A Brief Guide on Microdosing Journaling

If you are into microdosing and curious about finding new ways to improve your mental health and resilience, journaling can be the secret sauce you’ve been missing so far.

Journaling is the art of putting down your thoughts, feelings, and emotions into written words. As a means of self-discovery, expression, and documentation of your personal development trajectory, it is unparalleled in its benefits. Multiple studies have linked journaling to positive outcomes in a variety of challenging scenarios – from easing anxiety and mental distress to boosting feelings of optimism and gratitude in mothers of children with behavioural issues.  

Microdosing journaling combines the benefits of taking very low doses of a drug for its therapeutic properties with the empowerment and control that creative expression provides. Think of it as a way of nourishing both your heart and mind at the same time. Microdosing journaling can help you look back at the progress you’ve made in reaching your goals. More specifically, it can guide your way to achieving the perfect microdose based on your physical and psychological makeup.      

Let’s dive into a few ideas to get started with microdosing journaling and help realize your objectives to the fullest. 

Answering the Right Questions  

Journaling is often an act of self-confession, of opening up to yourself and going beyond the mental clutter that besets our everyday lives. These reasons may make it challenging for beginners. However, it can be effective in supporting you along your microdosing journey and helping you achieve the transformation you wish to see in yourself. Spending even a few minutes each day writing down your physical, emotional, and spiritual situation can be uplifting. 

Here are a few topics and questions that you can include in your journaling process. Make sure you answer them precisely and truthfully, without evasion or embellishment.

What is Your Intention? 

What is your primary intention behind microdosing journaling? This is a question worth pursuing even if you cannot arrive at a definite answer at the outset. Being clear about your intentions can help you redefine your journey. It will allow you to focus on more immediate considerations like your physical and mental well-being, for instance, than relatively less-important ones like likeability and social acceptance.   

Mental State, Mood, and Emotion 

You can begin by grading yourself every day against all three of these variables on a scale of 1 to 10. You can repeat the exercise every morning, mid-day, and night if you’d like to keep a closer tab on your inner self. Along with the ratings, feel free to jot down the various ups and downs on all three parameters. Make a point of recording how external developments at work, in personal life, and social environments affect these variables.   

Concentration 

This is a significant factor that you’ll do well to keep track of in your microdosing journal. Concentration is a key mental faculty that determines success and failure in most of our everyday undertakings. Keep a sharp track of your ability to focus on any task, whether making breakfast or preparing a presentation. Ask yourself if you can concentrate at will and whether you can engage meaningfully even in activities that might be repetitive or boring.  

Anxiety 

Write down all experiences that make you feel more anxious, and also those that make you feel less so. Keep detailed notes on the times you feel on edge for whatever reasons, and then times when you feel relaxed and calm. 

Social Interactions 

This section can be about social situations that affect you positively or negatively. Find out what circumstances make you feel more outgoing. Ask yourself when and why you want to be around other people and what effect it has on you.  

Creativity 

Every one of us is creative in our own way, and it is essential to know what gets your creative juices flowing. Challenge yourself to come up with alternative approaches to everyday situations and keep track of your creative progress. 

Physical Health 

This section can cover all aspects of your general physical well-being, including your exercise routines, sleep cycle, eating habits, and sporting activity. Make a note of even minor developments concerning physical health in your journal.   

Overall Outlook 

This is the sum total of all the various aspects discussed above. Your overall outlook can be a score based on the cumulative positive and negative impacts over a given period. It can help you get a quick read of your progress made over the days, weeks, and months. 

Setting Your Goals  

Microdosing journaling is not an exact science with formal rules and protocols. Instead, it is a freewheeling, out-of-the-box activity that lets you open up about yourself as you track your progress over time. The only requirement for exactness in this exercise is in outlining your goals. Here’s all that you need to keep in mind when defining your goals with microdosing journaling. 

Setting Your Goals

• Be specific: Flesh out your goals in concrete terms instead of vague aspirations. ‘Being more confident’ is an example of a specific goal; ‘feeling good’ is decidedly vague. 
• Set milestones: Prepare incremental targets along the way to your goals. This will help you develop a sense of achievement and keep you from getting lost along the way. 
• Be persistent: Some of your goals may not be easy to achieve and require you to overcome years of conditioning and habit. It’s important, therefore, to aim at them with resolve and fortitude. 
• Embody your goals: Use an object, image, poster, or quotation to represent your goals in a tangible manner – something that you can touch and feel every day. 
• Make them measurable: Set up your goals in a way that allows them to be measured for progress. For instance, replace ‘eat better’ as a goal with ‘cutting down junk food to once a week’. 

You can also separate your goals under ‘Micro’ and ‘Macro’ headings. Micro goals are relatively easier to achieve – getting up every morning at a given time, for instance, or drinking three liters of water every day. Macro goals are broader in expanse and comparatively harder to achieve – for instance, losing 5 pounds of body weight in two months. Additionally, you can divide your goals into short-term, mid-term, and long-term periods in the following manner:

• Daily goals: Waking early, eating healthy, personal discipline, etc. 
• Weekly goals: Work efficiency, spending budgets, weekend plans, etc.
• Monthly goals: Work-life balance goals, health targets, etc. 
• Quarterly goals: Career development, job change, vacation, etc. 
• Half-yearly goals: Relocating to another town or city, signing up for an educational course, etc. 
• Yearly goals: Writing your first novel, starting your own business, etc. 

Elaborate on Your Intentions

As we’ve mentioned before, having clarity on your intentions is a vital part of the microdosing journaling process. That is even though intentions are subjective and not quantifiable or measurable in any manner. Understanding your own motivation and intentions is key to achieving the goals you set for yourself. Ideally, you should try to break down your overall intention behind microdosing journaling into individual desires or aims. Here are some questions that you can ask yourself to understand your true intentions. 

• What matters the most to you, above all else?
• What areas in your life do you most want to see improvements in?
• What are the factors or circumstances holding you back?
• What aspects of your life are affecting you negatively?
• What aspects of your life affect you positively?
• What activities or outcomes make you happy?
• What about your life do you feel most grateful for?
• If there is only one thing that you could carry with you, what would it be?
• What things in your life can you give up without any negative impact?
• What is the achievement or possession that you feel most proud of? 

A Template to Follow 

Here is an example of a comprehensive journaling template that can help you keep track of daily activities: 

Mornings: 

• How well or otherwise did you sleep?
• Did you have any dreams? If yes, do you remember anything about them?
• What are your goals for today?
• What is your plan to achieve all of these goals?
• What three things are you happy about today?
• What three things would you like to change today?
• Is there a motivational quote that can help you achieve your goals for today?

Evenings: 

• What are the things that went right for you today?
• What are the things that went wrong?
• Would you have done anything differently today? If so, how?
• What was the most unexpected thing to happen today?
• What, if anything, did you learn from it?
• How many of the daily goals you set out to accomplish today were you able to achieve?
• What change of tactic or behavior can help you achieve more tomorrow?

Use these questions to test yourself first thing in the morning every day and just before going to sleep at night. Finally, use your microdosing journal to write anything and everything outside these questions that you feel is important enough to record. 

Here is a mood chart that can help you keep a track of your mood. This can be used as an addition to your journaling.