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Benefits of Writing Weekly Reflections

By Frank Hamilton

Writing down your thoughts, emotions, experiences, freams, goals, expectations and plans for the future is pretty effective practice, regardless of the factor that drives you to write. Scientists have already confirmed that writing can be healing, inspiring, and motivating activity. Its positivity influences our mental health and helps to self-heal from within. Writing weekly reflections is also an opportunity to bring more clarity to your life, undtansdant yourself better and plan each next week more effectively. Still, these aren’t the only benefits of weekly reflections. We will dwell on them in more detail in this article.

Make the Things Clearer

Putting your thoughts on paper is the best way to formulate them clearly, structure them and handle the mess in your mind that you can feel after a hard working or studying week. Writing weekly reflections help you get back to each of the weekdays and highlight the most important things, experiences and concerns, track your priorities and the ways they changed during the week, evaluate your productivity and much more. There are too many things you can write about in your weekly diary but only writing can help you make them as clear to you as possible.

Improve Your Writing

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This is quite an obvious benefit. Ongoing writing improves your writing skills. That’s why writing weekly reflection can also be effective for improving your academic writing skills since over some time of practicing, you will feel sharing your thoughts on paper becomes easier and more enjoyable. Surely, you don’t have to write your weekly reflections following academic style. You shouldn’t necessarily have an introduction, the main part, conclusion and citation. Let the Best Writers Online from the Writing Judge custom writing website do this job instead, and focus on what you think, feel and would like to share in your weekly diary.

Reflect on Your Achievements

One more benefit of writing weekly reflections is the opportunity to reflect on your achievements and evaluate your overall success. This is also an opportunity to track your progress step by step, plus remember what you have felt, what have you thought about when you either finished the task successfully or failed. Both of the experiences are equally useful for your future development but you have to learn the lesson from both of them. Consider doing it with the help of writing and ask yourself - how can I cope better next week? What prevents me from boost and advancements? Answer yourself honestly - there is no need to hesitate in your diary. The insights you will be able to uncover are likely to be pretty valuable next week.

Analyze Your Emotions

Sometimes we strive to hide our emotions as deeply as possible. While it can be a self-defensive function of our mind, our emotions and feelings still need our attention, analysis, and reflections. Doing this with the help of weekly (or even daily, if you feel it necessary) writing helps you find out what you have felt. To determine your emotions, get back to the situation that concerned you during the previous week. Try to remember what was going on inside you and identify the emotion or the set of emotions at that moment. If you feel you are unable to identify your emotions, use the dedicated list and choose the suitable one from it. Next, let yourself feel it, reflect on it, and finally let it stay in the past.

Set New Goals

Another benefit of writing reflections every week is the opportunity to set new goals. To make this approach work best for you, set small goals that you will be able to actually achieve during the week but don’t underestimate your strength and abilities. For example, coping with a term paper in a week is a doable task for a student. Eating more fresh fruits and vegetables during the week is also easy. So, make sure to try it - even the smallest goals count. And when they are written down, they become more visible to you, and at the end of the week, you will be able to get back to them and celebrate your success.

Take a Sober Look at Your Concerns

One of the main factors that drive a lot of people to write (even those who have never practiced journaling before), is a certain concern that prevents a person from concentrating on their daily tasks and staying productive. Surely, if your week is rich in events and news, you may have a lot of concerns on the eve of the weekends. Spend one hour of your Friday evening writing them down. To get started, make a list. Then, proceed to each point step by step, taking a sober look at what you can and can’t change, identify your feelings and emotions in relation to the certain concern, and suggest ways to deal with it next week. After writing all these down, you will feel a mental relief and more confidence that most of the problems are solvable.

Self-Heal

Writing is healing. It helps us cope with stress, sharp life changes, and unexpected events. This is a free and effective tactic to take better care of your body and mind. For example, reflecting on stressful events can make it less stressful, and give you the feeling of completion. It is not going to repeat any more, and after you have analyzed the root consequences of your stress with the help of writing, you become better protected from it. You can also practice weekly writing to self-heal your body by writing down your health changes, behavior patterns during the week, stating healing mantras, and planning your health-boosting activities for the next week.

Stay Organized

Writing weekly reflections is also good for developing your life and time management skills. With the help of weekly notes, you will be able to find your weak and strong sides, determine what tasks you are best at, find out what do you actually want from your life and what events (or people) make you frustrated. In a nutshell, this is an opportunity to take a look at your life in the long run and improve each of its aspects by practicing self-awareness and goal-setting.

Conclusion

Reflecting on your life week after week is a valuable practice that helps you add more clarity, determine what you actually feel, and find the way to better deal with your emotions, dwell on your challenges, track your progress and set new goals. Give this approach a try, and very soon writing your weekly reflections will become a strong habit that can help you become more self-aware and productive. Consider taking short notes every day, and at the end of the week, write a holistic picture and analyze it.

About the Author

Frank Hamilton is a blogger and translator from Manchester. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and self-education. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.

Disclaimer:

The above guest post is published based on the premise that it will be helpful and informative. The opinions made within it are those of the author and not of sunnyray.org. The links you may find within this post do not necessarily imply our recommendation or endorsement of the views expressed within them.



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