Journal Your Way to Better Habits

With our 21-day journal challenges, you earn badges. Drop bad habits or create positive habits in just 21 days. Our guided journal prompts help you address a wide array of challenges like: stop smoking, losing weight, or even quitting dairy! Go inward and journal your way to a better YOU.

How It Works Start Writing

Get Community Support from Journal Owls

Millions of people across the Globe face similar challenges as you every single day. Learn from each other, grow together, and share your insights of overcoming bad habits, creating positive habits, and succeeding in life. JournalOwl Community brings everyone together.

How It Works Get Support Now

Therapeutic Coaching

Committing to new patterns and ways of living takes serious work. Journaling creates that inward momentum needed to establish a solid foundation of success. It commits you and helps internalize your deepest desires in life. Take it a step further with 1:1 JournalOwl Coaching.

How It Works Find a Therapist

How It Works

21-Day Journaling Challenges

Identify triggers and overcome bad habits with free journaling challenges. Earn badges and climb our leaderboard.

Daily Check-Ins

We SMS text you at the end of the day with a simple question. Did you abstain from (Insert Habit)? If yes, reply with 1. If no, reply with 2.

Write HOF Speeches

Made it through a 21 Day Challenge? A badge is awarded and you can write a Hall of Fame Speech in our Community Forums.

Freestyle Journaling

Pour your heart and soul into your freestyle journal day-after-day. Record videos, add photos, or let us transcribe your voice audio.

Moderated Community Support

Receive support from Owls & other overcomers in a safe and secure forum. Video chat with your group leaders or 1:1 with others.

1:1 Coaching

Ready for lasting change? Pair up with an Owl to receive 1:1 coaching on a variety of challenges. We’re a community of overcomers!

Watch this 2-minute video to learn more

Coping with Change

Recent research indicates that expressive writing reduces intrusive and avoidant thoughts about negative events, while improving working memory.

Research published by APA’s Journal of Experimental Psychology has also discovered that the improvements from expressive writing free up our cognitive resources for other mental activities, including our ability to cope more effectively with stress.

JournalOwl’s pre-launch beta group of Journalers reported a 70% reduction in stress & anxiety associated with overcoming a bad habit. According to participants, the day-to-day journal prompting tailored to the target habit created structure, reduced anxiety, and allowed freedom of expression.

Success Stories

“Expressive writing laid the foundation for me to overcome habit after habit. Bad habits melt away with the 21-day challenges.”

Matt A.

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JournalOwl Free

FREE

Always & forever free!

Journal your way to better habits

Plus earn badges and join unlimited group channels.

Group channels

Engage and chat with other Journalers pursuing the same life goals. Get support, exchange ideas, and tackle your obstacles together!

Safe & secure

100% private and customizable. Your journal entries are double password protected with military grade encryption.

Audio journals

Record daily audio journals with automatic transcription to text.

Mobile friendly

Works with mobile apps, iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Take JournalOwl anywhere you go.

Electronic notifications

Custom email and SMS text reminders to encourage you along.

Theme customizations

Add personality to your journal with your own background, covers, and many different font styles.

Advanced search

Easily tag your journal entries and search across all of your journal entries.

Export and print friendly

Export your Journal to PDF to publish, print, or save.

Multiple journals

Maintain multiple journals covering different aspects of your life: personal, financial, professional, health & wellness.

Connect with Owls

Share journal entries with Owls or Others in a single click for insight and advice to overcoming specific challenges.

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JournalOwl Vault

$5/mo or $30/yr

Less than a cup of coffee!

Includes all JournalOwl Free features, plus:

Unlimited photos

Add unlimited photos to your journal entries.

Unlimited video journals

Record and upload your private video talks to Vault.

Invite family members

Invite your family and friends to specific journal entries to comment, discuss, and update.

TimeCapsule

Write a letter to yourself, your child, or a family member to be opened at a future date. JournalOwl will store it in our Vault until a future date.

Private channels

Vault subscribers get exclusive access to private channels and group video chats with JournalOwl coaches.

Goal Trackers

Track your progress toward goal attainment: weight loss, quit smoking, quit drinking, or less stress. Also create custom goal trackers.

Sentiments

Our built-in Artificial Intelligence analyzes your journal entries and ranks your mood: low, indifferent, angry, good.

Insights

Get the insights you need to improve your life. With simple analytics, see how you compare with other journalers enrolled in the same challenge, how you are improving, and where you are falling behind.

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JournalOwl Therapy

$50/week

Get the help you need!

Includes all JournalOwl Vault features, plus:

1:1 coaching with an Owl

An Owl is a pre-screened life coach that has overcome specific challenges you are facing. Although we have a growing number of licensed therapists, not every Owl necessarily holds a license in therapy. We provide immersion coaching to ensure your continued success. After you go inward with journaling, our Owls provide the outward support for you to sustain your improvements over the long-term.

Daily SMS text reminders

Daily SMS Text support to overcome challenges, such as: weightloss, nicotine addiction, and alcholism.

