Wellness Journal Ideas for Positive Health and Wellbeing
Are you overwhelmed trying to follow a healthier lifestyle? Let’s dive in with wellness journal ideas for positive health and wellbeing.
It can be challenging to know where to start when you are trying to live a healthier lifestyle. Making small changes, such as eating more vegetables or getting enough sleep, seems daunting at first. Wellness journals help people make these changes and achieve their wellness goals.
In this blog post, we will discuss wellness journal ideas and the benefits of tracking your habits.
Benefits of using a wellness journal
Wellness journals can help you set and achieve your wellness goal. It also provides accountability and assistance in achieving successful results.
Wellness journals are a great way to keep track of what is going on. It provides a sense of perspective about the whole picture. Tracking our habits makes it more likely we will take better care of ourselves. Especially compared to when we are just “winging” things.
A wellness journal also allows us to explore our feelings, thoughts, and experiences. It can provide an outlet for self-exploration and emotional processing. In this way, it can offer assistance with mental health.
Wellness journals can be an effective way of self-care. It allows us to acknowledge where we have been and decide on wellness habits that are going to help us in the future. Tracking our healthy habits allows us to make better choices next time. We are able to reflect on any barriers so we can continue to make healthy changes.
Getting started using a Wellness Journal
The first steps when getting started are to set one goal at a time. Write the goal you wish to accomplish and how you are going to accomplish that goal. Think about what actions are needed in order for you to achieve your goal.
Use “SMART” Goals
As you write your goal make sure it is a “SMART” goal. It is important for it to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. This will allow you to easily know if you completed the goal.
For example, “Exercise for at least 30 minutes on three out of five days this week” is a much better goal than just saying, “I am going to exercise more.”
Specific goals will help you stay on top of your goals. It will allow you to focus on what is important to be successful and not get sidetracked with everyday life.
Measurable goals are important so you can know if you completed the task. Achievable goals are also important because we want to make sure the goal we are setting is realistic and attainable.
Relevant goals are important in working towards the task. Is this goal going to help with the overall picture?
Timely goals need a beginning and end. Give yourself a deadline so you can push yourself to reach the goal.
Importance of a Habit Tracker
Wellness journaling is about tracking positive habits on a regular basis with the idea to eventually achieve your wellness goals. It’s up to you to review your wellness habits every day or just once per week. I recommend reviewing daily habits on a daily basis.
We can set goals all day long, but if we don’t spend time reflecting on them they don’t do us much good. It is a good idea to track your progress so you can see how far you have come. Sometimes it is easy to feel defeated if you did not reach the goal, but seeing the progress will help keep you going.
It could be that if you are not making progress then you need to reevaluate your goal or actions steps. Is the goal not realistic at this time? Is it more than you have the bandwidth for? Are you able to make it a priority? Do you not have the correct actions steps to get you there? Are you not giving yourself enough time?
Wellness journal ideas
Create wellness goals based on simple things you want to accomplish. Need some ideas? Try these wellness journals prompts: Exercise one extra day per week, drink water daily (at least 64 oz), aim for 8 hours of sleep every night, and meditate 10 minutes every day.
Write down your wellness goals and how many days you wish to accomplish them – this will help keep you accountable for the changes you want to make. There may be times when we can’t do everything at once, but by taking small steps each day we’ll get there eventually!
There is no wrong way to track your healthy habits. You don’t need fancy health trackers to get started, you just need the desire to develop positive habits that will help move you forward.
Tracking in a wellness journal
I recommend using a weekly spread or even monthly to track. You can find samples on Canva or Google. There are lots of journal prompts you can find online if you are looking to do more of a gratitude journal. There are also lots of wellness journals or gratitude journals you can buy or you can easily create a bullet journal if that is your style. Honestly, just plain paper works well. It just depends on your preference.
As mentioned above bullet journaling can also be used. That would allow you to customize exactly what you want to track. I love the idea of bullet journals, but don’t love creating them. I waste too much time trying to make it perfect.
The important thing is to start and not get overwhelmed with the process. Things I recommend tracking are water intake, activity, meal planning, sleep tracker, mood tracker, stress level, and energy level.
If you want to see positive change, a wellness journal is a great way to make positive strides in your overall health.
If you are trying to lose or gain weight, I do recommend tracking your weight. Although please do not use a weight loss tracker if this adds stress to your situation. There are other markers you will notice like how well your clothes fit. Are your pants feeling tight or baggie?
I believe in taking a holistic approach to overall health and well being. As I navigate my own health journey and have just started following the autoimmune protocol diet, I am tracking the following:
- Food intake and symptoms such as bloating, headaches, sore throat, etc
- Mood
- Mental health & stress
- Water intake
- Exercise sessions
- Sleep
- Meal Planning
- Self Care practices such as reading and meditating
- Gratitude – writing 1 thing I am grateful every day.
Tips for getting started using a wellness journal
Remember these tips before starting your wellness journal: Start small – start with one thing at a time. Write down what you are grateful for every day – this will boost your mood and can show you how much good there is in the world we often take for granted. Remember to review your wellness journal regularly.
Wellness journaling is not about being perfect, it’s a way of acknowledging where we’ve been and thought about ways to improve our wellness future together with others who might be going through similar things.
Wellness journaling is about making these wellness habits a regular part of our daily routines. It’s important that we remember it will take work to keep mindfulness, healthy sleep, or happiness going, so don’t get discouraged if one week you’re getting more done than the next! That just means you have been able to prioritize wellness in one week and not the next.
At times I have used Cultivate What Matters Powersheets. This allows me to set goals, action steps, and then track daily, weekly, and monthly actions. It includes fun pages that really get you thinking about the big picture. I also like to go back to look over the entire year and see the progress. This has significantly helped my personal growth as well as my business.
I also just like to use a small notebook I can keep with me in my bag.
I hope these wellness journal ideas have helped inspire you to start your own. If you use a helpful wellness journal tool, feel free to drop it in the comments to help other readers.