Hey guys!
Welcome back to Lavendaire.
Today I want to continue this reset, refresh-your-life type series with a journaling video.
I love journaling – you guys know that.
And today I want to share some journaling prompts to help you reflect and reset your life.
So it starts with reflecting on how you've been doing, and then reassessing where you are,
and then realigning yourself with your values and where you want to go – all of that.
So I also created a worksheet to go along with today's video.
If you want to get that worksheet, you can click that link down below to download.
You'll have to enter your email and then you'll get a download link to the PDF in your inbox,
and then you'll also be signed up for Lavendaire updates, which I don't update that often.
So don't worry, it's about twice a month, I'd say.
So today I'm going to share three practical journaling prompts
and inquisitive, deeper type of journaling prompts to get you thinking.
We'll start with the practical ones
and then we'll move onto the deeper, open-ended ones.
The first journaling prompt is simple:
"What are the lessons that I've learned in the past three months?"
I love to ask myself this every three months, every end of the quarter.
And it's about the end of the first quarter– yeah, we finished Q1 in 2019 already.
Anyway, it's time to reflect on how you've been doing the past three months.
Be honest about the mistakes that you made, any failures that might have happened.
And don't see them in a negative light, rather in a light where you are taking risks
and trying and learning from your mistakes and your failures.
I always tell myself, "If you have a failure, that just means that you tried."
And if you haven't had a failure or made any mistakes,
that means that you're playing too safe and you aren't trying hard enough,
putting yourself out there enough.
Also take this time to appreciate all your wins in the past three months as well,
and just appreciate how far you've come.
We tend to look at how far we have left to go
and so we feel not as confident or happy about where we are now.
But if you make a practice to look backwards and see how far you've come,
you'll feel proud of yourself and more motivated to keep going on in the future.
The next journaling prompt is this:
"Rate yourself in all the areas of your life that matter to you."
How are you doing in those areas?
Rate yourself from 0 to 10 on how satisfied you are in that area.
You don't have to do this, but there's this self-reflection wheel that helps you get
a better visual of how your life looks like, how you're doing, visually.
The categories are: Wellness, Self, Relationships, Purpose, Financial, and Creativity.
And then within these categories are subcategories to help you rate your life in more detail.
I actually got this exercise from a YouTube wellness workshop that I went to recently,
and I really liked it so I had to share it.
But you don't actually have to do this self reflection wheel.
You can just list it out in your journal, one after the other.
How am I doing in wellness?
Finances, creativity, career, purpose? Etc.
After you rate yourself on how well you're doing in each area,
look at the areas that need the most work.
Where are you scoring the lowest?
For me, it was health
because I've neglected my physical health for a while, like not eating well.
I got lazy about that.
So this month, I told myself, "Okay, I'm going to make health a priority."
Pick 1-2 areas you want to focus on for the next month
or the next three months, whatever works for you.
This is just a really good way to see where in your life needs some work,
because ideally you want to be balanced out in all areas.
Balance is never perfect but you can always improve
and give yourself more love and care in the areas that need it.
The next journaling prompt is to help you reprioritize for the next three months.
Ask yourself: "What are my priorities for the next three months?"
And then list out all the projects and goals that you want to achieve.
Then you can really reassess:
What is most realistic?
What is most important for me?
Sometimes you do have to declutter your priorities
because we want to do so much it's not physically possible to do all of that at once.
You don't want to spread yourself too thin.
Take this time to really, really assess what is the most important, most urgent,
or the most valuable thing that I want to accomplish in the next three months.
And then pick those things.
You want to look ahead three months, and then set that date as the date
that you want to have accomplished these goals or projects by.
Then from there, you want to work backwards
on setting mini-deadlines for each project or goal that you have.
The reasoning behind that is: If you set a goal and you don't have an end date in mind,
then you'll just give yourself forever to accomplish it and you might never really get to it.
So it's always important to have the end date in mind,
which is the timeline that you want to achieve that project or goal.
