#450 - Why Journaling Will Change Your Life: The Science That Blew My Mind

There's something about journaling that I have loved for most of my adult life, and today’s episode is all about why this simple practice is so incredibly powerful.

Lately I have been diving deep into the science behind it, and what I found made me even more passionate about sharing this with you.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why journaling is so much more than just writing your thoughts on paper.
• How can help you get clear on your dreams, reduce stress, process emotions, improve focus, and support your physical wellbeing. 
• How I use journaling as a daily practice to move through overwhelm and stay grounded.

Be inspired to start journaling, or to start again.

You don't need the perfect notebook, a complicated system or lots of time.

You simply need a pen, a page and a few minutes.

And if you have ever wondered whether journaling could really make a difference in your life, this episode has the answer.

Listen in and discover how a few quiet minutes each morning can help you make more intentional choices and move closer to living your dream life, whatever that means to you.

As always, I’d LOVE to hear what resonated most with you - so please share and let’s keep the conversation going in the Dream Life Podcast Facebook Group here.    

Have a wonderful week …and remember, it all starts with a dream 💛

Dream Life & kikki.K Founder

P.S. If you’re ready for guided support, it's a brilliant month to start with me as your mentor in Dream Life Coaching.

SHOW NOTES:

• Buy Kristina's book, Your Dream Life Starts Here
• Buy a Daily Wins Journal.
• Follow Kristina on Insta and TikTok
• If you feel it's time to take a leap and invest in you, join:
  • My Platinum Coaching Program where in April our focus will be on Owning Your Mornings and Transforming Your Life - with a Morning Ritual. Learn more here.
  • My Dream Business Book Club here. In April, we'll be reading and learning from:

    The 1 Page Marketing Plan, by Allan Dib. Whether just starting out - or an experienced entrepreneur - this is the easiest & fastest way to create a marketing plan to propel your business growth.

  • My online personal Growth Book Club GROW, April, where we'll be reading and squeezing the learnings out of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, by Cal Newport 

    Learn more here.

• Dream Life Community Facebook Group: Connect with like-minded dreamers.

RESOURCES:

• Sign up to our email list here to hear about upcoming workshops.
• Take your first step to getting clarity on what you want from life with this free bonus dreaming exercise here 101 Dreams Audio Guide 
• Buy Kristina's book, Your Dream Life Starts Here
• Discover how close you are to living your Dream Life. Take our 5min Quiz here and get personalised insights emailed to you...

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi there, and welcome back to the Your Dream Life podcast.

I am so glad you are here, because today’s episode is one I have been looking forward to recording for a while. We are going to talk about something I have believed in deeply for most of my adult life, and something science is now proving over and over again to be one of the most powerful tools available to any of us.

We are talking about journaling.

Before you think journaling is not for me, or it is just for creative writers, or maybe you have tried it and it did not stick, I want you to stay with me. What I am about to share is not just feel-good advice. This is science, real research from some of the world’s most respected universities.

It has changed the way I think about this simple, beautiful practice that I do daily and love so much. Sometimes I have found it hard to explain exactly why I love it so much, and that is why I started looking into the science behind it.

So let’s dive in.

I want to start with a story. When I came to Australia at twenty-two, I had no idea what to do with my life. I did not know what my future looked like, and I felt completely stuck.

My partner, Paul, encouraged me to write down my dreams on paper, and that night at 3 am my life completely changed. But that is not actually what I am going to talk about today.

After writing down my dreams, I started my first business, kikki.K. When I started that business, I felt completely overwhelmed. I had so much going on because I knew nothing about starting a business, and I knew nothing about stationery. There was just so much to learn.

Because of that overwhelm, I started journaling daily. I wanted to get things out of my head and onto paper. I wrote down things I never said out loud, things that challenged me, things that scared me, things that excited me, my ideas, my dreams, and the things I wanted more of.

By doing that, something shifted.

What I did not know then, but what I know now, is that what happened when I started journaling daily was backed by decades of scientific research. Writing things down does not just record your thoughts. It transforms them.

Today I want to share ten extraordinary things science has discovered about journaling, because when you understand why this works, I think you will want to start, or start again, today.

So let’s begin with number one.

Number one: Writing down your goals makes you 42 percent more likely to achieve them.

I want you to let that sink in.

Forty-two percent more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down.

Dr Gail Matthews at Dominican University studied this, and the results were remarkable. People who simply thought about their goals were far less likely to achieve them than people who wrote them down.

Why? Because writing clarifies your intention. It increases your commitment. It activates goal-directed behaviour in your brain.

When you put pen to paper, you are telling your brain: this matters. This is real. This is happening.

