Writing is one of the easiest and most helpful outlets a person can have. It is an important outlet for those people like me, who might have a hard time verbally expressing themselves. Writing helps us to communicate when we can’t exactly say what we are thinking. Writing does a lot for a person, and the more you write, the more you get out of it. Here are some of the benefits of writing on a daily basis.

1. You get better at writing.

Practice does not make perfect, but it does make you better. Knowing how to write is so important for life. You need to know how to write to get certain jobs and to communicate within your job. There is always a need for it! This is especially true for college students, because nothing is worse than getting a bad grade on an important essay. The more you write, the less mistakes you will make, and the more you get used to the way words go together.

“I wish I hadn't spent so much time getting better at writing,” said no one ever.

2. Expressing yourself gets easier.

Writing is a form of expression and the more you do it, the more thoughts, feelings, emotions and ideas you express. It becomes easier and easier. It's like when you do the same thing over and over. It becomes like muscle memory. You just do it with ease. It never gets to that level overnight, but with time, you are like a pro. Writing out your thoughts and feelings helps you understand what you are feeling, and you will know how to say what you are thinking without stumbling over words. Stumbling over words is frustrating and, for those who are self-conscious, embarrassing. Writing daily will increase your ability to communicate with others, even verbally.

3. You discover things about yourself.

Writing can be used to reflect on oneself. You can not only reflect on how you have improved in your writing, but also how you have changed as a person. Your writing reflects your thoughts and feelings. If you write specifically about who you are right now and keep doing that, then look back at in a a couple of months or even a year, you will see change in yourself. It is very beneficial and surprising to see how much you have changed and how far you have come. It can give you that much needed confidence boosts, and it's a great way to continue to grow and change.

4. Processing things becomes less of a challenge.

Processing things is, most of the time, a challenging thing to do. Things that happen in the past or things that are happening right now can be very hard to process. If something happened when you were six that you were not able to understand then, you would need to process that event. Writing about it helps you figure out and understand what it is that happened. If you write about a particular event in your life again and again, then you are processing. If you keep doing that with different things, it becomes easier to do when new events that require you to think a lot come up. You know how to process what is happening because you have done it on paper.

5. Your mind literally feels lighter.

“Take a load off” is a phrase we use to say take a rest, and give your physical body a rest. Well, writing is like taking a load off by putting all your thoughts on paper. That’s why in class you write out your notes. You do not want to try and just remember everything. Putting things down on paper or on the computer is a good way to do a spring cleaning of your brain. Writing down all your thoughts and things that are going on won’t make them go away, but you won’t think about them as much. Your brain will lose all that weight and will feel lighter, for sure.

Those are just a couple of things that I know writing daily has done for me, and I know it has done the same for others. Keep on writing.

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect." ― Anaïs Nin