This post is all about journal prompts for self-improvement.
Self-improvement is something I’ve been passionate about since I was little. There’s just something about feeling like I’m inching toward my full potential that I find so fun and exciting haha.
A great way to improve yourself is by journaling. Specifically, using self-improvement journal prompts to identify the different areas of your life that could use some improvement.
I’ve been journaling since I was 15 years old (so about 15 years now – you should see my old journals, it’s hilarious lol) and since then I’ve been sprinkling in journal prompts for self-improvement so I can really reflect on how I’m living my life and ensure that I am on a positive path.
This blog post is made up of the best journal prompts for self-improvement that I have used over the years to ensure that I am growing into the person that I want to be (aka someone who is kind, empathetic, has a growth mindset, is disciplined, etc.).
If you enjoy self-improvement even just a little bit, I know you will find these journal prompts for self-improvement to be so helpful when it comes to figuring out if you are on the path to becoming a better person.
Quick Navigation
Journal Prompts for:
- Self Reflection
- Self Healing and Mental Health
- Self Worth
- Confidence
- Discipline
- A Positive Mindset
- Time Management
- A Bad Day
- Goal Setting
Journal Prompts For Self-Improvement
Journal Prompts For Self Reflection
One of the best ways to truly reflect on yourself and the type of person you are is by using journal prompts for self reflection. These journal prompts will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses so that you know what you’re good at, and what you can improve upon.
1. When you think about your “best self” or your “highest self”, what are they like? What do they do every day? How do they treat themselves? How do they treat others? How are they different from who you are today?
2. What is one thing you want to improve on? How can you start improving on that thing today?
3. Name 3 positive characteristics about yourself. Give examples of how you carry out each of these characteristics in your life.
4. If you were to ask a family member or close friend what your biggest weakness was, what do you think they’d say? Why?
5. Think about your biggest worry at the moment. Now, write down steps you can take to minimize this worry. What actions can you take to worry a little less and make your situation a little bit better?
6. What’s a hard thing you have overcome in the last year? What characteristics or traits of yours helped you to overcome it?
7. What’s something you love to do? How can you do more of this thing in your everyday life?
8. Name someone you are often jealous of. Why do you think you are jealous of them?
9. Name someone you wish you had a better relationship with. Is there anything that you can do to improve your relationship with them? Or is it better than you have more distance from them?
10. Have you ever read a book that changed the way you looked at life? What book was it?
11. When you’re feeling anxious or stressed out, what’s one thing you can do that helps you calm down?
12. How can you get out of your comfort zone this week?
13. What’s your biggest fear? Have other people ever experienced your biggest fear? How did they handle it?
14. How important for you is it to become a better version of yourself throughout the course of your life?
Journal Prompts For Self Healing and Mental Health
One of the most important things, or perhaps the most important thing, is your mental health. If you don’t feel good about your life or about yourself, life can be exponentially more difficult.
Here is a list of journal prompts that’ll help ensure that you are making your mental health a priority.
1. Who do you spend time with that allows you to be your truest, most authentic self?
2. Name someone you love. Why do you love them?
3. Name someone who loves you. Why do you think they love you?
4. What’s something you love about yourself?
5. Who is someone you can always go to for advice? To vent?
6. Who is someone that has been through what you are going through?
7. Think about your healing journey. While it may be really tough, is there anything about your healing journey that you are grateful for?
8. What is your safe space? Where can you go and feel completely safe, calm, and loved?
9. What’s your favorite way to practice self care? How can you do more of that?
10. What’s a song that always makes you feel calm, at peace, or happy?
11. What’s your favorite thing to do in your free time?
12. Write a letter to yourself from the perspective of a healed you. What would the healed version of you tell you right now? Would they say it gets easier? Would they tell you to do certain things? What would they say?
13. Have you ever tried therapy? If yes, what did you like about it? What did you dislike? If you haven’t tried it, is there a reason you haven’t? Is therapy something you can see yourself trying in the future?
14. What is your favorite form of exercise and why?
15. When was the last time you tried a new exercise? Is that something you might consider doing?
Journal Prompts For Self Worth
How is your self worth these days? Do you tend to compare yourself to others often? Are you scrolling social media a little too much to the point where it upsets you?
