Journaling | Intuition Development | Emotional Wellness
Tune In To Your Inner Voice
Access the healing powers of your inner guidance through journaling exercises, daily journal prompts, tools for building intuition, and resources for emotional wellness & emotional healing.
Find Freedom With These Journal Prompts For Perfectionism
I saw a Gloria Steinem quote that said, “Perfectionism is internalized oppression,” and I thought, “Ugh, that is, unfortunately, very true for me.” It took me many years to realize that my perfectionism stemmed from a traumatic childhood. In fact, it took me many years to even realize that my childhood was traumatic. (You can read a little more about that in my post on What I Wish I Knew Earlier about Healing Psychological Trauma if you’d like.) When I accepted and began to process the ways in which my childhood traumatized me, it was easier to see the ways that I continued to function by the rules of my childhood. In childhood “perfect” behavior was required from me in order to “earn” love and the right to have emotions, set boundaries, and be my own person. The rules were always unclear and ever-changing, and even if they had been clear, I would never have been able to live up to them. The end result was that I continued to endlessly strive to be more and more perfect in every facet of life to earn love and the right to simply be a human with my own emotions, body, and opinions. I’m very much still a recovering perfectionist, but I know that I have the tools now to continue to step away from perfectionistic tendencies and it’s something I’m actively working on.
These journal prompts are designed to help you explore what your perfectionism looks like and the “whys” behind your perfectionism. I hope they’re helpful to you on your journey to overcome perfectionism!
Journal Prompts For October
Journal through the month of October with me with these October writing prompts! These October journal prompts explore a variety of topics. In October, we’ll journal about how emotions feel in our bodies, self-care, self-talk, happiness, fear, and our relationship with time, among other topics. We’ll also do a few fun journaling exercises involving poetry, free association, our dreams, and personality tests.
Journal Prompts for October 1st
Write out something positive you commonly say to yourself. Write out something negative you commonly say to yourself. How does hearing the positive phrase impact you? How does hearing the negative phrase impact you? Were there other people in your life who first said these things to you?
Get To The Root Of Your Anxiety With These Journal Prompts For Anxiety
When I’m feeling anxious, I’m usually tempted to “run away” from the anxiety by ignoring that it’s there. Unfortunately, this doesn’t usually help to resolve my anxiety or the underlying reasons I’m anxious, and even worse it tends to cause my anxiety to build up until it feels large and unmanageable. I have found that taking deep breathes, running cold water over my wrists and/or face, and leaning into the anxiety and expressly acknowledging to myself that I’m anxious helps. Making these coping mechanisms a habit has helped my anxiety, and learning to acknowledge and lovingly accept my emotions as they arise has helped reduce my overall instances of anxiety.
Cherish Your Memories With These Memory Journal Prompts
Keeping a memory journal is a fun way to reflect on your life and to safekeep memories so that you can revisit them and reminisce later. Keeping a memory journal can also help you see patterns in your life. When you keep a memory journal you will begin to see what moments in your life feel the most important to you, what you value in life, and how your daily experiences impact you and string together to create the story of your life. If you’ve ever considered writing a memoir, keeping a memory journal is also a great way to get started. With a memory journal, you’ll have plenty of inspiration to pull from for a memoir in the future.
Harness The Power Of Your Intuition With Journal Prompts For Decision Making
These journal prompts are designed to be an intuition development exercise using active imagination to help you make a hard decision or work through a difficult situation.
Using active imagination to enhance your intuition
When you are facing a difficulty it’s a good time to consciously work on accessing your intuition. Developing your intuition means learning how to access all of the knowledge that your body has, rather than just the knowledge you can consciously remember right now with your mind. The more we can tap into everything we know and feel about ourselves and the world around us when making a decision, the happier we will be with the decision we make.
Nestle Up With These Journal Prompts For Fall
Autumn brings a new routine for many people, but even if your routine will stay the same, the changing of the season tends to bring a newness that invites reflection. Fall is my favorite season, it brings to mind the sound of crunching leaves underfoot and geese honking overhead, cozy sweaters, warm drinks, the smell of bonfires, and the taste of pumpkin bread. Of course, not all fall memories are sweet; it also brings to mind the dreaded fall allergies, and a few bittersweet feelings about autumns past. Whatever your feelings about fall, it can be great time to pause and reflect.
I invite you to grab your journal and reflect on the end of summer and the beginning of fall. If it feels helpful, use the journal questions below to start.
Journal Prompts for Shadow Work: Do You Judge Yourself?
What does it mean to judge yourself?
Here are some common examples of self-judgement: Going over a conversation or interaction in your head afterwards and chiding yourself for something you said or did. Berating yourself after you express an emotion or show vulnerability. Holding yourself to a standard of perfection and picking apart everything you could have done better. Being hard on yourself when you forget to do something or when you don’t know how to do something.
Surprise Yourself With These Journal Prompts for Self Discovery
How is it possible that sometimes we surprise even ourselves?
It may seem like an obvious truth that we know ourselves, and to a certain degree, this is inevitably true. After all, you’ve spent your entire life as you! Yet, we have all had life experiences - no matter how mundane those experiences may have been - that we simply don’t consciously remember. Sometimes we’re surprised by our reaction to a situation, or we forget that a particular activity makes us happy. It’s easy to lose touch with parts of ourselves or to lose ourselves in relationships, work, people pleasing, busy schedules, or simply the ebb and flow of daily living. Our relationship with ourselves is the most important relationship in our lives.
