If you’ve been having trouble growing your confidence, it might seem like a wasted effort to try anything else. If nothing else has worked, why keep trying? But don’t give up; there are dozens if not hundreds of methods you can use to boost your confidence.

Journaling is an effective self-improvement technique that is seldom used for confidence building but often shows success. Journaling involves writing down your thoughts -that’s right, with good old-fashioned pen and paper -to try and help you understand what’s going on in your mind and where your block is.

There are two basic kinds of journaling: free journaling and prompted journaling. Free journaling involves writing down whatever comes to mind on the topic you’re working on. Prompted journaling is answering a question on the topic.

You don’t need any fancy notebooks or journals unless you want them. All you need is a pen, some paper, a timer (your phone should have a built-in app you can use for this, or you can get a physical timer), and some time to yourself. And some prompts, if you want to use prompted journaling. You can find the latter for free online or in books.

You’re going to set the timer for the length of time you want to spend journaling. If you’ve never done this before, five minutes is plenty to begin with. Then pick up the pen and start writing.

If you’re freewriting, think about your self-confidence issues. What is bothering you the most? What keeps getting in the way of growing your confidence? If you’re using a prompt, answer the question. Try to identify which of the four pillars of confidence is being impacted by your issue.

When the timer goes off, you can stop writing. You can also continue if you feel like it. Try to journal at least two or three times a week, especially at first, and do your best to identify the issues that arise in your writing.

Writing creates a shortcut to your unconscious, and you’re going to be surprised to see what turns up on the page. Once you determine what an issue is, you can seek to find its cause. When you do that, you can problem-solve ways to correct it and get back on track in growing your confidence.

Journaling is a powerful technique. It can help you master your confidence issues if you let it. Give journaling a try today!