10 Journal Ideas – Inspiring Journals That Can Change Your Life
Bullet Journal
Bullet Journaling, also known as BuJo, is a structured and short but at the same time customized way to plan, organize, and sort information. Entries are tagged with bullet points, dashes, and other graphics so you can see their categories at a glance. But empty pages also allow to add your own sections (called “collections”) that align with your long and short-term goals such as a morning routine tracker, fitness log, diary, favorite quotes, meal planner etc.
It is a mix of a calendar, a diary, check lists and collections of other things and goals you want to remember and keep in one place. Bullet journaling requires daily, monthly, and yearly reflections and allows you track your habits, goals and tasks and prioritize the ones which are necessary to meet your weekly, monthly and yearly goals.
Check Out This Pinterest Collection to Find Creative and Inspiring Bullet Journal Ideas.
Gratitude Journal
Practicing gratitude on a regular basis is not just increasing our level of happiness but it also reduces feelings of envy, hatred and stress. It improves our self-esteem and our relationships with others as it makes us more giving and optimistic.
A Gratitude Journal is a great tool to keep track of the good things in your life. Write down the things you are grateful for on a regular (or even daily) basis. Did you master something or achieve a goal? Maybe you received a nice compliment or message from someone? Write it down in your gratitude journal. It’s easy and quick but it can have a huge effect on your mood and attitude towards others.
You can also go a step further and write down “Thank You” messages for different people reminding yourself who you are thankful for. You can use this collection to list all the people you want to thank and write down all the “Thank You” messages you want to send to these people to show them your appreciation and love.
It only takes a few minutes, but it can give you a lasting mood boost that can take you from feeling “okay” to feeling “great” on a more regular basis. Morning Journaling can enable you a great start in the day and journaling in the evening can make you feel calmer and sleep better.
Inspiring Journal for Motivation
There are different things you can keep in your Journal for Motivation. You can focus on your future and write down your vision that will keep you motivated. If you didn’t create a vision yet, you can take my 7 day challenge to create an inspiring vision for your future. Knowing your “Why” and reading your vision again and again can keep you going every day even if things might get hard and overwhelming.
Another thing you could write down in this journal could be great moments of your past where you felt motivated, happy and fulfilled. Think back to the last time you had a surge of motivation. Describe these moment and how you felt. What did you master or do in that moment? Which things or situations made you “feel alive”? This might not just help you to remember the great things that happened in your life but also get to know yourself better and keep track of the things that make you feel good.
An Journal of Motivation could also be a great place to keep your favorite affirmations or inspirational and motivational quotes which you want to repeat over and over again. Also inspirational people or videos could be great things to write down so that you can always come back to them, whenever you’re looking for a new book or if you feel down and need something that lifts you up.
Full Focus Planner
The Full Focus Planner is created by Michael Hyatt to set regular goals, increase the focus and achieve more by doing less. With weekly goal and focus overviews and a specific daily structure (Daily Big 3, rituals, daily time plans, other tasks and notes) it is more than a usual calendar.
The weekly previews are encouraging to review the biggest wins and achievements of the previous week. You’ll also find questions like “What worked and what didn’t” or “What will you keep, improve, start or stop doing” which encourage to review your actions and to think about which ones helped you to come closer to your goal and which one’s didn’t work.
The Full Focus Planner can be used as a more effective and focused calendar but it has no empty pages like the bullet journal which can be customized.
Five-Minute Journal
The Five-Minute Journal was created by UJ Ramdas and Alex Ikonn in 2013 to make people happier by “priming the brain” and “cultivating gratitude.”
It is broken up into two sections: a morning routine section and a night routine section. The Five-Minute Journal can boost happiness & increase productivity each day. It provides daily guided gratitude exercises and is the perfect tool to hone your ability to focus on the good in life.
The Five-Minute Journal is a perfect tool for people who want to journal every day and have either not much time, who need more guidance or who struggle with keeping a bullet journal.
Every page contains a few simple questions and notes: An inspiring quote, “What would make today great?”, affirmation, gratefulness, “How could you’ve made today better” and a list of weekly challenges.
The Five-Minute Journal is designed to last 6 months and can be bought here: Five-Minute Journal.
Travel Journal
A Travel Journal allows you to capture emotions, images and descriptions of the places, people, and things you’ve encountered on your past trips. Travel Journals can become time capsules of your memories where you store your adventures, stories and memories. They are a beautiful way to document your travels and trips and something you might want to take a look at in the future or even show your kids or grand kids.
But travel journals are also a great way to plan ahead for future adventures. You can use a travel journal to keep a list of all the places you want to visit in the future and all the things you want to do. You can even start to plan your next trips and use it to keep all the important information (addresses, reservations, tickets, numbers) in one place.
Dream Journal
A Dream Journal is a great journal for people who want to recall their dreams to analyze them or to practice lucid dreaming. A lucid dream is a dream where you’re aware that you are dreaming. During a lucid dream a dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment.
But even if you’re not interested in lucid dreaming, keeping track of your dreams can help you to see patterns and to get to know yourself better. It can give you some insights into your most important concerns, activities, and relationships in the waking world.
You can start it very easily by write out the last dream you remember, even if it’s just a tiny fragment or image. What is the earliest dream you ever remember? Do you remember any recurrent dreams? Place your dream journal next to your bedside, so that you can immediately write it down when you wake up with a dream in mind.
It can be helpful to give each dream a title, as if it were a short story. It’s a way of crystallizing in a phrase or image something important about the dream. The titles also make it easier to refer back to the dreams. If you want to learn more about dream interpretation, I can recommend the book The Divinity Code To Understanding Your Dreams And Visions.
Mindfulness Journal
A Mindfulness Journal can be great to help you find peace and calm wherever you are. In this Mindfulness Journal you’ll find exercises that can help you to cut through the noise and reclaim calm and a peaceful mind in stressful situations.
It can help you to live in the present moment and fight insecurities, fears and doubts. With a Mindfulness journal you can increase self awareness, self-confidence and creativity to find solutions to problems you might not have thought about before.
Goal Journal
Yes, we want things to happen immediately and are depressed when we don’t change our life in the next days…
But transformation needs time. We need to adapt new habits and beliefs and sometimes we need to work on things for weeks or even months before we reach our goals and start that new career or become the successful person we want to be and start living our dream life.
A goal journal helps us to break our goals down and to put everything in perspective so that we don’t fall into the trap of wrong expectations and frustrations. Breaking the bigger goals down into small and attainable ones can help us to focus on the next important tasks and track the progress which has a uplifting effect and can be a huge motivation to continue moving forward.
You can use a goal journal to keep track of your long-term, and short-term goals and set goals for different categories of your life like your health, personal development, relationships, finances or your career. You can also write down rewards for every milestone or small goal you reach and keep track of all successes you had to remember what you’ve already accomplished. Don’t forget to celebrate yourself and every little progress you’re making towards your goals.
Food Journal
Keeping a Food Journal is a great idea if you want to lose weight, focus more on a healthier nutrition or follow a specific diet which requires special meal plans. You can use it to keep a record of what you’re eating, to plan out future meals or to keep a collection of your favorite recipes.
You can write down what you’re eating, where you’re eating or what you’re feeling before or afterwards. This can help to recognize patterns or situations in which you felt bad, sad, lonely, bored or overwhelmed that caused you to eat more than you needed or something you’re trying to avoid.
But you can also use a food journal to keep a go-to list of your favorite restaurants and meals or recommended restaurants you want to visit in the future.
