My New No Pressure Journal

If you are anything like me or you are into journals yourself, you will often find that your journals change, how you journal changes and you you feel about journalling changes too.  I go backwards and forward and in and out of love with not just the different types of physical journals I have but also how I am journalling in them. I guess different things suit me at different times and for different reasons.

Next week I will do an update on my current journals but just to give you a brief idea of my current journals, I am using an art journal and a 100% written journal but I was finding increasingly that I wasn't having any motivation for my written journal, I was finding that I didn't have the time, or perhaps more importantly that I wasn't finding or making the time to journal and when I did I just wasn't feeling it or in the mood.

Then one day I decided to set myself a no pressure journal.

I have a few new, empty notebooks / journals on my shelf and so I just went and grabbed the first one I felt drawn to with little thought into it, this was to be my no pressure journal so I didn't want to spend ages pondering over the cover, the paper quality the size and all that jazz. I was creating a new way of journaling, well new to me anyways.

So I set myself some rules for my no pressure journal:

No pressure to write
No pressure to art
No pressure to decorate at all
No pressure to have beautiful neat handwriting
No pressure to use any type of pen
No pressure to write long entries
No pressure to make eloquent entries

I told myself that I could just write whenever and wherever I wanted, multiple times a day if I wanted to. I can just grab any pen that is kicking around the house and just write until I want to stop writing. If I run out of time, or motivation I can just stop and not worry about it making sense or having to pick up where I left off the day before.

This is to be my no pressure, 100% fun journal and you know it is. I am finding myself wanting to pick it up and write in it all the time. Sometimes I will just write a sentence if it comes to me, other times I will write several pages but above all I am not worrying about it and just enjoying the process. I think this is a great tip for those just starting out or wanting to start journalling. Don't overthink it and don't worry about hoarding that beautiful notebook or worrying about not making it look nice and pretty. Who cares! It is just a notebook, it is there to be written in and loved.

I have been journalling for years and often go in peaks and troughs with my journals but I think you need to enjoy it and not force it. If you are forcing yourself to journal you are not being true to you and your reasons for journalling are all skewed. A journal is your companion for telling your woes, your fears, getting negative emotions out, rejoicing in the good times, documenting your life and record keeping. It is all there or should all be there, the real you, the place where you can truly be you and not worry about what anyone else things, so why should you worry about coherrent sentences? You shouldn't, you should just write, write whatever needs to come out and just go with it!

I hope that has helped you in some way, let me know if you have various journals that you use for different reasons, I would love to know.

If you would like to know more about how and why I journal you can watch this video. This is a video that I created in May 2013 but I realise that newer subscribers may not have seen this before and may find it interesting.