What's even more helpful is break down, by either month or every week,
what do you want to have finished by the end of each week?
So for me, it's helpful to work backwards
because at the end you want to have the finished product
and then you'll just logically set those deadlines going backwards.
"Okay, but the second month, I should have finished this much.
By the first month, I should have finished this much,"
and then just work it out from there.
Hopefully that helps you reprioritize
and make an actual action plan to achieve your goals and projects for the next three months.
Alright, so those are the three practical journaling prompts.
And now I want to move on and share three open-ended,
more thought-provoking journaling prompts that you guys should definitely journal too,
because I feel like these open-ended ones will help you reveal what's deeper within you:
What do you truly want?
How can you realign to what's valuable and what's important to you?
The first journaling prompt is:
"What would I do if I knew I could not fail?"
And this is a good one because if you consider –
if failure was not an option, what would you do with your life?
You would just go for the craziest, most fun things that you would want to go for,
because if you can't fail and you take away that risk,
then you would just go for the best thing that you could ever think of.
And this is a fun question to ask yourself
because it reveals what would you actually want to do with your life?
What are the true desires you have within if you weren't going to give in to
the fear of failure or the fear of looking stupid, fear of embarrassment, or any of that.
If there was no failure and you could not fail, what would you do?
Let me know down below in the comments,
because I'm curious what you guys are thinking.
The next prompt is similar but different:
"If I had all the money in the world, what would I do?"
If money were not an issue, if you don't need to have money to survive,
to support yourself, your family, whatever – what would you do?
And this is another one to let yourself dream.
Give yourself some time to just think open-ended and really explore all the possibilities.
What would your life look like if money didn't matter?
What would you do?
How would you spend your time?
What would you want to create out of your life?
This is another prompt to help you dig deep and discover who you truly are inside,
what is genuinely valuable to you in this lifetime,
what matters when you erase the need for money
and the basic foundational needs that we all have.
And it could give you ideas on how you want to spend your life in the future.
Alright, the last journaling prompt I'll share today is:
"What are some scary things outside of my comfort zone that I want to do this year?"
And then: "What are some scary things I want to do in this lifetime?"
Think always about how you can expand your comfort zone
because it's so easy to stay within what's comfortable, what's normal, and what's safe.
But we only grow when we stretch ourselves and step out of it.
You only grow when you get nervous and feel anxious and a little bit scared,
because that's when you're pushing yourself into doing something you haven't done before.
It's always a good reminder to reflect:
What is something that I've wanted to do but I'm scared to do?
Something outside of my comfort zone that I could consider trying to do,
trying to push myself.
I'm sure there are a ton that you can think of.
If not, please share down below for people who want inspiration or ideas
on things they can do outside of their comfort zone.
It could be really simple.
It could be: going on a photoshoot with a friend, or learning a new language,
or going skydiving, or doing some solo travel.
There are tons of things you can do to stretch outside of your comfort zone.
Just another reminder that whatever feels scary to you,
that is a clue to where you should go.
What I mean by that is not "jump off a cliff" or anything,
but anything scary in terms of going for your dreams
or stretching yourself in a way that is helpful or beneficial to yourself.
Alright, that's it for this video!
Let me know if you guys like videos like this where I share journaling prompts.
Leave your feedback down below because I love journaling and I journal almost every day.
And I have a journaling playlist which I'll link below.
I feel like journaling is something so personal
and it's hard to make videos about it because journaling is just journaling.
I sit down and write whatever's on my mind.
Anyway, if you're new to this, my only tip for you is: Don't overthink it and just write.
Get out a journal, a pen, and just write whatever's on your mind.
Journaling has no rules.
You don't have to share it with anyone.
It's just for yourself.
And if you want, you can burn it or delete it afterwards.
You can even journal digitally, and I know a lot of people do that.
I personally love handwriting.
I like it better, but whatever works for you, works.
Good luck with your journaling session and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day.
Love you so much.
Bye!