The Journal Prompt

Insightful Journal Prompts Delivered Weekly.

Good morning!

Welcome back to The Journal Prompt, your weekly companion for introspection and personal growth. 🌿

This week, we’ll dive into the theme of Life Momentum.

Let’s get started!

In This Week’s Issue (6-minute Read)

💬 Quote of the Week.

🖼️ Framing Your Reflection

✍️ Three Insightful Journal Prompts.

🥾 Featured Photo & Affirmations.

📜 Poem - To fight aloud is very brave

Framing Your Reflection 🖼️

Momentum can be a wicked thing.

Consider this…

Scenario 1

A promotion at work leads to more money. You re-invest in yourself, upgrade your skills, and it leads to another…faster…promotion…with even more money. You spiral upward.

Scenario 2

A long-term relationship grown toxic leads to a horrid breakup. Unsteady, you go to the local pub for an Old Fashioned to calm the nerves. You feel the need to “get out there”, and “blow off some steam”, and over the following months one Old Fashioned turns to three, three to six, and six into liquor store runs to “save money”. You spiral downwards.

The point: momentum works in both directions. And it builds with…and without…your involvement.

More complex still, both scenarios can simultaneously exists for the same person.

Eventually, the momentum of one direction builds enough to overcome and crush the other. The news tells us stories of high-flying celebrities crashing and burning, and someone from dire straits rising to build something amazing.

The news may give the highlight, but both are the natural culmination of small actions accrued over a long period of time.

In case you are in the middle of believing that this phenomena could not possibly apply to you…you are reading this newsletter precisely because you understand positive momentum.

But…as forever-work-in-progress human beings…we must also respect the negative momentum we all have in some regard.

This is where journaling comes in to save the day. 🦸‍♂️

This edition’s prompts are about stepping back and assessing your life with the same distance you would pieces on a chessboard.♟️ That means you do not make it personal and crush yourself.

Instead, just focus on which moves can continue pushing you toward’s your goals. And which moves can help make those sucky things suck less.

End the reflection with at least one actionable step you can put on your calendar.

We are all here because journaling is great for creating perspective. But words can be deceptive - even our own words to our own selves.

Writing gives us a dopamine spike and tricks our brain into thinking it already took action.

While the act of journaling is crucial, it does not replace taking actionable steps toward your life vision. Improvement is not about subjecting ourselves to impossibly high standards that, even if we could them, certainly not consistently because life happens.

Setting such high standards for action is just a guise for giving ourselves permission to quit later by saying “it’s not for me” or “I just didn’t have the time”. 

Instead, set the bar low enough.

Pick an improvement action that’s so small on your vision’s hierarchy of value that you could indeed achieve it today.

Need to journal more frequently? Don’t do long form yet. Write about the prompt for 3-5 minutes while you’re on the toilet. 🚽

Scared to write because you think you’re bad at it? Do speech to text on your phone for 2 minutes and then read it afterwards.

Need to lay off caffeine because overconsumption is making you feel anxious and messing with your sleep? Pour just 1 oz less into your cup today. 

The journey of a 1,000 miles begins with a single step…and you always do it…one step at a time. 🥾

Three Journal Prompts ✍️

🔍 Prompt #1: Examine Past Momentum

Reflect on a past time when you were in the groove and absolutely on fire with the direction in which you were taking something.

What about it made you feel that alive?

What physical actions were you taking daily during that time?

See if there is a habit, framework, or routine you can implement. No detail is too trivial - that’s where the devil is, after all…

📆 Prompt #2: Energy Audit

Sahil Bloom talks a lot about doing an energy audit on your calendar. Look at the events during the past couple of weeks/month and determine which gave you energy, and which drained you.

Explore why for each one, and workshop how you can add more energy-giving events, and remove/mitigate energy draining events.

🔄 Prompt #3: Clarify the Vision

Describe a regular ideal day (humor the paradox) in your life….10 years from now.

Be as detailed as possible, talk about how it all feels, and be real with yourself on what you truly want, if you could actually have it.

🎁 Cool Bonus Thingy

If you have ChatGPT Pro 🤖, tell it to generate an image that captures the spirit and essence of what you wrote for prompt #3. You now have a visual representation of your vision, unique to you, that you can put on a Vision Board.

Featured Photo & Affirmations 🥾

Affirmations for Life Momentum

1. "I am the master of my path"

2. "I take action in filling my life with energy"

3. "I will not let perfect be the enemy of good"

Poem - To fight aloud is very brave

Emily Dickinson

_{To fight aloud, is very brave -} 

_{But gallanter, I know}

_{Who charge within the bosom}

_{The Calvalry of Wo -} 

_{Who win, and nations do not see -} 

_{Who fall - and none observe -} 

_{Whose dying eyes, no Country}

_{Regards with patriot love -} 

_{We trust, in plumed procession}

_{For such, the Angels go -}

_{Rank after Rank, with even feet -}

_{And Uniforms of snow.}

As we dive deep into the direction in which we are all taking our lives, let’s remember that we are not alone. Writing is healing and healing can hurt - reach out to friends and family. They are there for you.

Warm regards,

Ivan from ‘The Journal Prompt’ Team.

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