Key Takeaway: Journaling can be a powerful tool for self-reflection, personal growth, and even life transformation. Supported by research, journaling can support greater clarity, self-connection, and overall well-being. Scroll down to the TAKE ACTION section for this week’s actionable steps.

One habit I started that has been life-transforming is journaling. I started journaling regularly in 2003, at about the same time that I started two other life-transforming habits: exercising to feel good and meditating.

Here’s the thing about journaling: It can be a tool for changing your life.

Why?

Because it gets you to stop and reflect.

Journaling gives you the opportunity to ask yourself meaningful questions and start the work of finding answers. It allows you to see things — to experience ah-ha moments — because as you write, reflect, ask, and try to answer, you may recognize patterns of how you think or behave that may not be serving you (or are). It can also be healing, where writing about something negative that happened can provide relief and allow you to make more sense of it.¹

And research supports this: Journaling helps us gain clarity, improves our self-connection, and boosts our overall well-being.¹

While I often journal about my previous day or what is happening in my life that I want to unravel more on paper (or laptop), I also like to journal to gain clarity about what I want to do.

After all, as I often remind myself, life is finite. I know it has an end and that each day is a gift, not a given. So, every so often, I like to check in with myself and stop, pause, and reflect to make sure that what I’m doing still aligns with what I feel does that.

10 of My Favorite Journaling Questions

Ten of my favorite journaling questions that I have gathered over the years that help me do that are as follows:

Question #1: If I were financially secure and had enough money to take care of my needs, now and in the future, what would I do differently than what I am doing today?²

This is from the book Lighting the Torch: The Kinder Method of Life Planning.² I use this to help identify financial goals that support important life goals, but I like this question and the following as good life questions, too.

Question #2: If I had one day left to live, what dreams would be left unfulfilled? What do I wish I had finished or had been? What do I wish I had done? What did I miss?²

This is also from the book Lighting the Torch: The Kinder Method of Life Planning.² It helps to get rid of the noise that can build up in our day-to-day living and remind us that life is finite as is our time to align our lives with the things that are most meaningful to us.

Question #3: If I were to repeat the things I’ve done this week for 10 years, where does it lead, and is that where I want to be?³

I love this question posed by Dickie Bush, digital entrepreneur, because this, too, makes us aware of how time has passed and how we have passed it. It makes us stop and assess if that is how we want to spend the next ten years, too.

Question #4. This is more of a reflection and one I wrote about in my book. It never fails to help guide me when I am grappling with something in my life.

I’m 100 years old, and I am reflecting back on my life, which has been well-lived. It has been full and fulfilling. I feel that I have lived my life aligned with what was most meaningful to me, achieved the things most important to me, and have been the person I wanted to be.

• What are the most significant differences between my 100-year-old perspective of myself and my life and who and where I am today?
• What is there about how I am living my current life that, if I were to continue along the same path, I would regret later? What would I change?
• What would my 100-year-old self like to tell or ask my current-aged self? What is the piece of wisdom my 100-year-old self would most like to share with my current-aged self to help me live a full and fulfilling life, one with the least regrets?

Question #5: What is something that I want to do or a change I would like to make but am scared to do? If I give in to my fear and don’t do it, how will I feel about my decision in one year? Ten years? When I am 100?

Fear is the biggest reason why we don’t make the changes we crave in our lives. However, sometimes we are so caught up in the fear, we forget to ask ourselves what it will cost us.

Question #6: What am I positively compounding in my life? What am I negatively compounding? What would I most like to change?

I talk a lot about baby steps in my work and that baby steps of small positive change can lead to real change in our lives because those steps accumulate. They compound. The same applies to negative steps. So, this is one question I ask myself regularly.

Question #7: What is my ideal week? What would I be doing, who would I be spending time with, what skills would I be using? How is that different from my usual weeks now?

It is easy to get caught up in wishful thinking, but we often don’t identify what that really feels or looks like. Doing this ideal week’s exercise can help to clarify that so that we have a clearer target to take action on and work towards.

Question #8: Reviewing the different areas of my life — my health, finances, relationships, work or vocation, lifestyle, and life experiences — how would I rate them on a scale from 1 to 10?

And following up on that:

• What is my top-rated area?
• What is my problem area?
• What would I most like to fix about my problem child, and what is the biggest obstacle to doing that?
• What would a 10 look like in each area?

Question #9: Imagine it’s December 31st. You contemplate the last 12 months, which have been amazing. What would need to have happened to make that true?

