Did it ever happen to you that your thoughts and feelings turned into a whirlwind and you ended up stressed and confused?
Putting your ideas and emotions on paper without worrying about grammar, punctuation, or spelling provides a sense of relief and clarity.
Once on paper, you can see what your worries, concerns, and fears are.
This is one of the many ways that writing can make you happy.
How Can Writing Benefit the Writer?
Bottling up our emotions can have adverse effects on our mental and physical health as the stress will accumulate in our body.
Many authors expressed the positive effects of writing about their experiences or questions.
Just to name a few:
Stephen King in his book On Writing tells the story about being run over by a car and the difficult and painful rehabilitation. He chose to focus on writing and telling his story, which helped with his recovery.
Elizabeth Gilbert in her book Eat, Pray, Love recounts her traumatic divorce and her search for pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and a balance between the two in Indonesia.
Michelle Obama, in her book Becoming shares that she started a journal to figure out “Where I want my life to go. What kind of person do I want to be? How do I want to contribute to the world?” She picked up this habit from Barak Obama who viewed writing as therapeutic and clarifying and had kept journals on and off over the years.
Albert Einstein and Leonardo Da Vinci used to keep a journal to jot down ideas, thoughts, and experiences.
You don’t have to be a writer to benefit from writing.
Journaling Toward Happiness
Instead of reaching for your phone, TV remote control, or snack, grab a pen and a notebook when you need a break.
Writing can lessen anxiety and stress if you write about difficult experiences.
Writing helps you to think, organize your thoughts, and accomplish important tasks.
Here are some ideas to get you started. You may write about:
- Past experiences that you are still trying to understand
- Goals you want to achieve
- Expectations for yourself and others
- Worries and fears that repeat in your life
- Questions about the past, present, or future
- Interests you would like to explore
- Difficult decisions you are thinking about
- Everything you are grateful for
If you can’t think about anything, write about that. Keep the pen moving and you will be surprised by what shows up on the paper.
10 Ways Writing Can Make You Happy
Writing affects your happiness and well-being in the following ways:
1 – It Relieves Stress and Anxiety
Writing helps you process your emotions and thoughts. Expressive writing helps you think critically and address a situation with deeper understanding.
Journal writing helps you vent and effectively cope with the ups and downs of life.
You may keep track of what triggers your emotions and what provides relief.
Reflecting on this information will help you limit or better manage the triggers and provide more opportunities for relief.
Here are additional strategies to go from overwhelmed to happy.
2 – It Promotes Emotional Intelligence
Writing can make you happy by enhancing your emotional intelligence. Moreover, jotting down your feelings helps you make sense of your emotions.
In addition, you may remember helpful quotes or advise you received in the past or engage in positive self-talk.
Here you can find guidance in how to use positive self-talk for happiness and success.
3 – It Enhances Your Communication Skills
Journaling is communicating with yourself in writing. You can ask and answer questions, give examples, justify, and analyze your actions.
Furthermore, it helps you to articulate your ideas accurately and concisely. As a result, you are able to improve not only how you communicate with yourself but also with others.
4 – It Helps You Set and Achieve Goals
Journal writing about your goals helps you gain clarity about where you are and where you want to go. As a result, it increases your chances of succeeding because it helps you to think through difficulties and chart an action plan.
Jack Canfield recommends writing your goals down and posting them in a visible place.
Writing all your goals down everyday in the morning and at night is Grant Cardone’s advice to keep your goals fresh in your mind.
Hal Elrod advises to write about your goals every morning. You should analyze and reflect on your motivation, progress, next steps, and how to overcome challenges.
Writing and working on your goals will increase your feelings of happiness.
Here you can learn how working on your goals can make you happy.
5 – It Increases Empathy
When you are upset or angry with someone, write down your concerns, disappointments, and complaints. Don’t hold back. Don’t be polite. Just get it all out.
Then, write from the other person’s point of view.
Why do you think the other person acted that way? Put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
Once you have the two opposite points of view on paper, you will be able to understand better the situation.
Practicing empathy tends to increase happiness.
6– It Promotes Problem Solving Skills
Writing is a great problem-solving tool. In addition, jotting down a problem you want to solve allows you to explore possible solutions. It helps you to think through difficult decisions and gain clarity, which increases happiness.
You can brainstorm all the possible solutions to the problem and the more you write, the more alternatives will come to your mind.
