Do you remember the first time you saw an adult coloring book or heard about the idea of adults coloring for relaxation and creativity? 

​I remember the first time I saw an adult coloring book in an article in the New York Times about Johanna Basford’s 2013 coloring book Secret Garden. 

The cover of the book exhibited lovely black-ink line drawings against white paper with gold foil accents.  The book’s simple message was optimistic—tapping into your childhood activities is therapeutic.  And the adult coloring sensation was on.  Adults set up coloring clubs, met up at cafés, and bought each other countless coloring books to devote hours filling in line drawings with colored pencils and crayons. 

Adult life has hit a breaking point where high stress, fast pace, and increased anxiety is the norm of the day.  Regardless what people are doing—students, homemakers, professionals, and creatives—our collective levels of stress and anxiety have reached a height where our health and wellbeing are affected.

Today, more people are more stressed and more affected by that stress than ever before.  Since 1999, levels of stress, depression, and anxiety have risen at a steady pace.  And this is not just an American problem; this is happening all over the world in nearly every demographic by age, economics, and location.  
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In much the same way that we turned to coloring books to relieve stress and balance our lives, journal writing is a simple activity that anyone can engage in to relieve stress. 
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With half the country being at odds with the other half, can people really decrease stress as easily and picking up a journal and jotting down a few notes?  Yes, it can work.  Of course, journal writing is not a cure-all to everyone’s problems, but the research indicates that it people’s stress, anxiety, and depression levels can decrease with journal writing.  

How does someone get themselves set up to journal?  Like all activities, when people start off prepared, the likelihood for success is greater. 

Space
Create a space to write just the way you like it.  Do you prefer to write in bed for a half hour before falling asleep?  If so, set up your nightstand with your journal, pens, and colored pencils so that you are ready to write and draw. 

Are you an early morning writer who likes to wake up the sun?  Great.  Set the timer on your coffeemaker to have a hot drink ready for you first thing in the morning.  Maybe set out your writing materials next to the kitchen table or easy chair under the reading lamp so that you can write first thing.

Schedule
People are particular about when and what time they write best.  Many people pop out of bed before dawn to greet the day with enthusiasm and others take advantage of the late-night creative energy that allows them to produce a ton of work closer to midnight.  Whatever your preferred time, try to schedule time to write each day at your preferred time of day. 

Accouterments 
What goodies do you like to have with you when you write?  Do you need your special pens or colored pencils?  Do you only write with a hot coffee and a pastry?  Are you a person who writes with a glass of red wine and an assortment of dark chocolates?  Do you prefer classical music in the background or total silence?  The things we carry when we attend to our writing can be the difference between success and giving up too soon, so choose consciously.

Style
Different people like to write in different ways.  Some prefer a memoir-style of writing so that they have an opportunity to look back on the past and make peace with their memories.  Others like to release the stress of the day by journaling about their everyday happenings.  And some use journals as a note-taking tool where they can keep lists, ideas, and drawings all in one place.  Whatever your favorite style, choose one to begin your writing practice. 


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Audience 
Writers can use audience as a means for creating a better writing experience for themselves.  When we write journal entries to a particular person (i.e., parent, child, friend, deity) then writing journal entries can be easier to compose and smoother to write.  Consider who you might use as your intended audience for your journal entries.  Although you do not have to share the journal entries with the intended audience, having an audience in mind can make the writing process more accessible.

Support  
For many people, writing is a social activity not an individual endeavor.  Writing with friends, with a writing club, or with a writing coach can enhance the writing experience and produce more useful writing. 

Evaluate, Reflect, Adjust 
Be willing to change along the way.  Our initial decisions are not always the best ones.  Sometimes we need to evaluate our processes, reflect on what worked best, and make adjustments to find the methods that work best for us as individual writers.  ​

Once writers are set up to write, which really could be set up in a few minutes, then it is time to start journaling. 

Conscious journaling is the path to relieving stress rather than building up more of it.  If we allow ourselves to wander down a negative path of dark thoughts, regrets, and painful memories without having a plan for relieving those low emotions, then journaling may be counterproductive.  For journal writing to relieve stress, writers need to focus on the positive.

How does a writer stay positive and relieve stress, even while writing about difficult subjects?

To relieve stress while journaling, conclude each journal entry with a solution, plan, or successful result.  So, each time that you write about anything at all—future goals, dark memories, or reflections on life, end the journal entry on a positive note. 

After writing about a dark memory of when things went wrong, rewrite the story with a solution in mind.  Write about what could have been done differently, how things could have changed, or what different actions could have created a better outcome.  Another option for writing a solution is to write about how a new solution could be put in place to correct the effects and outcomes. 

