far you've come.

9. Five-Year Diary

In this diary, you write where you will be in five years, how you will get there, and what you will take with you. What will you give up? Decide on some rewards to motivate you to stay goal-oriented and focused.

10. Food diaries

These diaries track your caloric intake and amount of food consumed to meet fitness objectives.

11. Workout Diary

This is where you keep track of your exercise habits to achieve your personal fitness goals.

12. Reading diaries

These diaries are excellent for writing any idea or good quote from a book.

It's not that difficult, and you need a piece of paper and a pen to get started; you can try an online diary or a diary-writing app like Journey, Day One, Daylio, and Five-Minute Journal.

Writing a diary helps you create and initiate your own independent ideas, so make sure your diary is as unique as yours.

Write down the reason for your diary

Another tip on writing a diary is to start by writing down the reasons for writing your diary; you can write to express your thoughts and opinions on a topic, for example, or to reflect on and analyze your life and learn more about yourself. You can also write gratitude lists, messages, daily, weekly, and monthly concerns and goals, memories you have lived, challenges you face in solving problems, and more.

Here are some formulas to start with:

• Dear old self...
• Dear future self...
• Dear “so-and-so” (letter).
• I feel... (to identify and express your feelings).
• I'm worried about... (to jot down your worries).
• I have done / will do today…
• Reflect on the events of the week.
• You can also write gratitude lists, messages, daily, weekly, and monthly concerns and goals, memories you have lived, challenges you face in solving problems, and more.
• What challenges do I face?
• Think about solutions to any problems you encounter.
• I am grateful to….
• Morning diaries, that is, writing down the first thoughts that come into your mind in the morning.
• What are the things I like about myself?
• Fast writing, that is, writing for five minutes about anything that comes to your mind.
• Bucket List.
• Write down areas that need improvement.

Create your own or search the internet for more and read more diaries; there are plenty of possibilities at your fingertips.

Use the Emotions wheel

If you're looking for a smoother way to get motivated, look for Robert Plutchik's wheel of emotions. Write down every emotion in this classification and start by marking the emotion that accurately describes your feelings. Therapists use this method to help patients identify their feelings so they can heal. If you can pinpoint your exact emotion, this may help you relax and eliminate emotional distress.

That is a simple exercise at the beginning or end of your day; you may notice how your feelings fluctuate, and write about this.

If you can't write freely, start by choosing one of the emotions you sense to write about and write down why you feel that way. When do you feel it? Ask yourself questions like these; over time, this daily experience will help you get to know yourself better.

Use writing to treat pain

Writing a diary prompts you to express your emotions and recognize traumatic events in your life. It's normal to experience traumatic emotions and events, and you should expect that. The best thing to do is to use your journal as a place to talk about how you feel without making any judgments. That can also help you tell others how you feel, too.

When you deal with your feelings and the challenging events you are going through by writing diaries, you will build resilience. Therapy with writing or writing with the aim of treatment is a real thing. You will step towards recovery when you put your pen to the side. Through writing, you can identify the causes of pain, express your needs somewhere, and provide support for yourself.

Writing may not always be simple and smooth. Challenges can arise, but all you need to do is accept them and move on.

Celebrities who have committed to diary writing

Finally, you must get to know famous people who have practised writing diaries. Many celebrities have kept their diaries and used them to reach greatness, and some of them are:

• Marco Polo
• Lewis and Clark
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Frida Kahlo
• Ludwig van Beethoven
• Thomas Edison
• Mark Twain
• Albert Einstein
• Marie Curie

You may not want to become a public figure, but writing a diary may inspire you with ideas that may change the world. Many people (famous or not famous) keep a diary. It is simple and easy, so why not do it?

In conclusion

There are no real rules for writing diaries, so do it as you wish, and it's okay if you start and stop again or leave journaling for a while, as long as you return to it.

It is not necessary to write your diary professionally. You just have to give yourself the freedom to write what you want in a safe place. Many of us do not have a safe space, but journaling may be that space for any situation we live in. Use it as a means to achieve your peace of mind.

Regardless of how you journal, it's worth it. You can discover yourself and create a dialogue with yourself that will change your life. You may realize you have lots to offer the world or many things to be grateful for.

Writing a diary is a challenge and can push you to become the person you want to be, so you become stronger and better every day by just writing these simple words. The good news is that you don't need much to start, as you can start with these simple tips.