7 – It Makes You More Creative
Writing can make you happy because it tends to boost creativity. It enables you to explore and discover new or hidden ideas and solutions, which optimizes your creative potential.
While writing down your problems, your mind will start working on possible solutions and you will come up with creative solutions you had not considered before.
8 – It Helps Process Emotions
Writing helps you make sense of your emotions. What’s more, it helps you identify negative patterns and find relief.
If you consistently write everyday about how you feel, you will discover patterns of situations that put you in a good or bad mood.
You may discover that every Sunday afternoon you feel sad without any apparent reason. Writing will help focus your attention on what you experience, do, and think on Sundays.
With this information you may change your routine toward activities that lift up your mood.
9 – It Increases Self-Awareness
Writing is a great way to express and evaluate yourself.
It allows you to assess situations honestly. What’s more, writing objectively increases optimism and personal accountability. It gives you insights and encouragement.
10 – It Boosts Memory
Expressive writing tends to improve memory and comprehension. Furthermore, writing about events in your life gives more permanence to fleeting events. Writing can make you happy because it tends to increase working memory capacity.
Writing down your thoughts and feelings can make you happy.
What is your experience with expressive writing, journaling, or writing in general? Let me know in the comments below.
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I need to start writing more often about my feelings. Even if I do write as a living, I don’t put down on paper personal things.
As someone who opted for a career in writing because it makes me feel so happy, I can totally attest to this article! Great post. 🙂
I completely agree writing keeps me balanced and more self-aware. For a long time, i stopped writing but when I started again, I noticed a great difference.
I am not big on writing about my feelings but have found writing for my blog to be a creative release that somehow allows me to de-stress. I need to check out the other benefits you mention.
I definitely enjoy writing and getting my thoughts out on paper. I often use writing to do a creative project or accomplish a task. It’s so important to be able to write well.
I’ve always thought that writing is like a sort of giving but I’m also grateful that I get a lot out of it. We are blessed that we have skills, even a bit in writing.
Writing is a magical tool we all can use for the best of our well-being. It helps emotionally, psychologically, and connect to other people.
I LOVE writing letters old-fashioned way and send birthday cards and holiday cards, too.
This is beautiful. Expressing yourself can be quite liberating.
This is exactly what I feel about writing. It’s sustenance for me. And I believe that it is through writing that I am able to see my life more than the pain and suffering.
Through writing, I was able to give it a better meaning.
Such a beautiful post and I really enjoyed reading this. I agree, that writing is a tool that can help you in so many ways. For me, writhing makes me happy because I was able to released my heartache, the stressed that I felt and most especially writing gives me a freedom of telling those things that I want to say and doing things that I want to do. Writing is such a very powerful tool.
Great post on writing. I’ve been encouraging my parents to put their ideas and emotions on paper.
love this topic! every single one of them is such an important writing inspiration. Thanks so much for sharing
I love writing most especially keeping diaries and journaling. It really helps me not to pile up emotions within me so it’s so therapeutic. And also, as a blogger who always wants to write more, I’m always able to note down my ideas for months ahead. Writing is just great!
Absolutely! I feel like writing is a huge release for me! I tell everyone that they should take up journaling. It just feels so cathartic!
I completely agree that journaling and writing can make you happier. It has definitely calmed my stress and even made me a better writer. I feel like everyone should try doing it from time to time even if they aren’t someone who loves writing.
For me, writing is therapy. It relieves me of pent up emotions and stress when I write down my feelings. It is so freeing and yes, it does make me happy.
My mom taught me to write a journal at a very young age. I have been writing it since then. After dozens of journal, I agree to you completely!
I love writing. Since I started blogging I have noticed some positive changes in me. It definitely promotes emotional intelligence .
I love writing! and It certainly makes me feel very happy!
Creative writing and journaling are great ways to release stress…it’s so therapeutic. I need to get back to writing.
I’ve just recently started a gratitude journal, but maybe I should take it a step further!
I agree, I am a writer and I need to write to get things done or when I am sad or when I need to motivate myself. I find that so soothing and calming
I recently started journaling. I didn’t really think it would help much, but I am working through the book The Artist’s Way and part of it is journaling every day. I don’t do it every day like I should, but it helps when I’m feeling overwhelmed.
I loved that book. The author recommends to write 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness every morning just to get everything that is on your mind out of the way so that your creativity can come out. It’s a great strategy!
Writing is a great way to heal, learn, share, and grow. It gives us insights that might remain dormant, and the creative process is always a fascinating road to traverse.