Weekly habit hacking calls

Weekly habit hacking calls with your private group to overcome challenges. An Owl facilitates the secure group call, answers questions, offers guidance and encouragement.

App-based check-ins

App-based check-ins to break negative habit cycles. Journal insights from an Owl familiar with your specific challenges.

Live video check-ins

A weekly 1:1 video check-in with your Owl to stay accountable and moving ahead with your personal, professional, or health & wellness goals.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is JournalOwl Vault?

JournalOwl Vault is your military grade storage chamber for all journal media types: written word, audio, photo, and video. With Vault, you can invite family & friends to open your vault and comment on journal entries, photos, and videos. You also receive premium support, premium handwritten fonts, full version control, and the ability to create private community groups. Vault costs $3/month paid annually.

What is Coaching and How Much Does it Cost?

Our global network of coaches and therapists are on standby to help provide you with focused therapeutic support. Coaches and Therapists (Owls) have been pre-screened by JournalOwl to help you tackle life’s most difficult challenges. Owls are on standby to help you with a variety of issues: Anxiety, Anger, Addictions & Compulsions, Bullying, Body Image, LGBQT, Midlife Crisis, OCD, Unemployment, Rejection, Self-Esteem, Sleep Disorders, Weightloss, Worry, and Workplace Issues.

At $50/week, you’ll have direct access to your Owl for intensive online therapy sessions to overcome, accept, or sustain long-term change. Combat Veterans suffering from PTSD, Anxiety, or Depression receive special discounts.

Are the 21-day challenges consecutive?

Yes, our free 21-day challenges are designed to stack each day ontop of the other. These challenges are not designed to take at your own pace. You will be required to commit to a 21-day period of continuous introspection and held accountable to yourself. We believe that momentum is created for lasting change in our 21-day challenges (see - Why 21 Days?). Once your badge is earned upon successful completion of a 21-day challenge, you are prompted to check-in every 30 days to maintain your status within our Community groups.

Will my data be secure? Can I download it?

Yes, we take your privacy and data security very seriously. Double-password protection and military grade encryption are the standard at JournalOwl. All of your journal entries are downloadable and printable with 1-click. If for whatever reason you decide that JournalOwl is not for you -- simply 1-click your way to exporting your entries and close your account for good. We never want you to feel trapped and make it super simple for you to move on if you choose.

What is the research on Journaling?

According to Psychcentral.com, journaling helps to clarify your thoughts and feelings. It also allows you to know yourself better, reduce stress, solve problems more effectively, and resolve disagreements with others.

We also believe that journaling allows you to track patterns, trends, and improve yourself over time. Nothing happens overnight and journaling is a process like every other life pursuit. Many famous people kept journals, including John D. Rockefeller, George Patton, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, John Adams, Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway.

Other famous people such as Albert Einstein maintained a daily journal. It's an essential aspect of an examined life. In the words of Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living.

What are Journal Prompts?

Journal prompting is at the cornerstone of our free 21-day challenges. You are also given the reigns to design your own 21-day challenge by specifiying journaling prompts for yourself. A journal prompt is a statement or question that inspires introspection.

We have designed the 21-day challenges to help Journalers dive deep into their psyche to understand why they are trapped in a negative cycle. In effect, our challenges help individuals uncover their own reasons for overcoming a specific life challenge. With an Inside/Out approach to improvement, JournalOwl helps people understand the sources of their addictions, as well as providing targeted suggestions on how to overcome life's greatest challenges.

Are your "Owls" licensed and vetted professionals?

Are you seeking a theorist, or a practitioner? A theorist is an individual who has studied addictive behavior, but has not necessarily been in the throws of addiction and overcame it themselves. A practitioner, on the other hand, is someone who has lived and breathed the same problems that you are attempting to overcome. Who would you rather take advice from? At JournalOwl, we believe that Practitioners who have proven battle scars in overcoming the challenges you are facing are the ones that provide the most sound advice.

Every Owl is vetted, but not every Owl is licensed. Our platform is a "coaching platform" and not intended to diagnose, treat, or provide specific medical advice. We do have licensed therapists serving as Owls, but our pre-screening criterion requires them to have overcome the specific 'badge' they are providing full immersion coaching on.

How do I communicate with an Owl?

It's easy. You can get coaching in five ways:

Secure message exchange with your Owl.
SMS Texting with your Owl.
Chatting live with your Owl.
Speaking over the phone with your Owl.
Secure Video Conferencing with your Owl.

Every day is different and we encourage our users to mix up the communication style with their Owls. How you decide to communicate with your assigned Owl is truly up to you.

Get Matched with an Owl

Owls are pre-screened coaches and therapists with a passion for helping others overcome challenges. You can augment your journaling with 1:1 support from our large network of professional coaches. We match you based on a short questionnaire.

5 Modes of Communication with Your Owl

Secure Messaging • SMS Texting • Live Chat • Phone • Secure Video