4 Journal Prompts for Stress Relief
I absolutely love journaling! It is one of the easiest things we can do for stress relief! But many people find it hard to do, I used to be one of them.
I’ve written this blog to highlight the benefits of journaling and I’ve also provided 4 journal prompts for stress relief to get you started.
What is Journaling?
Think of journaling as a way to record your thoughts, feelings, experiences and reflections.
You can use journaling as a tool to explore things that are happening in your life.
Journaling is one of the most powerful and accessible tools you can use for managing stress. It works best when done consistently but even occasional, sporadic journaling can help at stressful times.
You don’t need any special knowledge and it doesn’t cost anything. You just need some paper, a pen and little bit of time every day
Research shows that journaling reduces stress so when it’s free and easy to do we’d be daft not to use it as one of our main stress management tools!
Benefits of Journaling
There are so many benefits to journaling including:
✨ Creating self-awareness around your stress triggers
✨ Helping you process your thoughts and emotions
✨ Building resilience against negative situations
✨ Reflecting on your day and processing experiences
✨ Putting things into perspective
✨ Stopping thoughts spiralling
✨ Helping with mindset
✨Gaining perspective which decreases sress
✨Helping to organise what’s going on / clearing the mental clutter which brings peace of mind.
Challenges with Journaling
The only challenge with journaling is knowing where to start.
It’s something I really struggled with, I didn’t know what to write and even when I had prompts to follow, I felt stuck.
The mistake I was making…
Thinking I had to answer every prompt like a question
Here’s the thing, a prompt is a prompt, it’s there to give ideas on what to write, it’s not acting as a question you need to answer!
How do you keep a journal?
The most important thing to remember is that there is no right or wrong when it comes to journaling.
Prompts are helpful to get you started but you don’t always need to use them.
Sometimes you just need to let the pen flow and brain dump everything that is on your mind!
Nobody knows what you are writing.
No-one is going to check.
So don’t get hung up on whether you are doing it right or wrong!
4 Journal Prompts for Stress Relief
One of the most important things we can do to relieve stress is to create awareness around our stress triggers. This enables us to understand ourselves better and create mechanisms to cope better when these stress triggers arise.
The following 4 journal prompts for stress relief will help you to create awareness around what your stress triggers are:
- What made you feel stressed today?
- Where were you / What were you doing / Who was there?
- How did it make you feel?
- Why do you think it made you feel this way?
REMEMBER: You don’t have to answer all these like questions, they are simply prompts.
Sometimes prompts aren’t helpful and maybe you just need to brain dump everything onto a piece of paper.
My 2 Favourite Journal Prompts
My two most favourite prompts that I use every day are:
What are you thinking?
How are you feeling?
I write in my journal every morning on what I’m thinking and how I’m feeling. These two prompts help to raise awareness if I’m not feeling my best or have too much on my mind.
If something happens throughout the day that makes me feel stressed / unsettled or any other negative emotion, then I’ll stop what I’m doing and grab my journal and start writing what I’m thinking and how I’m feeling. I always find that by starting with these two prompts first, everything else just flows!
My Top 3 Tips for Journaling
Tip 1: Make it a habit – aim to journal every day, choose a set time if you can so it becomes habit. For me that’s in the morning but I will often grab my journal throughout the day if there’s something on my mind bothering me!
Tip 2: Don’t get hung up on ‘doing it right’ – there are no rules, there is no right or wrong, just write whatever comes, if you’ve got nothing to write then write that!
The amount of times I’ve actually written “I can’t think of anything to write today’ and then before you know it I’ve written a few lines. Just the act of saying that seems to get things flowing!
Tip 3: Use your journal in a way that suits you, nobody is checking what you are doing. You can use prompts if you need to but it’s not essential.
What next?
If you’d like to explore journaling some more then get my free guide ‘Journaling for Stress Relief’ which you can download HERE