5 Benefits of Writing: Why You Should Write Every Day

Writing every day isn’t just about completing a novel or writing your memoirs. People memorialize all kinds of things in their journals, from dreams to vocabulary lists to reflections at the end of the day. While maintaining your journal, you can also get some stellar results. To get started, choose a diary that’s personalized to your purposes and tastes and let your thoughts flow freely. Here are some of the benefits of writing every day that you may not know about.

Wake Up Your Brain

How many times have you sat at work, waiting for your brain to warm up so that you can be productive? There’s a better way to prepare for the day than stumbling through the bleary first hours of the morning. While you’re sipping on your wake-up beverage, pull out your journal and write. ThinkWritten and other sites have daily prompts to get you started. This exercise gets your brain moving and ready to plow through the work you get paid for.

Purge Your Mind

Sometimes, you just need to clear the clutter. If your head is spinning from a relationship crisis, forgotten errands or anything else, put it down on paper–then forget about it. It could be something as simple as, “If I forget to get cat food, Fluffy may eat me in my sleep.” You can also use it the vent, “Why does she always have to have meetings before I’ve had my coffee?” (Just be sure to dispose of anything incriminating or likely to get you in trouble.)

What are the Benefits?

Writing helps you get negative and counter-productive thoughts out of your head. It can also help you become more self-aware. It’s highly likely that you will know yourself better after writing every day for three weeks. With so many voices telling us how to think, act and behave, it’s important to have a mechanism that helps us stay true to ourselves. Instead of self-criticism, start out your day writing an affirmation on self-love or copying a poem you love. Preceding your diary session with a walk or a few yoga moves can warm up your body as well as your brain and help you get over the morning lull.

Here are some useful exercises that increase self-awareness and open your mind up to creativity:

• Dream recall. Keeping a dream journal can help you choose topics to write about. Keep your journal by your bed so that you can take notes if you wake up suddenly after a dream. Write down if you remember concrete facts or vague impressions. Over time, you’ll start to remember more of what you dream about.
• Vocabulary expansion. Practicing your vocabulary can help you maintain it over time. Writing is the best way to do so. This exercise might spare you the embarrassment of forgetting vital jargon or constantly struggling to capture words on the edge of your memory. One great way to improve your vocabulary is to highlight words you don’t know in a dictionary or thesaurus and write them in your journal. There are many sites that offer Word A Day email lists to improve your vocabulary the easy way.
• Evening contemplation. Allow 15-20 minutes at night to write your thoughts on the day. What made you happy or stressed you out? Put it all on paper so that you can relax and wind down at the end of the day.

Things are just some of the ways that writing every day can benefit you.

from Feedster https://www.feedster.com/writing/5-benefits-of-writing-why-you-should-write-every-day/