- What is a Mood Tracker?
- Why Would I Want to Track My Mood?
- 15 Mood Tracker Ideas to Inspire Your Journaling
- Develop Your Journaling Skills with a Subscription
Want to take steps to improve your mental and emotional health? Creating a bullet journal mood tracker is a beautiful beginning. It is a subtle and compassionate way to get in touch with your mental states.
Plus, you can get as creative as you want with your mood chart, so that attending to it is a playful and pretty part of your day. We’ll provide some awesome inspiration for making your own mood journal, but first let’s talk about why it’s such a valuable spread to add to your bullet journal.
What is a Mood Tracker?
A mood tracker, also known as a mood chart, is a way to track your daily emotions.
In a bullet journal format, it is usually a playful drawing with a colour code — each colour corresponding to a mood.
Each day, you colour a “block” of the drawing, until it is fully coloured in at the end of the month.
Why Would I Want to Track My Mood?
You may not at first think a mood map is for you — it might seem trivial or unnecessary.
Actually, there are many benefits to tracking your mood.
It can help you:
Gain control: For one thing, it is a positive, daily action that can help us get a handle on our mental and emotional health. Often, we can feel like victims to our feelings, utterly absorbed by them. We are as a boat at sea, simply riding the waves of emotion, getting knocked around. Charting your mood is a small but significant act that puts you in control.
Notice patterns: Once you begin to establish a practice of tracking your moods, and build up enough “data” as it were, you will begin to notice patterns. Especially if you’re also tracking other things such as habits, sleep, menstrual cycle, etc., you can begin to see correlations between those things and your moods. Noticing patterns means we can begin to do more of the things that make us happy and less of the things that don’t.
Develop awareness around triggers: Tracking moods will also allow you to take note of particular triggers — those things that evoke a strong emotion from us. Gaining awareness of triggers is the first step in changing how we react to them.
Shift your perspective: One of the most beautiful things about mood tracking is that it can help take the edge off of a heavy mood through a broadened perspective. You begin to look at your moods from a more detached place, without self judgment. Because, hey, it’s just a feeling! And every mood is beautiful.
Imagine that anxiety is a green circle and joy is a yellow one, while sadness is light pink and excitement is orange, anger is black, confidence is red, and depression is purple — they are all just colours, and they all weave a beautiful tapestry when put together!
Tracking your mood daily may seem simplistic, but it works because it’s simple. It is an accomplishable first step in gaining control over your mental states and you can learn a lot about yourself through committing to the practice.
Plus, doing it in the bujo style, with a cute picture, is fun, and makes tracking the mood easy and playful.
With that said, here are some great ideas for making your own mood map.
15 Mood Tracker Ideas to Inspire Your Journaling
1. A Bunch of Flowers
Colouring in flowers always feels good — and is a reminder that all feelings are deserving.
Credit: dotsandpens
2. Life Line
Instead of colouring, you could create a visual with a graph. It will create a cool looking lifeline, and you can decorate the spread any way you choose.
Credit: journals_cloud
3. Month Tracker
A great way to keep track of your monthly moods: write out the month in block letters and block it out into the number of days in the month. Simple and efficient.
Credit: suncerulean
4. Dangling Lightbulbs
There are lots of variations on the dangling idea. Light bulbs are super cute, but you could dangle hearts, stars, or anything else you like!
Credit: passioncarnets
5. Mini Descriptors
This mood tracker is great if you want to track with a bit more information. Instead of just filling in a colour (or in this case, a black bar), save space for a few notes on what was going on for you that day.
Credit: planwithady
6. Beautiful Circle Design
The circle is a classic design for tracking. Spend some time drawing a lovely central picture that feels good to look at every day.
7. Wreathed
Another lovely take on the circle tracker. This wreath design just goes to show you how many directions you can take the circle.
Credit: its.mybullet.journal
8. Line Graph
Another line graph design, this one uses a number code for the feelings.
Credit: astralaffection
9. Moon Phases
What better way to track moods than symbolically with the phases of the moon? After all, the moon is said to affect our moods, and it looks quite pretty.
Credit: a.tea_a.bujo
10. Raindrops
The raindrop image is a great image, especially if you feel emotionally low overall. The rain can feel oppressive, but it is nevertheless magic to have water from the sky that brings flowers in turn! They can also look like tears of sadness — or joy! Whatever the feeling, they all wash away in the end.
Credit: marthasjournal
11. Make a Face
This simple circle design is cute and easy. Have fun creating a face each evening to convey the dominant feeling of the day.
Credit: Kitoremi
12. Library of Feelings
Create an entire library of feelings! Each book is a daily mood.
Credit: art_n_foxes
13. Wings of a Feather
This is a quite stunning mood tracker — more intricate than the others. A beautiful reminder that every mood is important, because together they give us wings to fly.
Credit: planpapers
14. Cloud Gradients
The genius part of this cloud tracker is that it gives the possibility of gradients — because one day is rarely just made up of ONE mood. Blend the various moods into a beautiful range of shades.
Credit: cloudberry journals
15. Every Mood is a Gem
Last but not least: jewels. Because our full range of feelings make up our internal treasure chest.
Credit: plintheced
Develop Your Journaling Skills with a Subscription
Want to go further into your journaling with a bit of guidance? Betterly offers a 12-box subscription series all about journaling. It will help you build a regular practice of journaling, complete with journals, markers, stencils, prompts, and much more!
