Confidently Beautiful with Ciera

How Journaling Builds Confidence — One Page at a Time

• Ciera • Episode 83

Share episode

Send me a text!

Join Confidence Journals Waitlist

Shop Confidence Journals here after October 15, 2025

Confidence doesn’t arrive with a spotlight; it grows in quiet moments we forget five minutes later. I’m sharing the simple journaling practice that helped me catch those wins in real time, calm my anxious brain, and build a stronger, kinder story about myself—one sentence at a time.

We start with the origin: a planner idea that evolved into a daily confidence journal after I realized what I really needed was reflection, not more scheduling. From there, I unpack what the research says about expressive writing—how even 15 minutes, three times a week can reduce stress and anxiety, and why naming emotions boosts mood regulation and can even nudge physical health markers. You’ll hear how journaling externalizes messy thoughts, creates distance for better choices, and rewires attention so your brain starts scanning for competence, not just flaws.

Then we get practical. I walk through prompts that work when you’re tired, rituals that make the habit stick, and a realistic take on handwriting versus your notes app. I share a personal example from motherhood—an area where I’ve felt insecure—and how tracking small, specific wins changed my outlook. You’ll leave with a 60-second exercise you can try right now: write “Today I felt confident when…” and see what shifts by tomorrow. If you want structure, I’m also announcing my rainbow collection of Daily Confidence Journals, designed to train your attention toward what’s working and help you revisit growth you might otherwise miss.

If this resonates, listen, try the prompt tonight, and tell me what you wrote. Subscribe for more confidence tools, share the episode with a friend who needs a gentle nudge, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.

Join my e-mail list: Click here

Take my skincare quiz: Click here

Buy makeup products here and help survivors of child sexual abuse

Shop Confident Expression Shop: Click here

Visit saprea.org to learn more about hope and healing from child sexual abuse

Visit Defend Innocence for resources on child sexual abuse prevention

Connect with Ciera on Instagram @confidentlybeautifulpodcast

SPEAKER_00:

You're listening to Confidently Beautiful with Sierra, a podcast to help you stay confidently beautiful because we all have confidence inside us. We just need to bring it out, and I'm here to show you how. Body image, dreams, parenting style, personality, and more. Here we cover it all. Get ready to stay confidently beautiful. Welcome back to the podcast. I am Sierra, your host, and I am so happy that you are here tuning in. I encourage you while you're listening to this episode to do something that will help you to feel a little bit more confident in an area of your life. It could be something big, it could be something simple, but something that is going to make you feel a little bit more confident in something that you have been struggling with. So for example, maybe this could be you are not feeling super confident in your finances these days. So maybe as you're listening, take some time. Go through your subscriptions that you have. See if there's anything that you want to cancel. Maybe you go through your bank account and you see exactly where you are spending your money and some areas you could cut back on. Maybe you are feeling like you are not being confident in your friend life and you don't feel like a good friend lately. Maybe send a quick text to a friend who you have been thinking about and just say hi and see how they're doing. So do something that is going to make you walk away feeling a little bit more confident in that area of your life. About two years ago, I started on the journey of creating a planner. Now I do still have this dream that maybe this planner will still be something that I do. But as I was designing it and I was doing prototypes and I was trying it out from my own life to see what I needed to tweak and try, then I realized what I really need right now is I needed a journal. So it evolved from a planner into a journal and I started journaling. I started in my phone, just in the notes app, and then eventually I went to a notebook. And I would just journal one simple question. Today I felt confident when, and that small practice has changed how I see myself. In today's episode, I want to take you through how journaling can actually help you grow your confidence. I want to tell you what the research says, and I would love to share some simple steps you can start today if you are interested in journaling. Confidence is not just about big moments. It is made from the small daily wins and how we perceive them, how we see ourselves in those moments. Journaling gives you a space where you can see your internal growth and you can notice the progress you might have otherwise overlooked. It can be really easy to have those small daily wins, but you just don't see them because you're just in the middle of your day and you were just going through the motions. You were just trying to get to the next thing. You are maybe so discouraged that you can't even see those small wins that you had. So taking the time to journal gives you that space where you can step back and you can see, okay, this is where I actually did win in this moment. This is where I did shine. This is where I was confident. You can start to notice the progress and it externalizes your thoughts so they're not just swirling around invisibly in your mind going unnoticed. Over time, it builds a narrative of strength. You can start to see the places where you are growing. You can start to see when you have your doubts and when you are shining. And you can notice patterns in your life of where you may be feeling extra confident. What does science say about this? What is the research about journaling? I don't want these episodes to just be a bunch of mumbo jumbo from my brain, but I want it to be actual evidence-based episodes where you can walk away feeling like, yes, this is valuable. This is something that is going to help me in my life, and this is why it is going to be helpful. There were some randomized controlled trials that they found that journaling interventions produced on average a 5% greater improvement in psychological health compared to the controlled groups. The groups that were journaling were greatly improving their psychological health. So one thing that I thought was interesting and that I can see that is actually true based on my experience is that people who suffered from anxiety specifically, if they were journaling regularly, they had a reduction of 9% in their anxiety. PTSD was a 6% reduction in this study, and depression was a 2% reduction. So these are probably very modest statistics, but I think that just any slight reduction in any of these is going to be an improvement. And if it can improve your health even just a little bit by journaling, that is such an easy way to do it. I know for me with my anxiety, I am much more calm and at peace when I am taking the time to journal. If you're thinking, right, I want to reduce my anxiety, I want to reduce my depression, then what how exactly can I do this? In some studies, they said just even 15 minutes, just three times a week, those participants reported less stress and fewer depressive symptoms. Journaling has been linked to improve emotional awareness, reduce stress, better your mood regulation, and also has physical health benefits because it can lower your blood pressure, because you're not so stressed, it can improve your immune response, which I think is also because you are not stressed and you are getting all of those toxic thoughts out of your body. For instance, writing about emotional experiences rather than just superficial daily, like today I did this and this and this, but writing about emotional experiences and what you were feeling that has been shown to reduce the number of doctor visits in later months and to improve immunity markers in some studies, which I thought was very interesting. So I think all of those statistics are very impressive, and I will include all of the links to the studies if you are very interested in reading them. But that was just a brief overview of the studies that I found. Just 15 minutes three times a week can reduce your anxiety and your other emotional responses by a large amount, which I think is so cool. How exactly does journaling support our competence? There's external reflection, it gives us a time to sit down, put our thoughts and our feelings onto paper, and it can help us to observe it rather than to just let it live inside us, maybe let it be unnoticed inside us because we are taking some time to create distance, to analyze, to reframe, and to question what is true. Before you sit down to journal, your thoughts may be chaotic. You may feel stressed, you may feel overwhelmed, you may feel like there was nothing good in the day. But when you sit down and actually start to write it, your chaotic thoughts can become more structured. It gives you a voice of what you're feeling inside. It can help you to put a name to the emotions that you are feeling inside. And over time, I love it when you re look back and reflect because you can see patterns, you can see recurring limiting beliefs, you can see how you are authoring your inner story, and then you can have a time to rewrite that story, to change those limiting beliefs, to maybe notice patterns where you are not showing your best self. But also on the flip side, you can see the parts where maybe you are overlooking where you are actually shining, where you are actually being confident, where you are actually excelling and doing really well. When you journal, you narrow your focus to what matters. You can signal to your brain, hey, this is meaningful. That strengthens, that strengthens your