A plan can be as effective to end a journal entry.  Writers can plan how to move forward with a new goal, can plan a list of steps to take, or can plan out a series of stories to write.  As well, a successful result is useful for concluding a journal entry.  Writers can incorporate successful results into journal entries as well; ending an entry with a positive outcome can turn any topic in an optimistic direction.  Writers can delve deep into all kinds of memories, ideas, and thoughts and relieve stress by ending each entry with a positive note. 

So, if you have not yet started, grab a notepad and start journaling.  Any time that you are delving into deep or dark topics, make a point of ending those entries on a positive note with a solution, plan, or successful result.  Over time, the effort put into journal writing should relieve stress for most writers.  
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What kind of an impression do you think that you make?  In the workplace?  With the family?  In public?  With your friends and colleagues? 

Reflective people tend to spend some time thinking about the effect they make on others.  Those who care about making a good impression, being a useful teammate, and demonstrating their best qualities spend time considering the effects they make. 

What kind of an impression would you like to make?  If you could choose what people thought about meeting you, what imprint would you leave on the minds of those you meet?  Would you like to be known for being a confident professional, a strong leader, a helpful colleague, or a gifted artist? 

People do not always see in us what we see in ourselves.  Sometimes they grasp a side of our personalities that we cannot see or they see one tiny element in the complexity that makes us who we are.  They might not recognize who we really are or who we are trying to become. 
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As we move through different phases of life, inevitably we want to change aspects of ourselves—our appearance, our physicality, the legacy we leave, and our impressions.

In your writer’s journal, write a response to three of these prompts.  Write 500-2000 words for each one to capture depth, breadth, and detail on the topics. 





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1. What do you want people to see in you?
2. What do you want people to recognize about you?
3. What did people see in you years ago see that you liked? 
4. What do you want to be acknowledged for (doing, creating, or contributing to)?
5. What is the impression you want people to leave with today? 
6. What are five adjectives that you want people to think of when they connect with you?
7. What is the tone that you want to be known for when you connect with others?
8. What imagery and style do you want others to associate with you?
9. How do you want to be known in your personal, professional, romantic, familiar, and artistic life?
10. Why is the impression you seek to impart the real you that you want to share with others?

When we look back over the memories of the past, we sometimes fall into moments of self-criticism.  If I only had that to do over again!  We can look at ourselves through a lens of reflective improvement rather than through one of honest and fair appreciation for who we were.  
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When we look at ourselves in the present, we can sometimes get wrapped up into the complexity of our dizzying lives.  Most people live busy lives that lack the contemplative opportunities to think about what we are doing before taking the next step. 

But when we look just to the future—even a few months into the future—we can be free of the shackles of regret and self-criticism.  Instead we can look forward to the days ahead as though they are overflowing with opportunity, good luck, and auspicious tidings. 
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One of the wonderful things about the future is that since it has not happened yet, we get to create it. 

As with most journal writing activities, when we write about the future, we slow down time.  We stop the complicated confusion that tends to cloud our days, and we become mindful when contemplating what is happening with our lives. 

Any opportunity that writers can take to be mindful about their writing can turn into a chance to be mindful about our lives and to collect great content in our journals. 

As we know about mindfulness activities (any activity that allows us to be conscious of something), engaging in mindful writing is a means to ease tension and heighten creativity.  Journaling about the changes we seek to make in ourselves is a means for reaching the goals and aspirations we set for ourselves. 

At any point, you may have set a goal for yourself.  Maybe you decided to lose weight, land a better job, write the novel you have always dreamed of, or travel the world.  Whatever your goal is, that goal needs attention to survive.  It will not make it on hopes and dreams alone. 

Earlier, we looked at journal prompts to guide our thinking about how we see ourselves, how we think other people see us, and how we want to be viewed.  This is a valuable journal writing activity because it transforms our thoughts into our goals for the future. 

From multiple research points, we know that words have power.  Knowing that words are powerful, we tend to be cautious with the words we use, but we can use the power of words to our advantage when working towards a goal. 
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As you journal about the you of tomorrow, think carefully about the words that you will use to describe this incredible person.  How will you describe this dynamo?  How will others perceive this shining light of a changed you?  We can take the power behind using words to describe intentions and use it to an advantage as we work on realizing the goals we are working towards (the goal can be anything—writing a novel, losing weight, landing a better job, getting into nature more often, etc.) 

In your journal, respond to three of the following prompts.  Try to write 500-2000 words for each one to capture enough depth, breadth, and detail about the topics.
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1. Explain what your goal is that you are working towards achieving.
2. Describe what three tools would help you on your path towards meeting this goal.
3. What will life look like and feel like once you meet this goal?
4. How will meeting this goal change the person you are? 
5. How will meeting this goal change the way others see you, interact with you, or react to you?
6. What possibilities could open up after you reach this goal?  How might this goal be a jumping off point to much greater opportunities?
7. How might your tone, style, or beingness change because of meeting this goal?
8. In what ways will you be a more fulfilled person by reaching this goal?
9. What three steps could you take today that would lead you towards meeting this goal? 
10. What five steps could you take in the coming week that would lead you towards meeting this goal?

