Sarah Moore
Journaling can also be a good way to discover yourself.
If you are trying to ‘figure yourself out’, you just don’t go into a room, sit down and start thinking. Achieving self-knowledge takes time and reflection. Journalling helps clear your mind and allows you to reflect without getting distracted. Not only can journaling help you discover and ponder life questions, but it can also help you be a better communicator.
This kind of journaling exercise can help you reach goals that you set, solve tough problems, and help you to be more creative.
Journaling is a good tool and exercise to have more self-knowledge by asking questions that stimulate your thinking process. Below are some self-knowledge starters to help give you ideas.
Pick a prompt below, start writing, and let your answers flow without worrying about the quality, quantity, or format. This exercise is just for you and no one else should see it. Let this be your authentic self speaking on paper and let it be real. Do not hold back, do as many questions as you would like, really sit with one question for a while and ponder it. This is a marathon, not a race. This is not a test. Sit and reflect.
For me, I took at least 10 – 15 minutes a question, just thinking about my life. I do a couple a day, it really helps me understand my life, and it takes a lot of stress and weight off of my shoulders. It is very therapeutic to get your thoughts on paper.
Self-knowledge journaling prompts.
- When I was a child, things I would think about the most were…
- I have always wished for many things, but the thing I have wished for the most is…
- If I somehow acquired a large sum of money around $30,000, and I had to only spend it on myself, I would spend it on…
- One big issue in my life that I need to work on is…
- I want to do many things in my life, but this year I want to…
- When I look at my life I can be the proudest of myself in…
- If I could talk to someone at this moment, I would talk to… (living or deceased).
- When talking to that person I would ask them or tell them…
- Recently I had a really bad situation that turned out well, the good that came out of this situation is…
- I have always wanted to learn…
- I have many skills but what I really want to acquire is the skill of…
- I have grown in the past year by…
- If my 10 year old self could see my life right now, my 10 year old self would react like…
- One goal that I want to achieve in my life is…
- If I could give my younger self advice, the advice would be…
- If I have one book that I want to read it would be…
- My favorite book that I always read over and over is…
- The one thing that I will regret if I never do is…
- Something I will never regret is… because…
- The three people I look up to the most are…
- The qualities I admire in those three people are…
- The qualities I want to build in myself are…
- The one person I trust the most is… I trust them because…
- The person I could tell anything would be… I could tell them anything because…
- If I had a time machine I would go the year… because…
- The one thing I am most afraid of is…
- A fear that I do not want other people to find out that I have is…
- Something I am afraid to tell someone is…
- The thing that I am thankful for is…
- The person I most grateful for is… because…
- I hope people think that I am…
- I hope peoples first impression of me is…
- Something I can easily do today that I want to do is…
- Something that I should do today that I do not want to do is…
- Some of my strengths are…
- If people look up to me it would be because of…
- I am worried about…
- I feel the safest…
- If I wasn’t fearful of… I would accomplish…
- In 5 years I want to be…