How to journal for intentional living

Prompts are useful for:

• Tracking your progress over time
• Revealing limiting beliefs and blind spots
• Providing a starting direction for your writing
• Thinking about a situation in novel and productive ways

For more details on what to track for greater self-awareness and goal achievement, check out this Stash: https://dsta.sh/TbDnJsZetnwi7qDZA

You should find yourself using prompt journaling most of the time, such as for your periodic (daily, weekly, etc.) reviews.

• Use the same prompts for your periodic reviews. This lets you easily compare your progress across periods.
• Keep things simple. You don’t have to use all the questions suggested by ChatGPT, a blog post, or a guided journal.

As a rule of thumb, prompts should:

1. Be relevant to your present situation
2. Leave you feeling neutral or refreshed, not drained
3. Help you organize your thoughts, not trigger a thought spiral

Brain dumping, also known as “stream of consciousness” journaling or Morning Pages, has 2 simple rules:

1. Write whatever comes to mind until you reach your “goal”
2. Keep writing even if you can’t think of anything to write

It’s like rant journaling, but without the intense negative emotions.

Instead, you’re driven by a goal—usually a target page count or word count.

Forcing yourself to keep writing is what helps you get unstuck.

Write down, as many as you can:

1. Information you have about the situation
2. Details of your desired outcome
3. Possible ways to change the situation—even if the solutions seem unrealistic

Then, implement one of the solutions in Step 3 and collect data on whether it works.

Bonus: You can also use prompts to kickstart your brain dump.

You might like my newsletter, Tea for Thought!

I'm on a mission to implement life-tweaking ideas for designing and living an intentional life.

For every concept I discover, I strive to find examples and stories from my own life. This newsletter issue was inspired by 10 years of personal journaling experience.

Come learn with me :)