In­tro­vert Friendly Saint Self Care Guide: Jour­nal your Jour­ney 

Some peo­ple recharge and take care of them­selves by so­cial­iz­ing at an event with friends, go­ing out to a new work­out or art class, but per­son­ally that does­n’t ap­peal to me. I pre­fer to keep to my­self and in­dulge in an ac­tiv­ity that brings me com­fort. In a world where tech­nol­ogy is every­where, it can be so ther­a­peu­tic to be pre­sent in the mo­ment and com­pose a list of your thoughts. Whether it’s re­flec­tive or for grat­i­tude, it can re­ally ground you and trans­form the ecosys­tem of your brain. If you were like me as a child, you had a se­quined, lock­ing jour­nal with your ini­tial on the front, and it was filled with delu­sions about your fu­ture life with your 5^th grade crush. Jour­nal­ing has been proven to help man­age the stress and emo­tions that come with life, es­pe­cially as a col­lege stu­dent.  

What if I told you I took the same ap­proach that brought me my now boyfriend of over a year? I had a ses­sion with my ther­a­pist, who rec­om­mended that I write down a spe­cific list of qual­i­ties that I am look­ing for in a part­ner. So that’s what I did, and while it did feel quite silly in the mo­ment, look­ing back, it was such a healthy thing to do! I re­ally took a step back and thought about my needs, and I ended up match­ing with him on a dat­ing app about 4 months later. Did the writ­ing it­self ac­tu­ally bring me a boyfriend? No, but I can say that it truly changed my mind­set from then on. Af­ter that, I took on the prac­tice of grat­i­tude jour­nal­ing which was a great way to gain more pos­i­tive in­sight into my daily life.  

I con­sulted with a Maryville class­mate of mine, Ly­dia Rice, who has spent the past month work­ing on her­self, and im­ple­ment­ing jour­nal­ing into her morn­ings. What mo­ti­vated Rice to start jour­nal­ing was the worst men­tal de­pres­sion of her life. Rice takes in­spi­ra­tion from many me­dia sources, for ex­am­ple, The Wiz­ard Liz. Click­ing her name will lead you to her chan­nel of videos you can pick from. Rice’s per­sonal fa­vorite video is How to stop doubt­ing your­self and how to stop be­ing lazy and pa­thetic. “She took a nee­dle and sent it right through the dream­land of “I am not al­lowed to be de­pressed any­more!”” 

I asked Rice what kind of phys­i­cal im­pact that the habit of jour­nal­ing has had in her life, and she gave me some in­ter­est­ing in­sight. “It helps me feel more awake in the morn­ings, be­cause I wake up and en­gage my brain in some­thing good. I have also no­ticed that my con­fi­dence has gone up be­cause I have switched from hav­ing a vic­tim men­tal­ity and now, I have some op­ti­mism and am push­ing my­self to get in­volved in things that I haven’t be­fore. 

While jour­nal­ing is­n’t the most in­no­v­a­tive self-care ac­tiv­ity, it is per­fect for in­tro­verts, or any­one that is lack­ing pos­i­tive move­ment in your life, or just could use a re­fresh in your days. Ac­quire a jour­nal that makes you happy, and pour your thoughts and as­pi­ra­tions into it. You never know what can come from it!