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 Escaping Judgement.

Let’s get started!

In This Week’s Issue (9-minute Read)

💬 Quote of the Week

🖼️ Framing Your Reflection

✍️ Three Insightful Journal Prompts

🧰 Life Improvement Toolbox (✨ New ✨)

🔦 Featured Photo & Affirmation

Framing Your Reflection 🖼️

An often cited question when we’re trying to get ourselves (or others) to dream big, or go for something ambitious is:

What would you do if you knew you wouldn’t fail?

It can be useful.

But it ignores two inescapable aspects of life and human nature:

1. Failure can…and will…happen.

2. We fear failure happening to us.

So perhaps a more useful question that puts both of these front and center would be:

What would you do if you had zero fear of judgment?

This question gets at the real TRUTH.

We don’t fear failure.

We fear being judged for failing.

The fear is even tied to the way our brain is wired.

We have a cognitive bias called The Spotlight Effect.🔦 It says that we grossly overestimate the degree to which other people notice and think about us.

Basically, we think everyone is focused on us, when in reality, everyone is just focused on themselves.

This creates two major mistakes:

1. Increasing anxiety by worrying about what other people think about us.

2. Believing that other people think about us in the first place.

As if feeling terrible wasn’t enough, we then use both of these to create for ourselves a Judgement Cage.

We literally put ourselves in an anxiety and guilt based mind prison of our own construction.

So if we’re physically wired this way…can anything be done?

Short answer: yes.

The pragmatic path here is not to try and make ourselves “stop worrying” about what other people are thinking about us.

That’s really hard and takes time for your brain to literally re-wire. We don’t want to create another Judgement Cage by judging ourselves for struggling with the Judgement Cage.

BUT….what we can implement immediately is to:

1. Realize its just a brain quirk (cute name for egocentric cognitive bias) of the ego we all have.

2. Accept that the fear is normal and will probably never go away.

3. Remember that everyone else feels it too (some more than others).

So, ask yourself again…..

What would you do if you had zero fear of judgment?

• What risky pursuit would you go after?

• What business would you work on?

• What relationship(s) would you seek?

• What hobby would you start?

Remember - no one is thinking about you.

Don’t wait for perfect conditions. Go do the thing!

There is no Courage without Fear.

Three Journal Prompts ✍️

🔍 Prompt #1: The Broken Cage

Examine a time in the past where you broke the Judgement Cage - where you felt anxiety and the judgement of others, but still did the thing you wanted to do.

Where were you and what were the circumstances surrounding the situation? What compelled you to do it anyway? Is what compelled you before replicable now? Look for patterns.

🧠 Prompt #2: Who’s Judgement Do You Fear?

First, entertain the question: what would you do if you had zero fear of judgment? Then, get as detailed as possible on who’s judgement you fear, and what specific things you fear them thinking about you.

After you got this out of your system, let it sit for a couple of days, then revisit what you wrote after re-reading the “Framing Your Reflection” section above.

🔭 Prompt #3: Resentment Forecasting

Take the name(s) of the person(s) from prompt 2 and think about how much you would probably resent them in 10 years if you didn’t do the things in life you wanted to do “because of them”.

First, consider this: are those relationships really that important for you to give them this kind of power? And if so, are those relationships you want to ruin by casting responsibility for your life and happiness unto someone else?

Everything we want in life is on the other side of some difficult conversations.

Life Improvement Toolbox 🧰

This section is all about helping us go beyond the prompts by…

• sharing reading that dives deeper into what the prompts explore

• finding cool journaling stuff for the artsy part of our craft

• improving the mind + body connection by paying attention to how we take care of our bodies

📚 Reader’s Corner

All of these will blow your mind, and if I had to begin learning about behavioral science again, I would start with Predictably Irrational. It’s a more fun read.

Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Minds - Dan Ariely

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst - Robert Sypolsky

P.S.

While reading is something we pretty much have to actively do, listening is fair game for dog walking, dish cleaning, chores, and driving.

Make more progress on the things you want to learn with audio books from Audible - check out how it works here. 🎧

📝 The Journaling Craft

Another behavioral science thing is object association: think of the Pavlov’s Dog experiment with the bell and food.

You can Pavlov Dog your journaling by picking a place, time of day, or object that sets your brain in a particular frame. I do this with pens.

When I am doing a really important or difficult reflection, I have a specific pen I use to help me feel the importance of what I am writing.

It also helps me quickly find important reflections in old journals by seeing the specific ink. If you’re curious about trying it our for yourself, check this one out. ✍️

🧠 Mind + Body Connection

This past week on Instagram you guys let us know that 67% of you prefer coffee as a companion to your journaling sessions.

I’ll be the first to tell you that I often take my love of coffee too far (on Tuesday I consumed ~600mg of caffeine…).

If you want the focus, without so much of the crash/anxiety, check out this super coffee made from the most nutrient-dense foods known to man (and tastes amazing) - check it out here 🌱

Featured Photo & Affirmation 🔦

Affirmation for Escaping Judgement

"I will not let my fear control me”

As we dive deeper into understanding ourselves, 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.

Sending Good Vibes,

Ivan from The Journal Prompt Team

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Happy Journaling!