Mindfulness Prompts for Connecting With Your Body
What does it feel like when your mind and body are connected?
The way in which our minds and bodies interact with each other has a profound impact on our daily lives and our physical and emotional health. Spending some time reflecting on our mind-body connection in a big picture sense can help us to identify what’s working for us and what’s not when it comes to cultivating mindfulness in our daily lives. I invite you to explore - and journal about - your mind-body connection. If it feels helpful, use the journal questions below to start.
Journal Prompts for Connecting With Your Intuition
How do you know when you’re connecting with your intuition?
Intuition is knowledge that comes from our bodies. Intuitive knowing is different than the knowing that comes from intellectual, logical, step-by-step processing. Both types of knowing are important for our daily lives, but intuition is a type of knowledge commonly denigrated in modern culture and therefore more easily dismissed as untrustworthy or unimportant. Disregarding our intuition prevents us from accessing important information and a deeply meaningful aspect of what it means to be human. Moreover, intuitive ways of knowing exist within each of us even if we dismiss or disregard this type of knowing; by being aware of the role of intuition in our lives we can learn to harness this way of knowing to assist us in our daily lives and we can avoid being unconsciously driven by intuitive forces that we have no conscious means of conversing and interacting with.
Reflect On Your Relationships With These Journal Prompts for Relationships
How do your relationships impact your life?
Our relationships with friends, family, co-workers, and significant others have a profound impact on our lives. Despite the power of relationships in our lives, we may not commonly take the time to reflect on how our friendships, acquaintances, and other relationships impact us and how we impact those in our lives. I invite you to take a relationship inventory by reflecting on, and journaling about, the relationships in your life.
If it feels helpful, use the journal questions below to start.
Write down the names of 3-5 people you are around on a regular basis, or the names of 3-5 people who have the greatest impact on your life right now. For each person, answer the questions below.
Journal Prompts For Finding The Divine Feminine In You
What does it mean to be feminine? Everyone, regardless of their gender, contains aspects of personality and being that encompass what we traditionally think of as feminine. And, regardless of our gender, these aspects of ourselves can be undervalued due to our life experiences, including living in a society that undervalues activities and ways of being that have been historically and culturally associated with femininity. Yet, none of us can truly feel and be whole without acknowledging and accessing our personality in full, including aspects of our personality that may fall within this traditionally feminine sphere. I invite you to explore your conception of femininity and how you interact with the feminine in the world and within yourself.
If it feels helpful, use the journal questions below to start.
Shadow Work Prompts For Childhood Trauma
What were you not allowed to talk about when you were growing up?
Families, like other social groups, have rules. Many of these rules are unwritten. Some of these unwritten rules tell us what we’re allowed to talk about and what we’re not allowed to talk about. If the family you grew up in was dysfunctional in some ways, there may have been many topics that couldn’t be discussed. Without self-reflection, we can unknowingly carry these same rules into our future friendships, romantic relationships, and our new families. Perhaps most detrimentally, we can also carry these rules into our relationship with ourselves.
Reflect On The Health Of Your Dating Life With These Journal Prompts for Dating
What version of yourself would you be in a romantic relationship that felt safe and nourishing to your soul?
In reflecting on what we want in an ideal partner, it’s easy to focus on traits or characteristics that are simple to describe and identify - the kind of information you can glean from a quick glance at a Tinder or Hinge profile, or a few messages or dates. But, the attributes and conditions that make a relationship feel good are actually much harder to describe. Sometimes we call this difficult to describe feeling chemistry. But can we - at least to some degree - learn to understand what gives us that sparks flying feeling?
Shadow Work Journal Prompts For Taking A Memory Inventory
What do you remember, and what don’t you remember?
While we commonly recall past experiences, it’s less common to consciously reflect on what we do and don’t remember from earlier times in our life. These journal prompts encourage you to take a step back and look at your memories with a big picture view.
I invite you to grab your journal and write about times in your life you remember clearly and moments and eras you have few or no memories from. If it feels helpful, use the journal questions below to start.
Journal Prompts for Shadow Work: What Do Your Pet Peeves Say About You?
What can your pet peeves tell you about your shadow self?
Everyone feels annoyed sometimes. Maybe it’s loud chewing, slow walking, or showing up late, whatever your pet peeves are, they have a story to tell about your past and how you experience life. They even have a story to tell you about your shadow self.
Shadow work is all about making aspects of ourselves that are unconscious, conscious, or in other words, bringing these aspects of ourselves out of the shadows and into the light. This is how we meet our shadow self and integrate our shadow self. When something is unconscious, however, that inherently means that it’s difficult for us to see. Exploring how we interact with others, or in other words, understanding that others are our mirror, can help us to bring our shadow selves into the light.
Journal Prompts For Finding The Sacred In The Everyday
What is the difference between the mundane and the sacred?
Attention. Attention elevates everyday mundanity to the realm of the sacred. Routine tasks are – almost by definition – tasks we don’t pay close attention to. Choosing to religiously focus our attention on some of these tasks throughout the day creates a liturgy of living that reconnects us with ourselves and the world.
Applying lotion is a routine daily task. Attention transforms this routine into the sacred: putting on lotion slowly, noticing the body part you’re applying lotion to, noticing how the lotion feels on your skin, and reminding yourself “this is my body.”
Quickly shampooing your hair and washing your face before you jump out of the shower is an everyday task.