Journal writing for me has always been a part of meditation.
Wherever you see me meditating,
No doubt there will be a notebook and a pen or several pens in different colors.
Because for me it's always been an opportunity to go in between both worlds.
And whether I am writing and using journal prompts for introspection and diving deep within myself,
And then switching over to closing my eyes and meditating self-directed,
And then writing what answers and wisdom arrives within me,
It's always been a free-flowing process.
And so I can't think of a better pairing of two worlds than journal writing and meditation,
And therefore I wanted to share with you my secrets,
The best journal prompts for five of the most important reasons why you need to be journaling.
And if you already have a journaling practice,
I just know that these prompts will help you to go deeper,
Whether in meditation or in moments of contemplation and self-reflection,
And of course in figuring out solutions and answers to better live your life.
Initially,
Writing in a journal was something I began as a teenager.
It gave me great comfort in a world where I felt largely misunderstood,
And where my ideas and thoughts differed from what I was taught to believe.
In the safety of written word,
I created a world of true self-reflection,
And a means of journeying within myself for learning,
Expressing my true thoughts and feelings in the safety of non-judgment,
And in bringing to life what was truly within me.
If you are in search of a means by which to develop a relationship with yourself,
Whether alongside your physical and psychological development toward adulthood,
Or any time thereafter,
This is definitely a practice that will yield huge benefits,
And become a source of inner peace and expression that will give you many answers.
Journal writing can develop the ability for you to know yourself even better,
To find the right answers that live within you,
To process and affirm your experiences,
To connect with and deepen the relationship you hold with your inner wisdom and your highest self,
And with your inner child,
As well as the parts of you that need more love and healing.
I'm going to share with you highlights from the original Wisdom blog post on the five secrets of journal writing,
And I'll incorporate these with my favourite journal prompts that will allow you to go deeper in your practice of meditation and self-contemplation to yield insight and self-discovery.
I can't think of a better way for yourself,
On your own,
To deepen the investment in knowing yourself best,
To learn how to access your inner wisdom,
And to be the best source of knowledge for your life.
I really hope you will go out and get a notebook,
Open it up,
And whichever style of journal writing,
Free form,
Free association,
Which is writing whatever comes to mind,
Or a timed open practice where you set a timer for,
I like five minutes,
Sometimes 15 minutes,
And you write whatever,
Again,
Is on your mind without really stopping.
It's a free flow process for the time that you've selected.
Or,
Like we're going to do in a moment,
Use journal prompts to help you access what wisdom and insight you need to help yourself and to also set goals and open up a path for how you plan to live your life.
There are so many ways journal writing can help.
And because of the many benefits writing can give,
And the research that supports its use for gaining clarity,
Insight,
For problem solving,
And for providing a space in which to process how you think and feel,
Writing as a journal practice is one of the most valuable tools you have for knowing yourself well and for building self-esteem and self-worth.
I just like to marry it with meditation because I find there's so much peace and infinite wisdom that arises in my meditation practice.
And so I want to capture this on paper.
So,
You may join me and do both of these amazing practices together,
Or each one on its own,
The value is here.
And I do hope you will feel it as we go through these first five secrets to help make your experience of journaling more rich in content and outcome and in what your intimate writing can offer and reveal.
I call these the five best secrets of journal writing.
Journaling is but one path to discovering a sacred way of living your best life now.
All right,
So before we begin anything,
It's really important to have this intention.
Think about what will guide your journal writing practice.
Is there something you want to know or have answers for?
Do you want to learn about yourself or have a place to just open up and have a dialogue,
An inner dialogue,
One in which you consciously connect with your inner being,
Your highest self?
Is your intention to manifest,
And so you're going to focus on what is wanted?
Maybe your journaling is about letting go of something,
Of processing something that's happened and then releasing it.
To begin,
Hold an intention for your journaling.
And let's begin with the first secret to why journal writing is so effective.
The first is to build a personal connection with yourself.
It's really about understanding yourself well,
Acknowledging your thoughts and feelings in a space where you're going to have the luxury of full acceptance and approval and validation.
This is really where many of us start when we begin to write in a journal or a notebook.
We're understanding,
We're exploring our thoughts and feelings,
We're capturing them on paper,
We're perhaps looking deeper into understanding the origin of our thoughts,
Maybe to shed light on some of our core beliefs.
And we're looking for this deeper connection with self.
In a world where we are all motivated to have relationships,
Truly the best and most important relationship you need is the one you have with yourself.
So,
Some journal prompts for this practice.
I'll state them here,
And for each and every one,
I want you to know that I've prepared with my team a PDF that is very comprehensive and includes each of the journal prompts that I will be mentioning here,
So I'll leave a link for how you can get your copy.
A great journal prompt for building this connection with self is the question,
What do I need to feel a greater connection with myself?
