Here is a set of journey prompts that encompass various aspects of self-reflection. They are designed to help you reconnect with feelings, explore inner thoughts, and ultimately gain a comprehensive understanding of yourself. 

Feel free to modify and tailor these questions to suit your personal needs. However, resist the urge to dodge questions that make you uncomfortable. Writing about painful emotions and experiences can be challenging, and it may initially make you feel worse, which is why we tend to shy away from them. Healing isn’t easy—it takes immense courage to face these feelings and continue moving forward.

You might find these self-inquiry questions difficult or even painful to confront. You might wonder why we don’t just focus on the positives—achievements, what makes you unique, or something to be grateful for. While positivity is important, it doesn’t cancel the negative aspects of life. What truly bothers us are the painful memories, unhealed wounds, and undesirable habits or traits that we carry with us. You don’t need to teach a healthy plant or child how to be positive—it’s in their nature. Similarly, once you return to a healthy state, happiness, peace, and positivity will naturally flow to you.

Writing Tips

• To capture your deepest feelings, just let those emotions and thoughts flow. Shut down that little inner critic who's dying to jump in to judge you.

• Be free. Be bold. Be open. Forget about the spelling, grammar, style, manner, or structure. And if you’re worried that someone might actually care enough to snoop through your life story and secretly (or not so secretly) judge you, just stash that journal in a safe place.

• Writing doesn't have to be a long and arduous task; focusing on specific areas can be incredibly effective. For example, studies have shown that participants who wrote about significant life events for just 15–20 minutes on 3–5 occasions experienced significantly better physical and psychological outcomes than those who wrote about neutral topics.

How are you feeling?

Let Emotions Be Your Guide. Emotions don’t come out of thin air. Emotions originate within us; we cannot distance ourselves from them. The reasons behind them might not be clear, but they offer clues regarding the root causes and help you heal.

• What troubling thoughts or emotions come up most frequently for you? How are you coping?

• Describe a few things you do to relax. What makes you peaceful?

• Do you ruminate on similar thoughts over and over again? Perhaps self-defeating thoughts that show up in your self-talk? Do you often get clung to particular thoughts or feelings and trouble letting go?

• What do you need most in your life right now?

• How do you deal with negative feelings? What are the coping mechanisms you use?

• Do you like yourself? What aspects of you do you like and dislike?

Happiness and peace

• What are things that can easily disrupt a good mood and bring you down? 

• No one is happy or sad forever, but what are your baseline feelings? Perhaps you’re not down explicitly but feel a weight on your shoulder, or don’t feel life could be cheerful and fun?

• Do you have a high bar of happiness? Compare yourself to others, watching the same comedy, doing the same fun exercise, other people might be score 7 out of 10 in terms of excitement, yet you might only achieve 4 out of 10 or lower. Meaning it takes more effort to cheer youself up, and quicker for you fall back to baseline emotion. 

Frustration

• What parts of daily life cause stress and frustration? What can you do to change?

• Do you get irritated or impatient easily? 

• Is there any anger or frustration inside of you that you would like to let go of?

Stress and Worries

• Do you get nervous or anxious easily? What are the things you worry the most about?

• Are you afraid of making mistakes or trying new things that you’re not familiar with? What activities are out of your comfort zone?

• Are you harsh to yourself? 

Confidence

• Is there any self-doubt, fears, or insecurities you would like to work on?

Fear

• List of things you fear and why. Perhaps an object like a spider or mouse, or something intangible, like darkness, talking to strangers, traveling alone, moving to a new job or city, etc

Framework of thinking

• Have you spent much alone time thinking?

• How often do you read? 

• List some of the books that inspire you. 

• Are there repeating emotions or behavioral patterns that bother you? 

Healing and spiritual practices

• What spiritual practices have you done: meditation, hypnosis, prayer, mantra, energy work, relaxation, yoga, family constellation, or anything else? How do you find each beneficial to you or a limitation of the practice? 

• What do you want to achieve through those practices?

Family and upbringing

• What’s your childhood like?

• How is your relationship with your parents?

• What are the positive and negative aspects of your upbringing? 

• If you could go back to your childhood, what would you do differently? Anything you would like to change? Perhaps parenting style, communication, etc. 

• Do you believe a person should be under strict discipline, have an open approach to self-governing, or take another approach? What do you value the most in parent-child relationships, respect, love, communication, or anything?

• Is there anything you want to change about your relationship with your parents? Perhaps be able to say, “I love you.” 

• Do you feel loved? Do you feel that people around you care about you? 

Social life

• Do you feel uncomfortable saying “no” to others? Do you often make commitments but struggle to fulfill promises, leading to last-minute cancellations or flaking out?

• What do you care about what other people think about you? Worry about embarrassing yourself? 

• What are the common conflicts you encounter with different people? Get into arguments easily; colleagues, spouses, or children complain that you’re not listening to them, or another way around, feel people are not listening to you, are critical of yourself and others, etc.

• Do you treat family members, friends, or colleagues equally or differently?

• Do you have a support system, friends, family, or mentors that could empower you through obstacles in life or comfortable sharing your feelings and thoughts?

• Are you comfortable being alone?

Connection

• Do you feel no one really loves you? 

• Do you feel no one really understands you? 

An ideal life scenario

You might not be living the ideal life; if you are, congratulations! Either way, you probably have something in mind that motivates you to wake up in the morning and make your life interesting. 

• What would your “good life” be? How would you like to improve or change your current life situation? What are the obstructions of the changes? 

• What’s holding you back from your inner peace? If there are few things you can change, what would that be to make you happy?

• What do you value most about life? What matters most to you?

• Do you feel a loss of direction or emptiness? Finding no purpose in life? 

• What do you enjoy or care about the most? Do you have a childhood dream?

• Is there any regret if it’s your time to leave or depart the Earth?

• Are there things that you’re grateful for in this life?

Personality

• Is personality changeable or set in stone? 

• Are you comfortable with sharing feelings with others?

• What kind of person would you want to be? Do you have a role model or somebody who you admire or inspire you tremedously?

• Does personality really represent you, or could it potentially be a trait inherited from your parents or grandparents? Or learned behaviors, social conditioning, or cultural influences? 

• What do you appreciate most about your personality? What aspects do you find harder to accept?

• What distinctive traits don’t you like about yourself? Perhaps a quick temper, easily anxious, get down easily, or some behaviors are out of your volition?

• