Recording your reflections, meditations and prayers can be inspiring, even liberating. Journaling can take the form of single words, life highlights or full narrative. This exercise can improve your mood as you allow yourself to express pain, fear, anger or other unexpressed emotions.

Consider journaling periodically throughout the week. More specifically, commit to writing ten minutes a day for at least one full week. Following a week of journaling consider how and to what degree journaling helped or influenced your life and your sense of well-being. Did journaling help you process through life events, relationship issues, health concerns, and anxiety about the future? Try re-reading and reflecting on selected narratives from your journal.

Journaling can add meaning to life; provide an avenue for expressions of gratitude, the setting of goals, and periodic life-reviews. Journaling is credited with helping to shift emotional dispositions and adjust an individual’s frame of reference. “Journaling reduces stress because the paper acts as an ear to verbalize our problems, frustrations or thoughts. Even though the paper does not talk back, you will still feel better getting everything out of your brain and onto paper because writing is cathartic” (www.lifescript.com/soul/self/well-being/journaling).