It’s so important that you remember how wonderful and unique you are. Here are the best journal prompts for self worth when you feel like you could use a little pick-me-up.
1. Name something about your physical appearance that you love about yourself and explain why.
2. What’s your favorite characteristic or personality trait about yourself?
3. Name something your younger self would be proud of you for accomplishing.
4. Write something nice about yourself.
5. Write down the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to you.
6. What’s a unique talent that you have?
7. What’s something you’ve done in the last year that you are really proud of?
8. When’s the last time you felt true joy? What were you doing?
9. Who is your biggest support and number 1 fan?
10. Do you know what your love language is? If not, it could be good to know so that you can start telling others how you prefer to be loved.
11. What characteristics or personality traits do you admire in other people? Do you think you embody these same characteristics? Why or why not?
12. Do you have any affirmations that you use on a daily basis? For example, the affirmation “I am enough” is often used when people aren’t feeling their best.
13. What good habits do you have that you are proud of?
14. What are your core values? For example, Integrity, Honesty, Compassion, Empathy. Do you feel like you embody your core values?
15. What limiting beliefs do you have? Do you let them control your life or do you take action despite them?
Confidence Prompts
In life, confidence is key. Confidence can help you land a job, attract like-minded people, and help propel you toward your dreams.
Confidence isn’t always easy to embody, though. If you are someone who is struggling with confidence, or you just want to be more confident in yourself, these journal prompts will remind you just how great you are.
1. What’s something you remember being good at in grade school? Do you still do that thing?
2. What’s something you remember being good at as a teenager? Do you still do that thing?
3. Have you ever been in a state of “flow”? If so, what were you doing when that happened?
4. What are things that you do on a daily basis that bring you confidence? Weightlifting? Running? Journaling?
5. What kind of clothes make you feel most confident?
6. When’s the last time you bought a piece of clothing that made you feel great about yourself? What was it?
7. What is something your friends always go to you for help?
8. What is something very difficult that you overcame?
9. Who in your life always gives you compliments in your life or pumps you up? What do they say?
10. When’s the last time you tried something totally new? How’d it go?
11. When’s the last time you did something that forced you to get out of your comfort zone? Did you enjoy it? How did it go?
12. What routines do you have, if any, that make you feel good about yourself? If you don’t have any routines currently, are there any that you would like to start incorporating into your daily life?
13. When’s the last time you failed, but continued to persevere anyway? What made you keep going?
Journaling For Discipline
If you want to make positive changes in your life, discipline is often required. Discipline is not easy to practice on a consistent basis, but if you can find a way to be disciplined, it can change your life.
Here are self improvement journal prompts that will help you channel the discipline you need to conquer your goals.
1. What’s a goal you have right now?
2. Are you on track to hit this goal?
3. Do you feel like you need to set more goals in your life? If so, which ones would you like to set?
4. What’s something you’ve wanted to change about your life/yourself for a long time but you just haven’t gotten around to doing? Why do you think you keep putting it off?
5. Who in your life inspires you to be more disciplined?
6. When’s the last time you had to exercise self-discipline? Were you successful?
7. What area of your life do you want to improve the most right now? What steps can you take today to start improving in that area?
8. When’s the last time you failed at something? What did that failure teach you?
9. When’s the last time you gave up on something? How did that feel? Is that thing you gave up on something that you’d like to start back up again?
10. What’s something you want to accomplish while you are here on this earth? What’s the first step you need to take to get there?
11. What’s something you have always wanted to do for yourself, but you just haven’t gotten around to doing yet?
12. What new habits would you like to build into your life this year?
13. What’s a goal you want to hit before your next birthday? Have you already started working your way toward that goal? If not, how can you get started today?
14. What bad habits do you have? Do you want to get rid of those bad habits?
Journal Prompts For A Positive Mindset
Negative emotions are inevitable. What really matters, though, is how you overcome your negative emotions or how you deal with them. How can you develop a more positive mindset, even when negativity starts pulling you down?
These personal development journal prompts will help you navigate your negative thoughts and emotions in a more positive way.
1. What’s something you did today that you are proud of?
2. Who inspires you to be more positive?
3. Who in your life is more negative? Do you need to set boundaries around how much time you spend with this person/these people?