You may also want to answer some of these journal prompt questions as we go along.
Maybe you have your notebook out and you are ready.
Another journal prompt,
What am I feeling?
And what am I thinking?
Or what are my thoughts?
When you learn how to capture the essence of your feelings and thoughts,
It gives you clarity for not only understanding yourself and why you feel the way you feel,
But also it gives you information that's valuable in order to choose how you will then think and feel.
And just a reminder,
Feelings are one-word descriptors,
So happy,
Sad,
Hopeful,
Excited,
Calm.
Those are all examples.
And thoughts are your ongoing,
Ever-present dialogue with yourself.
Thoughts are sentences,
So it's really about capturing how the mind is constantly putting out thoughts in order to understand and learn about self better.
When you've written about how you feel and what your thoughts are,
You may also want to use this journal prompt,
How do I want to feel?
It's a wonderful stepping stone toward really this beautiful freedom we all hold to choose how we feel in each moment and then to do what is needed towards feeling that.
So another journal prompt could be,
What do I need to do to feel the way I want to feel?
Another journal prompt for connecting with yourself,
What are my highest values?
Values are the ideals we hold,
And these are things like being honorable,
Being trustworthy,
Having high integrity,
Being loving to all people,
Noting your highest level values,
And maybe even the ones that you want to be better at can become the work that you do on yourself.
I think of clients who are working on increasing or enhancing their self-esteem and self-worth,
And a journal prompt here would be,
How can I best honor myself?
How can I hold greater self-esteem and or self-worth?
I think the challenge here for us is to acknowledge what also is needing some attention,
And so a journal prompt to that could be,
What do I need to feel and live at my best?
All right,
So a lot of self-reflection happens in this form of journal writing,
That is,
To have a deeper understanding and connection with self.
Let's go to number two in my five secrets for why you need to be journaling.
Number two is really a therapeutic process,
It's about releasing.
So think about what maybe you are carrying,
Holding on to.
Maybe it's an emotion,
Maybe it is a memory of a situation that,
Of course,
Stirs up difficult emotions for you each time you think about it.
Maybe there is unresolved conflict that,
For whatever reason,
Will never be resolved truly in the way that it could be or where you would like it to be.
Journal writing to release something from your energy field,
From your being,
From your mind,
Is very directive in using journal prompts.
And so here is some guidance for you to use journal prompts to release what is not wanted.
You can go back to asking the questions,
What am I thinking?
How am I feeling about this situation?
You can ask,
What do I need to let go of this,
Whatever this is,
Forever?
And remember,
After each question,
Hold the space,
Hold your pen.
Let the answers rise up from your heart.
Let your intuitive wisdom speak to you.
It's far bigger in some ways and more loving than what your analytical mind may decide.
I think about such questions as,
What does this feeling feel like in my body?
So a tangible or maybe a physical sensation that you want to identify.
And then a journal prompt question,
How can I release this from my body?
Maybe for you,
A form of release is simply to write your thoughts and feelings.
That may be enough for you to then channel that awareness into how you will let go of the situation or whatever may be unresolved.
Or maybe you want to release sadness.
Sadness for a reason,
Sadness for no reason.
When you are in self-reflection and you are writing your feelings,
It really gives you a place to outpour them.
Maybe you don't feel like crying,
Maybe you've cried enough.
Maybe it is a place simply to explore your feeling.
Often we can work through our feelings,
Our emotions by writing about them,
By feeling them,
And then by releasing them.
Releasing in some way due to putting our feelings into words,
Reading our words,
Validating our words and our experience.
And then we may have to do this more than once to really let go of them.
But it is the intention of getting them out of us,
Releasing them from our physical self onto paper,
Into words that give them life and then let them leave us.
Another journal prompt here for releasing is to simply speak your truth.
You can write about how you feel,
You can write about your anger,
You can write about the unjust that happened in your life.
Holding a space for you to be gives your emotions and feelings a place to go.
Alright,
Number three in our journey of the best reasons for journal writing,
Going within for answers.
So this is where you practice accessing the inner wisdom you have.
It's a wonderful tool.
I use this a lot with clients.
I teach them how to go inward for their answers,
Their truth,
Their wisdom.
And journal writing really takes it up a level,
Up a notch,
Because what you're doing is you're acknowledging this wisdom,
You're trusting in it,
You're recording it through writing.
You're feeling it,
You're feeling the energy of what my inner wisdom feels like,
How do I know it's my inner wisdom,
My highest self in communication with me and not my analytical mind that's telling me,
That's directing me what to do.
So writing becomes a form of communicating with your inner wisdom.
It's like you ask a question,
The question is the journal prompt itself,
And then you hold the space to just be.
It's one beautiful way to really validate the ability we all hold to express our inner wisdom.