That said, I don’t think it necessarily makes you happy otherwise, all the accomplished writers would be the happiest folks on earth and they are not.
It can be rewarding and offer some resolve… Happiness, on the other hand, is an inside job and tied to a whole slew of other factors in our lives besides writing.
I have found it very useful to keep a journal. I agree, it has helped me work through a lot of problems I’ve been faced with, relieve stress and keep me focused on my goals. I’ve done it since I can remember, and I will continue.
I have found much healing and happiness in writing. That is part of what inspired me to become a blogger.
I have been writing for years and it has helped me work through so much of my life! I could not imagine life without it!
Journaling is always helpful for me when I need to get out of my head. Sometimes I can get so overwhelmed with school, work, and family that only thing that helps is to just put it on paper.
It’s ironic that I am reading this now, because just last night I was bemoaning how busy things are with the start of school for my two kids. I haven’t had as much time for my journaling as I’d like in literally months now!
When I write I feel free and happy for sure. Especially when the result of my efforts is satisfactory. Often when going through the editing and final review a thought comes to my mind: “was it truly me writing this”.
That is very true and I do it all the time. Every time i feel i am in a bad mood, i grab my notebook and start writing poems, small stories, etc…Best remedy.
some really god points made here- i agree i love writing and it does bring me joy as well
I 100% agree here, writing does promote emotional intelligence and helps you to reflect too which is super important xx
I really wish I were good at the journaling thing. I mean, it’s interesting to look back later and see about what I was thinking at the time. But sometimes the questions I want answered while I am writing don’t come when I need them answered. Maybe that’s why I dislike the practice. So I usually start and then quit pretty quickly.
Thank you for sharing… just reading this post makes me happy as reading usually does 🙂 But I do agree with you… writing is a beautiful, things and it does make me happy. I love writing in my Gratitude Journal…. it is a great way to teach yourself to appreciate all things and to be grateful for them. It sets my tone for the day…. 🙂
I love writing, although I don’t do it as often as I used to due to time constrictions
It is a good Post but i am not too sure about the first point mention sometimes writing gives stress and anxiety.
Great point! Writing can be stressful when you are trying to accomplish a specific goal such as writing a paper for college, a dissertation or an article for publication but when you write on paper everything that comes to your mind without worries and expectations, it should not be stressful.
I LOVE writing and totally see now how it makes you happy. I love seeing goals achieve, seeing how prayers I’ve written have been answered and dreaming about future goals!
Journaling is a great way to relieve anxiety. I also find that my memory is so much better when I write.
Writing really is one of the things that help me stay sane. I have a lot of things going on in my mind most of the time and I just need a way to dump them all out. My go to would always be writing!
This has been such an encouraging post. It has inspired me to start writing again for processing my thoughts. Thank you, and thank you again!
I totally agree with you, I sometimes find myself being in a very relaxed moment through when I’m writing. I disconnect myself from the noises and its perfect.
I love the idea of journaling!! I rest wish I was better at it since it is a really great way to relax and figure life out!
I totally agree with you! Usually i write just to clear my mind and it feels so good later ☺
I have read it once that writing could be therapeutic and it’s like you’re pouring out your soul to a listening friend who will not judge you.
Thank you for sharing.
I’ve just started doing this recently and it has been a great experience. Happy to see so many more benefits that come out of it!
Never knew writing could help so much towards happiness. I started writing because I wanted to share my happiness with the world.
I agree with all the points you provided!! I love writing and it definitely makes me happy. Blogging and journaling are some of my favorite things to do!
Every year on my best friend’s birthday and the anniversary of his death, I write a blog post for him. It’s basically a place to say I miss you and tell him about what’s going on in my life since he has been gone. It is definitely therapeutic. I honestly didn’t know just how healing that writing could be until I became a blogger, and now I write from the heart and I love it.
There is something very therapeutic about writing with a pen and paper. I find that I am able to more creative by using that instead of “writing” on my phone or laptop. Great information on the importance of writing!
What a great post. I spend time journaling everyday to get my emotions out on paper. It really is liberating.
I love this! Writing has been so therapeutic for me. I really needed an outlet for my feelings. So now I write instead of stress eating lol
I love this post. I really do think writing is some sort of therapy. It helps so much expressing thoughts, feelings, and also organizing yourself with to do lists.
Writing is a big part of what is helping me through recovery. It’s so important to be able to express yourself in a safe, creative way.