That is why I have always said, write it down. It is not just a nice idea. It is a proven strategy.

When I wrote down my dreams on paper, they felt completely impossible. They were really big dreams at the time. One was to start my own business, but I had no idea what that business would be. I had no experience and no knowledge.

And yet, I achieved all the dreams I wrote down, even though they felt absolutely impossible. So there is definitely proof in this science.

Let’s go to number two.

Number two: Journaling reduces stress and can make you physically healthier.

This one really excited me because I cannot remember how many times I have been interviewed about work-life balance. One thing I never experienced was burnout, and I was often asked why.

Work-life balance was definitely not effortless for me. But when people asked what helped most, I always came back to journaling. If I could only choose one practice, even though it is never just one thing, journaling was the one that felt most important during a very full season of life.

So I was very excited when I read that Dr James Pennebaker at the University of Texas spent years studying what happens when people write about their emotions.

Just fifteen to twenty minutes of expressive writing over several days led to reduced stress, improved mood, stronger immune function, and even fewer visits to the doctor.

Let’s just focus on that one for a moment: fewer visits to the doctor from writing in a journal.

Think about that.

That is not a small thing. Your journal might be one of the most underestimated wellness tools you own.

Number three: Handwriting deepens your thinking and improves memory.

Researchers at Princeton University and UCLA discovered something fascinating. Students who wrote notes by hand understood and retained information far better than students who typed.

The reason is that handwriting forces your brain to slow down and process more deeply. You cannot write as fast as you can type, so your brain has to summarise, synthesise and think. That thinking is where the real learning happens.

That is why I always come back to physical journals. There is something that happens when pen meets paper that a screen simply cannot replicate.

Back in the days when we had lots of meetings in my first business, I always told people to bring pen and paper. Some people came in with nothing, and some came in with a device, but I always asked them to go and get a pen and notebook.

In fact, I never had a meeting without note-taking, because there is no way we will remember everything. Even if people believed they could, there were so many meetings where I felt it was such a waste of time because people did not take notes.

Now, of course, we can use AI and that is all amazing. But for memory, handwriting and taking notes is still the best way.

I bring my journal everywhere I go, even on stage. If I am on a panel, I bring my journal because I always take notes on the things I am learning. I know I will forget them as soon as I walk off stage.

Number four: Journaling can improve your physical health.

Building on Pennebaker’s research, expressive writing has been linked to lower blood pressure, improved immune function, and even faster recovery from illness.

Your mind and body are not separate. What you hold inside, the worries, the grief, the things left unsaid, lives in your body too.

Writing is one of the most gentle and powerful ways to release it.

Number five: Writing clears your mind before something stressful.

Researchers at the University of Chicago found that students who wrote about their worries before an exam performed significantly better than those who did not.

Writing helps clear what psychologists call mental clutter. It is like decluttering a room in your mind. Suddenly there is space to think, to focus and to perform.

So if you have a big presentation, a public speaking event, a difficult conversation or a challenging day ahead, try writing first. Even just five minutes can help.

That is why I daily write three pages, whatever comes to mind. I just put it all out there, and I do not save those pages. Then I have another journal next to me for the things that come up that I do want to keep.

I will talk much more deeply about this in the journaling session I teach inside the Dream Life Coaching Program, because I am going to share exactly what I do with journaling. I cannot tell you how excited I am to get more people journaling.

Number six: Handwriting activates more of your brain.

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology discovered in 2020 that handwriting activates areas of the brain responsible for memory, learning and creativity, while typing activates far fewer neural pathways.

In other words, when you write by hand, you are giving your brain a genuine workout. You are stimulating the parts that help you grow, create and remember.

Your journal is literally a brain-building tool.

I just love that.

Number seven: Gratitude journaling increases happiness.

Dr Robert Emmons at UC Davis spent years researching gratitude, and what he found was beautiful. People who kept gratitude lists experienced higher optimism, better sleep and improved wellbeing.

And here is the part I love: even journaling just once a week made a measurable difference to mood.

You do not have to write pages every day. Sometimes three things you are grateful for is enough to shift your entire outlook.

This is something I have talked about for years, even before I knew this particular research. I have always written down three things I am grateful for.

What I have found from doing this, and I have done it for years now, is that the more grateful I am, the more grateful I become.

People sometimes laugh when I say that, and maybe they think I am a bit mad, but every day I am so grateful for contact lenses. My eyesight is quite poor, and I love that I do not have to wear glasses all the time, especially in a country with lots of sunshine where I want to wear sunglasses.

It might seem like a tiny thing, but for me it is amazing. And I am genuinely grateful to the person who came up with contact lenses.

