11 Journaling Prompts to Help You Realign When Work and Life Feel Draining
Hi! I’m Bernadette, Founder and Coach Behind Bravely Rooted.
By taking the time to read and reflect with these journaling prompts, you are gaining new awareness and clarity needed to help you feel more energized in life. These are actual prompts I use with my clients.
I would highly recommend pen to paper for this exercise.
I’ve seen firsthand the benefits of writing your answers on paper (or in a journal) with my clients; also, neuroscience research shows that handwriting activates broader brain networks than typing, engaging movement, language, and attention all at once. That embodied processing helps organize your thoughts more deeply and reinforces new ways of thinking, which is where meaningful change starts.
Part 1. Listening to Self.
What voice am I constantly quieting (out of fear, self-doubt, self-criticism, perfectionism, etc) that is trying to tell me something important?
What are my values in my work and life? Where do my current choices reflect those, and where don’t they?
When do I feel most like myself in work and outside of it?
Part 2. Here you’re activating imagination and curiosity.
If my career, personal life, and well-being were truly working together, what would be different about my days?
Do I feel enough as I am right now? If I did, what would I be capable of?
What would the self-trusting version of me do?
Part 3. You’re turning insight into intentional action.
If my work gave me energy most days instead of depleting me, how would I lead differently?
What internal changes would make me feel more grounded and able to handle whatever comes my way in pursuit of a life I really love? Ex.
Letting go of the need to have everything figured out before taking a step forward.
Trusting myself to make choices that feel aligned, even if they feel scary at first.
Pausing to breathe and reset when stress rises, instead of pushing through on autopilot.
What is one thing I could consider removing this week that doesn’t serve my path forward?
Part 4. Action through self-understanding.
What am I being invited to outgrow?
How am I going to give myself grace and compassion while I am on this sometimes challenging journey?
Final notes…
Clarity, insight, and change don’t usually arrive as one big, dramatic realization. They tend to come in the form of small, honest acknowledgments over time, through this type of exercise, and tiny action steps.
Looking back at your answers, maybe it’s a sentence that feels true, a pattern or moment of insight you can’t unsee, or a quiet gut feeling that you had.
After you spend time reflecting on these questions, notice what stood out.
Was there a question that felt uncomfortable?
One that felt relieving?
A theme that repeated itself?
That’s your starting point.
If anything you wrote made you uncomfortable, give yourself grace.
You are not behind.
You are becoming.
And if, as you move through this, you realize you don’t want to navigate it alone, and you want the next steps, that’s exactly the kind of work I support people through.
Keep going. One grounded step at a time.
— Bern