Hishem Azzouz has kept a gratitude journal for three years. Writing down emotions lets you release anger and sadness without conflict. Reviewing old entries shows you patterns and growth you'd otherwise forget.
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Beautiful day, bit sunburnt. Yeah, so quick video. What's this? This is a journal or gratitude journal, whatever you want to call it, and I wanted to make a video because This is the third year now that I've kept a journal, and I think that it can benefit loads of people if you don't have one. So, two main reasons why, or the benefits I've seen from keeping a journal. So firstly, we're all guilty of this, and that's sort of just holding on to how you're feeling about something. If you're angry at something, or you're upset, you're sad, or whatever it is, you're holding on to it, and sometimes you feel like there's no outlet besides maybe getting emotional or having an argument with someone or whatever. And what this has really helped me with is be able— there's something about writing it down that is really, really powerful. So when I've felt maybe some of those emotions and I felt sad about certain things or upset or whatever, writing it down in this journal really feels like you've got it off your chest, and that helps a lot. So that's the first thing. Secondly, it's so easy to— if you were to say to me, Hishem Azzouz, what happened sort of last year, or what sort of— how did last year go? I find that really hard. It all sort of just merges into one. And what this journal allows you to do is what I've done for the last 2 years now is, as the year's going on, if you really wanted to, you could sort of take the time one day a month to sort of just look through your month, see how it's going for you, see where you can make improvements or what you're pleased with, all those sorts of things. But what's been really, really powerful is being able to look at my whole year through sort of my entries into my journal, and you can get some really, really cool insights when you have access to that. So with that as well, it's so easy just to forget sort of how far you've come sometimes because you're thinking about where you are now. You didn't— sometimes it's hard to really live or think about where you was 12 months ago. And when you read passages from 12 months ago, you can sort of get into that mindset of what you was at that time or what you was feeling. And one, I think that's a great thing to be able to do, to go to make sure that you're sort of taking the right steps. And also, as I said, some really, really cool insights you can get from reading your journal. So if you haven't got a journal, I'd really, really recommend it. There's no secret to sort of what you have to write or whatever. Just write how you feel, write how that day's gone, maybe what you're grateful for on that day. And honestly, it's great. It's a great, great simple tool to have, and honestly, I feel like a lot of people could benefit from it.