Some journal prompts for you here.
What do I need to know?
It's a wonderful open-ended question that really allows you to just hold presence and let your inner wisdom speak.
Another journal prompt.
What will help me best now?
It could be something you are struggling with and you're asking for the best solution.
What do I yearn for?
Another journal prompt.
Let the answers come through.
It's a beautiful practice.
And so you can see how in meditation you may use a journal prompt.
What am I yearning for?
Close your eyes,
Take a few minutes and meditate.
Let your answers come through,
And then maybe you sit and hold presence in what answers you receive,
And then maybe you open your eyes and record these beautiful aspects of wisdom.
Another prompt for journaling to go inward for answers.
What is my truth in this moment?
That really helps you to ground in your truth,
Your word.
All right.
The fourth big secret for how journal writing helps you to seek what you need.
Let me explain.
In journal writing,
It can become a process of honing what is most important to you.
You can plan your day.
You can identify and write and be committed to goals and intentions you hold.
It can be about imagining your future and then writing about what you desire.
There could be an element of this that is very much,
And it is,
Manifesting.
Here are some journal prompts for achieving what it is you need.
What do I need today?
What are my needs right now?
How can I best give these needs to myself?
What intentions or goals do I have?
That can be open-ended,
Very wide and broad,
Or very specific to today.
Then the journal prompt question,
How will I best do this?
How will I best achieve these goals?
What will allow me to live as my highest self?
It is both a journal prompt you can use for going deep to get answers from your inner wisdom,
And also it's accessing what you need in the here and now,
To live in the way that you want to live.
If you reserve a journaling practice to any of these five intentions,
These reasons,
These secrets for writing,
You're going to gain so much information,
And greater confidence in your ability to have the answers you need.
It's really quite therapeutic.
Alright,
So the fifth reason,
The fifth secret for why journal writing is so effective,
It allows you to connect with your inner child,
Or any younger version of you.
And some journal prompts here are not questions,
They are statements.
For example,
I love you.
You are amazing.
Think about what your inner child or younger self needs to hear.
You can write these words with love,
And then hold the space.
Hold that love toward your inner child.
Some other questions that are journal prompts.
How do you feel?
What do you need?
How are you?
What do you need to heal?
This work is really so powerful,
And so sometimes we can get images or flashes of memories,
And it can just help us access this beautiful wisdom.
Because when we seek to heal an experience of childhood,
Or any of our young adult life,
We are also gaining healing in the present moment for our current self.
So if I'm working with a client who identified that she was always seeking approval from her mother,
Always looking for love as a sign of approval,
And then noticing how she's carried that behavior,
That pattern,
Into her love relationships,
Her inner work with her inner child could be around recognizing how her inner child would feel if the love wasn't there.
And she could choose to write words of love and approval and acceptance to her inner child,
And at the same time direct that love toward what she holds in her mind as an image of her inner child.
And in doing so,
We also feel the love we hold for ourself presently.
All of these benefits of journal writing go deep,
And so the journal prompts just help you access this wisdom and the answers you search for and the answers you need.
And then they also become,
If you choose,
A segue into meditation.
For example,
With the client that was journaling to her inner child,
Then sitting in meditation for a time to follow that,
And then just noticing the love and approval and acceptance that she felt within her own being was very powerful for anchoring those emotions and that healing.
I think you can see just how powerful and therapeutic journal writing can be,
And especially if you have the best journal prompts to use.
And one more little tip I have for you.
If you are someone that journals regularly,
Or perhaps you will begin after hearing this,
And if you would like to experience writing before sleep,
A new study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests that what can help us most is to journal for about five minutes or so before bed our to-do list for tomorrow.
This helps empty the mind of any impending worries for the upcoming day,
And as well,
It helps us organize ourselves,
Our thoughts,
To allow for some good planning,
To take our mind off of what is for tomorrow and focus in on getting a good night's sleep.
There is a strategy for you.
All right,
This was fun and very helpful,
I believe.
Remember,
Journaling is an opportunity for you to refocus attention onto yourself.
It's really a form of self-care,
Self-love,
And certainly a means of self-discovery.
And if you would like my help in your practice of journal writing and journal prompts,
Definitely reach out to me.
All right,
Thank you so much.
This is Dorothy Sonari Juno.
Namaste.
Thank you so much for joining me in this episode of the Wisdom Podcast.
To hear more,
Please check out the other episodes here,
As well as my guided meditations,
Including my signature prose meditations and I AM mantras,
And as well,
The meditations to guide you into a deep and restorative sleep.
Please also visit me on social media and say hello.
And a special thank you to Insight Timer for this beautiful space to share all of my love.
Allow yourself to go within,
To access your inner wisdom,
And to live this.
Awaken your authentic power,
Live your truth,
And be loved.
Namaste.