It may sound silly, but the more grateful I am, the more grateful I become. And that is a beautiful place to live from.

Number eight: Journaling helps you process emotions more calmly.

When we experience something difficult, our brain’s emotional centre, the amygdala, lights up. We feel everything intensely, and sometimes overwhelmingly.

But here is what is extraordinary. When we write about that experience, we move it from the emotional centre of the brain to the prefrontal cortex, the rational and logical part of our brain.

Writing literally helps us process what we feel, not just feel it.

This means you can go from reactive to reflective, from overwhelmed to grounded, simply by writing it down.

When I think about this research, it really makes sense to me. When we lost our business, I dealt with it far better than many people expected. It was obviously traumatic and very sad, and there were a lot of emotions, but I wrote about it every single day.

I shared my emotions and all the things I was feeling, and I think that is one of the reasons I was able to handle it as well as I did.

Number nine: Writing your tasks down frees your mind and improves focus.

Psychologists have a name for what happens when unfinished tasks swirl around in our minds. It is called the Zeigarnik effect. It describes how our brain keeps unresolved things active, pulling at our attention and draining our energy.

But when you write those tasks down, your brain can let go of them because it trusts they are captured and will not be forgotten.

So writing your to-do list is not just an organisational tool. It is a mental relief valve. It reduces overwhelm and frees you to focus on what is actually in front of you.

That is why I am so passionate about planning the quarter and writing it all out. I often say that I think on paper.

I am a very visual person, and in the month before a new quarter inside the Dream Life Coaching Program, I get everyone to write down all the things they want to do. We do a whole workshop around moving from overwhelm to clarity.

So many people benefit from this, me included. That is why I created it.

When you keep everything in your head, it is draining and overwhelming. When you put things on paper, everything becomes clearer.

I often talk about the fact that stress and overwhelm may not be coming from all the things we have to do. It may simply be because everything is swirling around in our heads.

Number ten: Journaling strengthens self-awareness.

Psychology research shows that reflective writing improves self-reflection, emotional intelligence and decision-making.

When you write regularly about your life, your dreams, your choices, your feelings and your patterns, you begin to see yourself more clearly.

And when you see yourself more clearly, you can make better choices. Better decisions. Choices that are aligned with who you really are and what you really want.

This, to me, is the deepest gift of journaling. Not just clarity about your goals, but clarity about yourself.

I do not know if there is anything better than that.

Now, I want to add something else on top of all this, because the science does not just support journaling in general. It especially supports journaling in the morning.

Research from the American Psychological Association shows that structured morning routines help people start their day faster, reduce decision fatigue and improve focus.

Willpower research by Roy Baumeister tells us that self-control is strongest in the morning and depletes as the day goes on. That means the morning is your golden window, your peak time for intention, clarity and courage.

That is why I am so passionate about my morning ritual.

Harvard Business School researchers found that people who plan their day early experience lower stress, better time management and a greater sense of control.

And cognitive psychology tells us that morning writing helps us organise our thoughts, clarify our goals and reduce mental clutter, setting us up for a more purposeful and productive day.

So when you combine journaling with a morning ritual, something powerful happens. You are using your peak self-control hours. You are clearing mental space before the day fills it. And you are setting your intention before the world sets it for you.

That is not just a nice habit. That is a life-changing strategy.

That is also why I am so excited to be running a Morning Ritual Workshop inside the Dream Life Coaching Program. I am also running a journaling workshop, and together I think they are going to be unbelievably powerful.

But I want to leave you with this.

You do not need a perfect journal. You do not need an amazing system. You do not need to write for an hour.

What you need is a pen, a page and a few minutes.

That is where it starts.

Maybe start with writing down one dream, one thing you are grateful for, one worry you want to clear from your mind, or one intention for the day ahead.

Just start.

Then trust what happens next.

Because here is what I know from my own life and from many years of helping people create their dream lives: the people who write things down are different from the people who do not.

They are clearer. They are calmer. They are more intentional. They achieve more. They feel more. They live more consciously.

And that conscious, intentional life, that is your dream life.

It starts with a pen. It starts with a page. And it starts today.

Thank you so much for spending this time with me today talking about one of my favourite subjects, journaling.

If this episode resonated with you, I would love for you to share it with a friend who might need a little nudge to start journaling too.

And if you want support creating your own morning ritual and dream life practice, come and join the Dream Life Coaching Program. I would love to help and support you to take that next step whenever it is right for you.

If it is, just head over to yourdreamlifestartshere.com/course.

Until next time, keep dreaming, keep writing, and remember your dream life is closer than you think.

As always, I will be back on Monday with another Monday Morning Motivation episode.

I will see you then.