And then write it down.

A study by Gail Matthews at Dominican University, often cited in goal achievement, found that participants who wrote down their goals “accomplished significantly more than those who did not write their goals.⁴

Not only that, but the group of participants who not only wrote down their goals but also formed action commitments, shared their goals with a supportive friend, and sent weekly progress reports to the same supportive friend “achieved significantly more than all the other groups,” of participants who had also written down their goals, supporting that not only is it good for us to write down our goals, but by sharing them with others and having accountability, our success rate increases even more.⁴

Question #10. This relates to the fact that envy and regret can be a great motivator.

I know this personally. In 2018, I started to write what I wanted to be a positive resource for women to help them feel more empowered and fulfilled in their lives. It was based on my own personal and professional journey and what had helped me. It started as a coaching program but later became a book, THE PERSONAL POWER PROGRAM: A Woman’s Step-by-Step Guide to Thriving in Self, Body & Money. However, I was scared to publish it — to put myself “out there.”

What finally got me to hit the proverbial publish button was fear.

1. Fear of Regret: I feared the regret of not publishing it. I didn’t want to get older and look back and regret that I had not pushed past my fear and published what was my passion project and incredibly important to me.
2. Fear of Envy: I was also scared of feeling envious. A friend of mine started writing a book, and I knew that if she published her book and I didn’t because I was too scared, I would feel envious, and I didn’t want to feel that way.

Fear of regret is addressed in questions #4 and #5. So, in terms of envy, ask yourself:

• Who do I most envy?
• Why?
• What is it about them or their lives that I most envy, and what does it tell me?

Final Thoughts

Journaling is a tool we can use to enhance our well-being and also gain clarity. It can help us be more mindful and present in our lives — more intentional. So, if you haven’t tried journaling, start. Give yourself a timeframe to try it out, perhaps for 30 days, and commit to journaling. Find a time when you are most likely to do it.

And as you journal, try some of the above journaling prompts. Write (or type) them in your journal and ponder them. What do they inspire in you? What do they tell you? Where do they lead you?

And then, search for other journaling prompts or questions that inspire you. Ask yourself, what do I want to ask myself today? What is the question I most want to answer? Or what do I feel most like writing about?

Sometimes, it just takes that one special question to get us going, to get a thread of thought and feeling that allows us to reflect and find relief or clarity or something else we may be looking for.

So, before I sign off, let me leave you with one more journaling prompt — a question that Mary Oliver poses in her poem The Summer Day that always resonates with me and inspires and encourages me:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

TAKE ACTION:

1. Start a journaling habit, committing to write regularly at a consistent time.
2. Use the ten provided journaling prompts to reflect on your life, goals, and fears. Then build on those prompts according to what most fits your needs. See what inspires you.

REFERENCES:

1: Benefits of Journaling

Carpenter, Siri (2001). A new reason for keeping a diary. Research offers intriguing evidence on why expressive writing boosts health. Monitor. September 2001, Vol 32, №8. Print version: page 68. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/monitor/sep01/keepdiary#:

Murry, Bridget (2002). Writing to heal. By helping people manage and learn from negative experiences, writing strengthens their immune systems as well as their minds. Monitor. June 2002, Vol 33, №6. Print version: page 54.

Rodriguez, Tori (2013, November 1). Writing Can Help Injuries Heal Faster. Expressive writing may lead to faster recovery from injury. Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/writing-can-help-injuries-heal-faster/

Smyth, J. M., Johnson, J. A., Auer, B. J., Lehman, E., Talamo, G., & Sciamanna, C. N. (2018). Online Positive Affect Journaling in the Improvement of Mental Distress and Well-Being in General Medical Patients With Elevated Anxiety Symptoms: A Preliminary Randomized Controlled Trial. JMIR Mental Health, 5(4), e11290. https://doi.org/10.2196/11290

2: Kinder, George D. and Susan E. Galvan. Lighting the Torch: The Kinder Method of Life Planning. Denver, Colorado. FPA Press. 2006.

3: Bush, Dickie. The single most powerful habit for personal growth: Journaling. https://x.com/dickiebush/status/1572970423935008769?lang=en

4: Matthews, Gail. Goals Research Summary. Retrieved from https://www.dominican.edu/sites/default/files/2020-02/gailmatthews-harvard-goals-researchsummary.pdf

IMPORTANT: The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified professional with any questions you may have regarding the topics discussed here as the topics discussed are based on general principles and may not be applicable to every individual. 

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