By: The Team 1/17/2025

Journal Ideas to for Self-Exploration

Ron loves to suggest bullet / brief journaling as a quick and creative way to engage in journaling. It’s perfect for people who want to gain insights or track their wellbeing but feel short on time or don’t know where to start.

Bullet journaling combines lists, symbols, and short phrases to capture thoughts and goals in a structured but flexible format. It’s highly customizable, which makes it fun! Individuals can use it to:

• Track daily moods or habits.
• Jot down “wins” or things they’re grateful for.
• Brainstorm self-care ideas or create checklists for stress relief.

Zachary’s favorite is to have clients write one positive thing about themselves and one positive thing about the day in a journal.  The catch is that they must write it down at the end of the day, not before, BUT they must be on the lookout and identify what that one thing is, as soon as possible when they wake up.  They can always replace it as the day goes on, but he want them to be on the lookout for what they will write down at the end of the day from the very start.

Frank’s favorite is a modification of “targeted Journaling” or “self-nudged notes” as he have grown to call them. It’s where he will suggest that the client use the inside flaps of journal notebooks (or separate piece of paper) to make a list of items they are willing to consider in their journaling. Some would be basic stuff like Work, school, family, money etc., while others can be more feeling based like “Best thing that happened today, something I did well, someone I helped today, my feelings today included…. “

This helps to allow people to cue themselves on what they care about so they don’t have to come up with ideas to write on, they can just pick one. Special attention to when they find a new one as that suggests growth or change.

Kathy will often have her clients I have my clients write down something daily, if possible, at the end of the day. She asks them to write down what happened to them that day that was positive and ponder how it made them feel. Also, if something negative happens, I have them write it down with their feelings. She’ll then talk about it with them and see how it affected their emotions and behaviors for both reactions. She is not searching for negative things, but it does happen and talking it out usually helps as they can voice their opinion on the matter.

Shannon is a huge fan of gratitude as a part of her journaling.

Most people like music to varying degrees and some songs just hit you. She asks her clients to reflect on those specific words. Is it saying something they couldn’t? Describing feelings they couldn’t put words on? What is it? And once that’s identified, how would they feel if they could share this with one other person? This can work with movies, tv shows or even video games too.

She also recommends the Journal App. It’s free and requires facial recognition to open and gain access.

Krista loves to share a copy of a feelings wheel with people & have them do a daily check in at least once a day to write down an emotion/feeling they might be experiencing, using the wheel, as it lists tons of feelings/emotions & is categorized!

Another common recommendation is these journal ideas from this self-compassion website: https://self-compassion.org/self-compassion-practices/#self-compassion-exercises

Hannah often recommends a gratitude journal. For her clients that are big phone users, she’s found having them journal in their note’s app helps with consistency. Or for iPhone users there is a journaling app that they can add pictures to and set reminders that is time to journal.

Lori tends to give clients three prompts to answer, in writing, at the end of the day:

(1) What is one thing that went well, or better than expected, today?

(2) What is one thing or one moment I am grateful for today?

(3) What is one thing I like or am interested in?

This guides them to look at moments and themselves differently – and possibly get to know themselves in the process (especially the clients with self-esteem or self-confidence struggles).

Amber encourages them to journal and document all the positive things they have experienced whether it’s a compliment, positive reviews, positive comments, etc. When people fall into negative thinking patterns (i.e. no one likes me), this can help disprove the negative thoughts one may have.

Elizabeth encourages clients to jot down – “mini-journal” – any positive feelings they have during the day no matter how small (e.g., this coffee smells great, it’s cold but the sun is shining so bright, the sky is so incredibly blue, etc.) and then reflect on this list of small positive feelings again at the end of the day. Smart phones are great for this, but sticky notes work too!

This offers two times during the day for intentional awareness of the positive feelings they usually don’t spend any time with or even notice because of the brain’s negativity bias. Pair this reflection with some good diaphragmatic breathing and they can experience even more benefits!

Savannah likes encouraging clients to write letters (not sending them) to process hard relationships or get things off their chest. Another letter idea is to encourage individuals to write letters to their child selves from adult selves/ to adult selves from child selves.

Kevin thinks  it’s important that people understand that journaling is whatever they want it to be! Journaling is supposed to be an outlet that works for you. There is no perfect way to journal, and it’s okay to take a step back or keep an entry shorter. It’s okay to have a bit of inconsistency in journaling, because there’s a lot of inconsistency in life!

Prefer to work on these journal ideas together? Call us to set up an appointment!

847-854-4333