Brain Break Journal April 3, 2020 by Nikki Bott Leave a Comment This brain break journal is based off of my concept to take time and reflect and check on yourself and your mental health. I tried to think of something that makes me feel better, but that I’ve never had an organized way of doing. This is where I got the idea for the brain break journal. The first thing the journal has you do is write your current mood. I feel like I would use my brain break journal in times where I feel stressed or sad, because the point of it is really to improve your mood and check in on your mental well being. Personally for me, writing things down and getting whatever is stressing me out out of my head and into words has always been really helpful. I haven’t ever really done this in an organized way, so I thought have a set place to vent would be very beneficial. Another thing that I thought would be helpful would having a place to write down things you could do to improve your mood. For example, if you are stressed about a project you could write down that you will work 30 minutes on the project so that some of your stress will be relieved. If you are stressed about not moving, you could write that you will take a walk or do a workout video. Often times I feel like we all get caught up with all the emotions going on in our minds and don’t even think about easy solutions we could do to make ourselves feel better. I am definitely going to use this journal and I think that it will actually be extremely helpful in making me feel better in times of distress, which will in turn help me be a lot more productive. My bad moods often stem from thinking way too much about stuff I could be doing, so this journal has you really nail down these things that could easily improve your mood. For the design of my journal, I wanted to make it extremely simple and straight forward. It’s purpose is really just to have a place to write things down and get your emotions out, so nothing about it needed to be too elaborate. For the heading, I chose blue and white because I find those to be calming colors. Other than this though, I want everything to be really simple and easy to follow. The main design choices were definitely the elements of describing your current mood, then venting, then thinking of things you can do to improve your mood, and finally reflecting. I think this sequence is really beneficial because after you identify your problem and think of solutions, you have time to reflect and figure out exactly what you are going to do or even just have two minutes of time to relax before you jump into action.
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