Hey Love,

I hope you are doing well. In today’s post, I will talk about a tool which has helped me in getting over my issue of being judgmental. And, this tool is (drumrolls….) ‘journaling.’ I am not going to tell you what the importance of keeping a journal is, there are already so many posts on it. I will tell you about my journey with journaling. So, let’s get started.

What keeping a journal has taught me?

If I have to talk about one major thing which journaling has taught me, then it has to be, acceptance. Acceptance of my emotions, even if they are negative, acceptance of my flaws, acceptance of my failures and acceptance of my positive attributes. Moreover, when I am accepting myself wholeheartedly, I am noticing that it has become easier for me to accept my friends and family members too. It has become easy to forgive when I get angry with them. I won’t say, that I have reached the destination of my journey I believe that it will always be a journey. I just have learned that journaling helps me in accepting myself.

Why acceptance is so necessary?

Now, some of you may still not be convinced and must be wondering why it is so important to accept myself. So, I will talk about some positive changes I have noticed in my life.

• I became less judgmental: I am too harsh on myself, especially on days when I am not very much productive. I used to feel guilty of not completing any task and sulk over it. Sometimes, I would just not get over this guilt for hours and would waste my time more. But when I started journaling, I became less harsh on myself. I understood that there will always be times when I won’t be very productive, or I would not be in a mood to work. I won’t say that I don’t feel guilty anymore, I do, but I don’t waste my time feeling guilty anymore. Journaling helped me in accepting that it is okay to be not productive and effective at times. Now, this is just an example of one of my flaws. I have many, and I am still learning to accept every trait, part and every behaviour of mine. I am getting in tune with my emotions. I am not ashamed of feeling any kind of emotion, I am allowed to be angry, be childish, stubborn, creative, and moody, I am allowed to be whatever I want, I am allowed to feel any emotion, even if it is negative, and so are you.

When I am learning to accept myself, I realized that I becoming less judgmental towards others too. When I gave myself enough time to process my emotions, I started understanding other’s emotions. I am becoming a better listener, and because of that, less judgmental. I started understanding other’s point of view and gave them space to be themselves. Overall, I can say that journaling not only made my relationship with myself better but also my relationships with other people better.

• I learned to forgive: When I accepted myself and others heartily, I realized it became so easy for me to forgive. I gave myself space to be angry on myself and others and then after that, I forgive. After venting out all the anger it is so easy to understand other’s point of view and then forgive. It became easy to forgive myself, I gave myself space to be harsh on myself for some time and then get over it.

• Taking responsibility for my actions: There are times when I face failures, and it is always difficult to take responsibility for that failure. But when I learnt that it is okay to fail, it became easy to take responsibility for that failure. I don’t toss it on situations anymore, I became courageous enough to say that yes, I made mistake here, and I am willing to work on it now.

• Planning my further actions: Journaling taught me how to plan realistically. When I was ready to accept my mistakes, I learnt that there are times when I overestimate the number of tasks I could do in a day. Now, I am always conscious to plan realistically. I don’t overburden myself I enjoy my work now.

How journaling helped me in accepting?

Now that I have talked about what I have learnt by regular journaling, I will tell you how it helped me in learning to accept myself and others. Whenever I start feeling distressed about not being productive in a day, what I would do is write out everything which comes to my mind. Sometimes I would just repeat one phrase, for example, “I am not in a mood to work.” I will repeat it continuously till it becomes normal, at first I will be angry at myself for not working, but eventually, my anger will fade away and this emotion will become normal. It becomes okay for me to be not in the mood to work, and after letting out all my emotions, after accepting my mood, I will start working. I let the emotion come to me, I feel it, journal about it, it becomes normal for me, I will accept it, and then I will let it go. I don’t let that emotion overpower me. And this is how journaling has helped me in learning acceptance.

Again, I won’t say that I am not judgmental or don’t get angry, feel conscience-stricken or feel any kind of negative emotion anymore, I just write it out, without any filters. If I am angry, I will take it out on my journal, my journal won’t judge me, and no one, not even I am going to read my journal. I just let out all my emotions and become ready to let it go.

I can’t guarantee that journaling will have the same effect on you, but through this post, I wanted to talk about a tool which has helped me. If you are going through some issues (which all of us do) and this post made you eager to try journaling out, just try it out. It may not have the same effect on you, but if you will continue it for a longer time, what I can say is that you will notice some changes in yourself. But for that you have to give time, you cannot expect quick results with tools like journaling and meditation.

If you are looking forward to incorporating some self-care activities in your routine, then give this post a read, in which I have listed many self-care activities.

And with this, I will end this long post here. I hope it helped you in some way. I will see you again, till then keep celebrating life!

With Love,

Komal

Tangled Tourista

Tangled Tourista is an online diary, which is about travel, food and books. Here you will read about book reviews and suggestions, tested travelling tips and about new cafes and restaurants around and their reviews.