Writers can harness the postulating power of words when working towards a goal to increase the likelihood of achieving that goal.  Our writing journals are a perfect location for this type of writing.  What type of goal is unimportant; we could work towards getting the house cleaned up, learning a new skill, or achieving a life-long dream.  Small or large, our goals can be met with we are better prepared.  By journaling about our goals and the paths we take to our goals, we are more likely to be successful.

Who are you?  Deep down.  In the inner recesses of your being, who are you really?  If you had to give an elevator speech in 30 seconds describing who you are, what would you say?  What attributes would you include, what challenges would you leave out, and what characteristics would you highlight? 

When I was young, a high school teacher told me, “You can’t find yourself.  You have to create yourself.”  It took me a few years to understand what she meant by that, but eventually it came to me.  I could not expect to live the life of a complicated, interesting, engaging person without taking some kind of journey to create this person. 

I was never going to find myself, although I did find elements of myself while on my journey.  These elements of self arrived in bits and pieces that eventually became my defining core values.  And journaling about core values has helped me to define who I am, what I value, and where I am going as an individual.​

It seems that people who follow all their family’s expectations have an easy time defining their core values.  Those values are defined for them under the categories of religion, politics, and social opinions. 

But what happens when individual don’t agree 100% with their familial expectations, or they want to branch out and be unique, or they are at their cores (gasp) artistic? 

Now the search for defining core values becomes complicated, because now those values are individual and become more precious because they were defined by for that person rather than appropriated from an older generation. 

Core values can be anything that is important to you—spiritual beliefs, valued prayers, social movements, political opinions, appreciation for an area of study, art, writing, film, or virtues.  Whereas one person cares deeply about patience, the next drives with road rage.  Whereas one person dedicates life to a religious practice, the next is repelled by religion.  Whereas one person spends weekends at the art walk and in poetry readings, the next finds art to be confusing and complicated.

Your core values are the things that are important to you.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  
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Are you the bohemian artist who loves whistling while walking to work each morning, wearing organic hemp clothing, and writing on your grandfather’s 1940s-era typewriter letters that you compose?  If so, you might have core values that include art, nature, walking to commuting, wearing organic textiles, and practicing mindfulness.  If that is you, then journaling about these values, what you love about them, and what makes them a defining element of who you are as a person can bring you satisfaction in your journaling practices. 

What about the posh trend setter?  Are you a tennis enthusiast, a stock broker, a driver of a brand new BMW, and a lover of European travel and designer clothes?  If so, you might have core values that include name brands, high-class lifestyle, eating in expensive restaurants, and living a life of luxury because you deserve it.  If this is you, then journaling about these values, how they define you, what they do for you, and how you connect with a vision of yourself that is how you have always seen yourself. 

You are the person you create, and that person is based on your values.  Journaling about those values can be a highly enjoyable journaling activity regardless of what your values area or how you see yourself.  
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Not only can we look back at how our core values developed the people we are today, but we can look forward to the people we will become and connect our core values to how they might support us along our journeys to finding and living as our truer, more authentic selves. 
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For example, during the years when my children were small, I had to put many of my personal needs to the side so that I could focus on the kids’ needs.  During that time period, I was challenged by providing for their needs at the expense of my own, but as they aged, they took on some of my core values. 

Now as we grow together, we enjoy some of the same activities and values in common.  Appreciating art is one of my core values, and I live this value by collecting paintings and photography and displaying them in my home—gallery style.  My son has taken on this core value as one of his own as he has been heavily involved in photography since he was young. 
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As I look at my future, I know that I want to continue supporting my core value of art appreciation, and I want to involve my son in this value.  In my journal, I have been writing about my future vision for art appreciation and how my son and I might come to share this value on an ongoing basis.  Together, we volunteer in a local gallery, we attend art shows, and he is involved in gallery shows.  

The values that we identify not only define us but they lead and support us.  By depending on our core values, we remain stable to the standards we believe in and can define ourselves with confidence and certainty. 


Consider journal writing about the following prompts in your journal.  Try to write enough depth, breadth, and detail to complete 500-2000 words for each journal entry. 

• List your top ten core values.  State each one exactly the way that it best defines you and what is important to you.  Write a brief explanation on each one about why it is a core value for you. 

• What is your most important core value?  What could you not live without?  What value drives you to succeed, to be yourself, and to achieve your goals?  Explain the importance of that value as though you were explaining it to someone who had never heard of it. 