neural pathways tied to noticing confidence. So when you are writing things down, you will notice like this is something that is important to me. So if you're writing I felt confident when, your brain is going to start having those neural pathways looking for those moments where you are confident. If you write I am grateful for, your neural pathways are going to start noticing the things you're grateful for. If you're writing the things that you are doing that are helping you to grow and be a better person, your brain is going to start noticing those things. When you write something, you're more likely to remember it. So retrieving and revisiting your written reflections can help strengthen your beliefs in yourself. So if you're writing things down about yourself that are positive and then you go back and you look at them, then you will be reinforcing those beliefs. When you write it down on paper, there is science that says you will remember it more because you are writing it on paper. So you will remember those positive beliefs about yourself. Your journaling is your confident confidant. You can say things that you maybe wouldn't say out loud. It's where you can validate yourself and you can build self-trust. So maybe you wouldn't say out loud, I am a good mom. Maybe you don't quite feel that yet. And so saying that out loud just feels like a fraud. It feels like something that is not true. But if you are taking time to go back and think about your moments in your day where you actually had like a, hey, I actually think I am a good mom, then you can write that because maybe you don't have the strength or the confidence to say it out loud yet. But writing it on paper can help you to validate it for yourself and to build that self-trust where you can believe yourself when you have those thoughts that you are a good mom or you are confident in an area of your life. So some practical tips. How do like journaling is great? This is all such good information, but how do we actually do it? Start small. Even just a quick 30-second entry can have a huge benefit and you can start noticing some shifts. Use a simple prompt. You can use a prompt like today I felt confident when, or what is one small win I had today, or today I am grateful for. Just pick one prompt, and even if you repeat that prompt every single day, it will get you in the habit of journaling. Be kind, you don't need to be perfect, and it doesn't have to look like the perfect, beautiful journey journal entry. It doesn't have to be eloquent, it doesn't have to be flowy, it doesn't have to be what you maybe think a journal entry should be, even if it's just a bullet point list. If it's something super simple that you're just writing down a few words, journaling something is going to be helpful. Revisit your past entries every few weeks and you can start noticing your growth. You can start seeing your patterns. Be consistent. It doesn't need to be daily, but just try your best. If it is daily, that's awesome. But just try your best to be journaling as often as you can, even if it's just one line, even if it's just something very simple. And create a ritual, a time and a space and an atmosphere that will make you want to journal. So maybe you are a morning journal person. Maybe you want to maybe set your journal by your mug in the morning so you can have a warm drink while you're writing in your journal. Maybe you want to journal at night before bed. So keep your journal and a cute pen right at your bedside. And every night you can turn on the light, you can get cozy in a blanket, and you can take some minutes to journal before you go to sleep. Maybe some days they'll be bullet list, some days will just be free write. And maybe some days it will just be one line. Just let it adapt to whatever you need for that day. I've been talking a lot about journaling with a pen. Is journaling with a pen better than using your notes app on your phone? Like how I very first started journaling. I don't think that one is better than the other, but I think there are benefits from both. There's neuroscience behind why handwriting might feel deeper than typing. Forming letters by hand lights up more brain region connectivity than simply pressing a key on a keyboard. That means your brain is doing much more rich work. There's more sensory and motor and visual circuits that are all firing and they're all engaged. So this is going to just activate your brain a lot more when you are actually writing pen to paper. In some studies, there were participants that reported or more positive mood when they were handwriting versus when they were typing. So one reason why this might matter when you are journaling something like confidence or gratitude is when you are writing today, I felt confident when, or I am grateful for. So motherhood right now is not an easy thing for me. I am feeling like I am very insecure in my motherhood and I'm lacking in a lot of different areas. But when I take the time to write today, I felt confident when it has helped me to start noticing moments in my motherhood where I actually am shining. Moments in my motherhood where I actually am really confident and doing really, really well. So rather than focusing on the areas where I'm feeling like I'm lacking, I can focus on the areas that I am doing really well and then I am shining. So if you're listening to this episode and you're in a place where you have a journal next to you, or a notebook, or a piece of paper, or maybe you just have your phone and you can open up your notes app, I want you to take a minute and just open up a page and write one sentence. Today I felt confident when, and write what you felt confident today doing. Later, go back and read this. Reflect later how the small sentence that you wrote maybe shifted your perspective in this area of your life. Did it affect your day? Did it change the way that you acted the next day? Did you feel a little bit better in that area? And then repeat this over and over and see if you notice a shift in your confidence. Growth is incremental. Journaling isn't some magic thing that is going to fix all of our confidence problems, but it is a powerful tool that I have found that has really helped my confidence. So I like to keep it in my confidence toolkit and I like to journal as often as I can. And speaking of journaling, if you enjoyed this episode, you are going to want to be on the list for my new rainbow collection of my daily confidence journals. They launch on October 15th, and I am so excited because it is all about confidence. It's all about growing that muscle that is going to train your brain to recognize the moments in your life where you are being confident, where you are succeeding. Make sure you join the email list. I will include a link in the show notes, but the journals will be launching on confidentexpression.com on October 15th, and you are going to want to check out this really cute collection. It's bright and colorful and happy, and I am so excited for it. So begin journaling today. Even if you think I don't have the time, just open up your notes app, grab a piece of paper. Even if it's not something that you are going to keep, just write it down and get in the practice of writing it pen to paper where you can start thinking and noticing those patterns in your day where you are feeling confident. You think of a sentence of I today I felt confident when, I would love it if you would share it with me. Post a picture on your Instagram story with your sentence and make sure you tag me so that I can see all of your today I felt confident when moments. Stay confidently beautiful.