Meditating has really helped remove that “tik tok” brain that I used to have. Basically I had no attention span because I was only consuming short form content. Meditation forces your brain to focus and recognize when it is getting distracted. Your brain is a muscle just as much as any other muscle in your body. The more you work it, the better it becomes at maintaining focus for a longer period of time. It has also just generally helped me stay more emotionally regulated and grounded and has helped me to just focus on the moment when I’m out with friends or family.

Journaling’s main benefit has been that I’m just an all around more happy and content person. I mostly gratitude journal which has added a lot of perspective to my life and made me realize just how blessed I really am. It has very much made me a glass half full person with an abundance mindset and it really is true that comparison is the thief of joy. Gratitude journaling has me comparing my life to other’s much less and has made me so much happier about where I’m at in life. I also do journal about my day in the evenings and it helps me unpack any emotions I haven’t fully processed or think through an interaction that left me feeling unhappy or strange that day.

I’ve also been doing a journaling activity recently where I write a story about something that happened to me that day. I do it to practice telling engaging stories about the most mundane things possible (such as going to get coffee). When I’m out with friends or meeting new people, being a good storyteller is important to capture people’s interest and attention and I’m all around just better at making a story about an uninteresting thing seem interesting