How Writing by Hand Improves Your Mood and Outlook

And Why Journaling about Your Thoughts and Feelings Helps You Avoid Anxiety and Depression

Anxiety and depression feed on chaos. Especially if chaos is in the mind.

How many of us harried souls with thousand-yard-stares ever find time within the day to do something that can vaguely be described as meditative? Can we even recall the last time we did?

When we examine our technologically advanced lives from a slightly different angle, we might just see ourselves as helpless creatures being pelted with distraction coming from all directions—in the form of unnecessary challenges, needless worries, and worthless goals that we get manipulated into setting for ourselves. More often than we care to admit, we take on so many things because we want to be successful. Failure is depressing. Some of us get paralyzed when we miss our place in the sun by a whisker. But barring dumb luck, success requires focus and mindfulness in order to make the right moves and the best decisions, especially when at first we don’t succeed. And we can’t be mindful if our heads are spinning from information overload. Hence the popular interest in activities like yoga and meditation, and detox of all kinds.

Mindfulness is a firm step toward mental and emotional health. It doesn’t go together with distraction. Which is why when we endeavor to become more mindful, we should probably make it easy on ourselves to focus. Maintaining a journal, for example, is one way to cultivate deeper awareness—of ourselves, of others, of where we are, of where we are going. Electronic journals have a lot to offer by way of convenience (i.e., Ctrl + Find vs. flipping pages and reading through them before finding what you need), options (e.g., font colors and styles, background colors, emoticons), and overall portability (i.e., phone vs. a heavy leatherbound journal and pen).

But here’s the thing: writing by hand, without any online distractions, has more to offer by way of clearing and sharpening the mind. Let’s face it—it’s pretty hard to get distracted when you use nothing but pen and paper to unpack your thoughts and emotions. And it’s pretty easy to get in the zone when your gadgets themselves are enjoying their well-deserved break. When we write by hand, we are more engaged. Writing in cursive, for example, demands just a bit more than typing: it requires us to slow down and pay more attention; it insists on self-discipline to write intelligibly—both in terms of organizing our thoughts and in mastering our handwriting. In the long run, when we notice how in tune we are with ourselves, how focused we are on the things that really matter, how our lives are no longer cluttered with things we don’t really need or want, after all, we will finally acknowledge the beauty of having earned a much-needed reward.

So, do you need to detox, to breathe, to get reacquainted with “your one wild and precious life”?

Start with a journal and see where things take you. Have a look around. We would like nothing more than to be a part of your journey to a more composed, more engaged, more joyful YOU.

Explore more of the benefits of writing by hand in our next article.