10 Prompts to Help You Start Journaling

I receive lots of emails and messages from people, asking me how to start a journal. The questions range from asking what people should write about, what type of journal to buy, how often to do it and I find these questions really difficult to answer.

There is no right or wrong way of keeping a journal, only a journey where each individual gets to discover what type of journaling works best for them. I think each of our journals should be as individual and unique as we are.

However, I always want to help people get started with keeping a journal, so I have come up with some prompts to get you thinking and hopefully set you on your way.

Reflect

1. What would you most like to use your journal for? Do you want to reflect on your

thoughts and feelings, document daily life, plan your dream life, get creative, or a bit of

all of the above? (I like to do a bit of everything so I keep a range of different journals that I can pick up whenever the mood takes me.)

2. What kind of pages do you most want to create? Do you prefer lists, lots of writing, trackers, planning or something visual with little writing?

3. What mediums are you most comfortable with and what do you already have? Do you enjoy pencils, gel pens, fountain pens, washi tape, stickers, papers, paints, etc?

4. How much time do you want to spend journaling each day/week? Have you started a journal before but then stopped? If so, what got in your way? Is that different now or can you make some changes to help you keep journaling?

5. Looking forwards, what would a "successful" year of journaling look like to you?

Do

6. Grab a notebook/journal and write a statement of intent. "This is my journal and I will use it for ...". Get clear on how you plan to use your journal.

7. Get comfortable with your journal. Perhaps try out some of your favourite pens and supplies on the back pages to break it in.

8. Look on Pinterest or Instagram at other people's journal pages that you like. Try to pick out what the common themes are that you could bring into your own journal.

9. Try creating a journal page using some of the common themes that you noted above.

10. Write out your ideal journaling routine and a list of pages or topics that you would like to journal about to help you feel inspired and motivated.

I really hope this helps to give you some ideas for getting started, or taking your journaling in a new direction. My advice would be to just start! You can always change how you journal over time, but there are so many benefits that you can receive from journaling, that it would be a shame to wait until you have it all figured out.

If you would like more journaling inspiration, journal prompts, creative challenges, videos and journal printables, I would love to see you over on Patreon.

Until the next time, keep journaling, Helen x