Meeting professional and personal goals means knowing what those goals are — and the New Year is the perfect time to figure those out. Your intentions may come when you’re in the shower, on a walk, or right before you sleep. Sometimes these whispers need a nudge to become priorities in your day-to-day life.
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Journal prompts can be useful tools to reflect on the past and set specific intentions to move ahead in the new year. You can either reflect on some of these prompts by writing them in a journal, or even talking them over with a friend.
If you’re looking to break in your brand new journal, use these journal prompts to help with self-discovery, anxiety, healing, and reviewing the year, as well as questions to help teens:
Journaling Prompts for Self-Discovery
Self-discovery often requires time to reflect. Near the end of December, I reflect on choosing a word of the year, as opposed to setting resolutions. Choosing one word is a way to prompt me into self-discovery on how I want to set the tone for the next 12 months. In years past, I’ve chosen compassion, laughter, pause, and let go. Here are some of the ways prompts can help you arrive at your word of the year:
To help the self-discovery process, you don’t necessarily need to rely on a word of the year. You can ask general questions to dive deeper into your self-discovery journey. Psych Central offers some questions on how to approach this process:
Journaling Prompts for Anxiety
Research shows that to help alleviate stress and anxiety, journaling can lessen intrusive thoughts. In a study, participants who journaled for seven weeks found that consistently writing thoughts in a notebook or journal helped with anxiety. Confused on where to start? There are some recommendations on what to ask, according to The Good Body.
Journaling Prompts for Healing
Healing requires time to process all of the emotions — it will likely feel uncomfortable, but it also likely means you’re involved in helping yourself get better. Silk and Sonder offers some questions that may be helpful in your healing:
Journaling Prompts for Reviewing the Year
As you enter into a new year, it makes sense to review how you spent the last 12 months, from what you did right to where you may improve in the upcoming months. The questions can be broad or as specific as you like. Renowned therapist and author Nedra Tawab recommends that you ask these questions:
Journaling Prompts for Teens
Journaling is beneficial for adults, but can also be a useful strategy for teens. Teens are likely going through so many ups and downs in their adolescence — feelings that arise from social media, navigating relationship issues, and working through managing school work, friends, and extracurricular activities. If they practice journaling in their formative years, it can be something they carry with them in adulthood.