• Choose a creative core value and tell a story about it.  This story can be something that really happened (i.e., the time that you realized how much you valued travel when walking the city streets in Paris).  Your story can be as complicated or as simple as you like. 

• What core value did you have earlier in life that supported you through challenges of the past but is no longer as useful?  What about that core value have you let go of and what have you replaced it with? 

• What core value do you envision as being most valuable in supporting you into the future?  Take a look at the goals that you are working on and align them with the value.  How do you foresee this core value will help you in becoming more the person you want to be and picture for yourself?  

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Your journal does not have to be as specific and guided as these prompts.  Your entries can be more open, fluid, and even follow a stream of consciousness pattern.  Spend some time writing about your core values, connecting your values to your goals, to your vision of self, and to the complex details of your life, especially those that matter most to you.  ​

Anyone who has spent time journaling about gratitude and acknowledgement knows that it has the power to release the old demons of regret.  It can also enhance a sense of well-being.  By recognizing that which we are grateful for, we travel a path of letting go of that which does not serve us and boost those qualities which support our inner strength. 

Gratitude journaling connects us to the past in a positive way, even when past events may have been dark or dreary.  It supports writers to find the light sparks in dark memories and to focus on the silver linings among cloudy skies. 

By gratitude journaling, writers can embrace a positive viewpoint that supports personal productivity and creativity.

Have you ever noticed that when you spend time focused on the negative elements of a situation the solution is hard to find and the dark fog of negativity tends to linger longer?  The same is true for the positive.  When we spend time focused on the positive elements of a situation, solutions are brighter and the light creeps through the cracks to illuminate the clarity within. 

A grateful heart is a happy heart.  When we are grateful, we have room only for compassion, empathy, appreciation, and love.  A person in the mindset of being grateful has no mental or emotional room for dissatisfaction, anger, spite, or regret. 

Gratitude journaling is the act of writing about that which we appreciate, are grateful for, and acknowledge as being valuable.  It brings about a sense of well-being and satisfaction in a short period of time, and when done consistently can aid in alleviating feelings of stress, anxiety, and sadness.
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One of the most interesting elements of gratitude journaling is its flexibility in allowing writers to evaluate any time period.  When we engage in gratitude journaling, we can look at the past to dig out the golden nuggets in our memories. 

When we look at our present, we take stock of everything that is going well for us—work, friends, family, love, pets, and art.  And when we look into the future, we can identify the qualities and skills we have today that will support a prosperous future. 

Everyone has past events they would rather forget or cover up.  Everyone.  But we also have the power to redefine those events but highlighting the positive elements in them.  When we look back at memories and redefine them in positive terms, we stop their power from dragging us down and force them to hold us up instead.  

Like many people, I have dark skeletons in my closet.  In my early days, I was sometimes less than graceful, polished, and appreciative.  But even in those sad memories, little glimmers of hope were mixed within the dark rubble. 

For example, in my 20s I spent a little too much time messing about and not enough time building strong relationships with good people.  Some of the people I hung out with ended up being fair-weather friends who deserted me when a better offer came along.  But . . . in the end I did connect with a few good people and am still in contact with them today.  For example, I had a friend who taught me so much about looking past social valences to appreciate the inner person, and I am grateful to be in contact with him today. 

I could look back on those days as ugly memories and focus on the lost friendships of the people who lasted a short time.  Or I can focus on the fact that some good people from that time taught me lessons about appreciating people and still reach out to me today. 

In gratitude journaling, we can look at the past or the present, recognize that not all our memories were tulips and roses, then seek out the daisies hidden among the weeds, and focus on those positive memories.  We control our attitudes by controlling what to focus on.  
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Try out three or more of these journal prompts.  Expand on each one with depth, breadth, and detail.  Try to write 500-2000 words for each prompt if possible. 

1. Who is the person you appreciate most in your life right now? 
2. Who was the person you admired most when you were a child? 
3. Who was the teacher, instructor, professor, or leader who inspired you when you were a young adult?
4. Who is the writer, artist, filmmaker, or social leader that you appreciate? 
5. What are your three best attributes?  How did you develop these qualities?  How might you support them further?
6. What are three characteristics that you would like to develop further?  What do you like most about these elements of yourself? 
7. What have you improved upon in the last year?  What steps did you take to make that improvement and how can you continue to improve upon it? 
8. If you had to leave your home tomorrow, what ten things would you take with you and why?
9. What element of nature are you most grateful for and why? 
10. What challenge have you faced in the last year?  What strength did it bring out in you? ​

Gratitude and acknowledgement journaling can be a powerful step of the stress-reduction practice.  When we seek to make peace with the past, we can do a better job of focusing on the present and achieving our goals in the future.  Try out gratitude journaling for a week and see how it changes your overall outlook.​