Five-Minute Sprint Journal

Information: The Five-Minute Sprint Journal is a simple technique that you can do anywhere and at any time. When you notice that your mind is busy, take a break and do a 5 minute sprint to work through your thoughts/emotions. Writing and reflecting on experiences is a healthy and proactive method to managing stress and anxiety.  

Some of the benefits of journaling include: 

• Reduces stress 
  • • Expressive writing has shown to lessen the impact of physical stressors, such as  lowering blood pressure and improving liver functioning. 
• Improves immune function 
  • • Journaling can strengthen immunity and help decrease risk of illness. Alleviating  stress helps reduce symptoms such as shortness of breath and inflammation.
• Keeps memory sharp 
  • • Expressive writing helps boost memory and comprehension, and also helps  improve working memory capacity and cognitive processing. 
• Boosts mood 
  • • Journaling provides a platform to process thoughts, emotions, and experiences  which in term can improve overall emotional well-being. 
• Strengthens emotional functioning 
  • • As expressive writing habits are developed, benefits become longer-term,  meaning that the writer becomes more in tune with their health after writing,  reflecting, and integrating what they learned into their future thoughts and  behaviors. 

Practice: Journaling is a good way to clear our minds and make some space for our thoughts and  emotions. It is also a good way for us to work on noticing our thought patterns and make changes  to how we think, if needed. Pay attention to common cognitive distortions which are irrational  thoughts that can influence your our emotions. Everyone experiences cognitive distortions to some  degree, but in their more extreme forms they can be harmful.  

This exercise is a short and sweet way for us to experiment with journaling and changing our  thought patterns. When building the habit of journaling, the five-minute sprint can be helpful  since it only takes 5 minutes and can be written, typed, or even voice-to-text on a phone. 

Five-Minute Sprint Journal 

COMMON COGNITIVE  DISTORTIONS 

• Magnification and Minimization: Exaggerating or minimizing the importance of events. One might believe their own achievements are unimportant, or that their mistakes are excessively important. 
• Catastrophizing: Seeing only the worst  possible outcomes of a situation. 
• Overgeneralization: Making broad interpretations from a single or few events.  
• Magical Thinking: The belief that acts will influence unrelated situations. 
• Personalization: The belief that one if responsible for events outside of their own control. 
• Jumping to Conclusions: Interpreting the meaning of a situation with little or no evidence. 
• Mind Reading: Interpreting the thoughts and beliefs of others without adequate evidence. 
• Fortune Telling: The expectation that a situation will turn out badly without adequate evidence. 
• Emotional Reasoning: The assumption that emotions reflect the way things really are. 
• Disqualifying the Positive: Recognizing only the negative aspects of a situation while ignoring the positive. 
• “Should” Statements: The belief that things should be a certain way. 
• All-or-Nothing Thinking: Thinking in absolutes such as “always,” “never,” or “every.”

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