4. What puts you in a bad mood? How can you avoid that trigger more often on a daily basis?
5. What puts you in a good mood? How can you incorporate more of that into your life?
6. If tomorrow were a “good day”, what would it look like? What has to happen for it to be a good day?
7. If this year were a “good year”, what would it look like? What has to happen for it to be a good year?
8. What puts you in a bad mood? Are there ways that you can avoid these things?
9. When’s the last time you felt genuinely happy? What were you doing?
10. When you are in a bad mood, what’s something that helps you turn your mood around? Is there a person that helps you turn your mood around?
11. Think about the most negative person you know. What would you say to them to help turn their mood around?
12. Do you have any affirmations for negative thoughts? Something like “I’m having a bad day, but I don’t have a bad life.” Brainstorm a few affirmations that you can say to yourself for when your thoughts are more negative.
Prompts For Time Management
How are you with time management? For most tasks and challenges in life, time management is key.
According to Time-Management.org, “time management is the skill of organizing and aligning your tasks and objectives into a schedule.” The better you are at time management, the easier your day will be to navigate and the easier it will be to get everything done.
If you struggle with time management, or it’s something that you want to improve on, here are some great journal prompts for you.
1. Is time management important to you? Why or why not?
2. Do you think having good time management skills would make you more successful in life?
3. When has having good time management skills benefited you in your life?
4. If tomorrow was executed perfectly, what would get done?
5. What do you want to accomplish in the next 5 years?
6. What do you want to accomplish in the next 10 years?
7. When you think about your future self and the goals that you have, are you on track to achieve those goals?
8. Are you always on time or always late?
9. If you are someone who is always late, why do you think that is? Is there something that you can change about your routine to ensure you aren’t always late?
10. In what ways can having better time management benefit you? How would that help you in your life?
11. Write down a bucket list, or a list of things you’d like to find the time for before your last day on earth.
Journal Prompts For A Bad Day
Bad days are inevitable for everyone. If you’ve had a bad day, don’t worry. It will pass soon enough.
In the meantime, if you could use some help processing your bad day, here are some journal prompts for you.
Just know that no matter what, you WILL be okay.
1. What happened today that didn’t go so well?
2. What did today teach you? What can be learned from today?
3. Although today was a bad day, what about today went well?
4. Is there anything that occurred today that you are grateful for?
5. If today was a “good” day, how would it look different from how the day actually played out?
6. Do you have affirmations for bad days? For example, “this too shall pass” is a good affirmation for bad days. Write down a few affirmations that you can use for bad days.
7. What do you do to calm down after a bad day?
8. Who can you talk to when you’ve had a bad day? Who makes you feel better?
9. Is there a meal you enjoy eating that makes you feel better after you’ve had a bad day?
10. What kind of exercise is your favorite? Is that something you can do when you’ve had a bad day?
11. Do you tend to journal and reflect more on good days or bad days?
12. When’s the last time you had a bad day? Did you get through it okay? What helped you move past that day?
13. Think about the best version of yourself. What do they do when they are having a bad day? How do they handle it? How do they overcome it?
14. Picture a good day that you had recently. Where were you? What were you doing? Who were you with? What made that day a good day?
Prompts For Goal Setting
Setting goals is imperative if you want to accomplish big things. If you don’t set goals, and make a plan to get there, what you want is simply just a dream.
To ensure that you are being intentional about the things you want to achieve, here are the best self-discovery journal prompts for goal setting.
1. What goals have you set for this year? Are you on track to achieve them?
2. Do you have weekly goals? If yes, what are they? If not, can you come up with some right now?
3. Do you have monthly goals? If yes, what are they? If not, can you come up with some right now?
4. What’s the biggest goal you ever set for yourself?
5. What goal are you most proud of accomplishing?
6. What’s the biggest goal that you have for yourself right now?
7. Who supports you when it comes to your goals?
Which personal growth journal prompts are your favorite?
This post was all about Journal Prompts For Self-Improvement.
Other posts you might like:
- 11 Small Changes You Can Make Today To Drastically Improve Your Life
- 140+ Discipline Affirmations To Achieve Success
- 80 Drake Quotes And Lyrics That’ll Boost Your Confidence
- 138 Sassy Self Confidence Quotes To Boost Self-Esteem
