One of the challenges we love on Challenge Addict is the Daily Journal Challenge. In it, you journal for 30 days straight on anything you want to journal about. We talk about asking questions as part of your challenge so that you can reflect on things that you might not otherwise reflection on. Questions such as, “What’s most important to me in life?” That’s a great way to connect more with yourself and gain awareness in your life. But, there are other beneficial things you can do with journaling, such as using journal prompts around a specific topic each day to dig deeper into specific areas of your life. If you want to understand yourself better and grow as a person, this challenge is for you!
5 Reasons To Take The Themed Journal Prompt Challenge
1. Journal Prompts Help You Dive Deeper Into The Theme At Hand
If you are going to journal around the theme gratitude, for example, you will journal each day around a question or idea specific to gratitude in your life. As you go along, you will think about gratitude and how it affects your life. And, you will gain a deeper understanding of how you use gratitude in your life and how you can use it better.
Basically, you can dive deeper into any area of your life. A breakup, relationship issues, financial problems, physical health, or happiness are all examples of topics that can be journaled about using journal prompts.
You can also use journal prompts to explore things that may not be an obvious issue to you. For instance, if you love bullet journaling, you may base your journal prompts around the theme of bullet journaling. Ideas like ‘inspiration’ or ‘reasons’ or ‘journal fatigue’ may be journal prompts that can help give you more insight into your bullet journaling.
2. It’s Not Overwhelming
When you use journal prompts around a certain topic, you don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to figure it all out at once. Instead, each day, you journal around one specific aspect of that topic.
After 30 days, you have a lot of insight into your subject at hand and become capable of making tweaks to that subject for more productivity, happiness, or whatever you are aiming for.
3. It Will Keep You In the Habit Of Writing Daily
A regular journal may not be exciting to you. Jotting down your thoughts and jotting down what happened in the day are pretty standard – and, sometimes, boring. It can be hard to get inspired to write in that journal every day. But, knowing the benefits of journaling, such as reduced stress and anxiety, more awareness, and progress made from that awareness, journaling is one of those habits you want to develop.
A journal prompt keeps you coming back. When you know you will be tackling a new aspect of a certain theme, especially if it is important to your life, you will be more inclined to get back to it day after day.
4. Your Life Will Change For The Better
As you delve deeper into certain topics, you won’t just write about them – you will take action on them. Yes, even YOU! When you are focused on a certain topic for a month, I can guarantee that you are going to get inspired and motivated to take action on that topic.
Your success, happiness, and relationships will all be impacted as you reflect on your prompt and bring new awareness into your life.
And once you become aware of something, you will always be aware of it. That awareness will encourage you to make changes in your life.
5. It’s Private
Journaling about an aspect of your love life, for example, will help you get out concerns, grievances, and problems without having to publicly talk about it.
I’m not saying that counseling or talking to your partner is not good. It is. But there are some things that are easier said in a journal that you know no one will be looking at. And because of that, you are able to be open and honest with yourself and avoid cover-ups or excuses to make things look better than they are.
The Journal Prompt Challenge
You can find journal prompts out there like this…
… And that’s a great way to use journal prompts.
BUT, for this challenge, we are focusing on a specific theme instead of questions from all over the place. For instance, you might focus in on relationships for one month and your career the next.
How Long Should You Do The Journal Prompt Challenge?
You can only do this challenge for a month, but why not do it for a year? That will give you 12 different topics to explore as you go through the year. Think of all the personal growth you can do in that time!
Daily Journal Prompts Can Go Along With A Daily Diary-Type Journal
Your journal prompts can complement your journal, where you talk about your day and other things and then make a section for your journal prompts each day. Or they can take over your journal, where you reflect on the aspect at hand and relate it to your current life.
Do whatever works for you!
Figure Out Your Topics And Aspects Of Your Topics
Each month you will focus on one topic and each day you will delve further into that topic with a particular aspect of it. That means that you may need to do some research on your topic before you start doing your journal prompts, but don’t worry because that’s not hard.
Let’s say you want to focus on the topic of ‘goals’. You could do a few things to find some aspects of that topic to focus on.
- You can search in Google for ‘common issues with goals’ and then start going through each of the articles and write down whatever comes to mind, such as ‘The last goal I set was…’ or ‘Why do I take so long to complete my goals’ or ‘Are my goals unrealistic?’ or ‘I view failure as…’ The more you research this topic, the more things you will find to reflect on. And there is no right or wrong thing to reflect on. This is your personal journey.
- Go to quora.com and search for the topic of ‘goals’. I guarantee you will come up with a month’s worth of prompts by going through the questions posed on Quora. You don’t need to delve into the answers. Just looking at the questions alone should give you some inspiration on aspects of the topic ‘goals’ that you want to look at. Just make it personal and interesting to you.
A Year’s Worth Of Topics At A Glance
Following is an example of topics you can use for the year.
- January – Goals
- February – Love
- March – Rejuvenation
- April – Celebration
- May – Happiness
- June – Contribution
- July – Fun
- August – Travel
- September – Change
- October – Spirituality
- November – Gratitude
- December – Peace
Your list will reflect things that are important to you. You can focus on topics that are impacting your life or topics that excite you but are not currently impacting your life.
An Example Of Journal Prompts Around A Specific Topic
Once you have your list of topics, create journal prompts around that topic.
Start off the first day by writing about things, places, or situations you are grateful about from your past. Then, on the second day, write about what you are grateful for in regards to your relationships. Work through the month like this!
While the above list focuses on gratitude in your life, you don’t have to follow that pattern. If you want, you can delve into things like why gratitude is important to you, what it means to you, and things you can do to improve it.
Whatever works for you is the right thing to do! Just challenge yourself to write every day and keep up with it.
I hope this journal prompt challenge brings you insight and discoveries in your life that promote more happiness and fulfillment!
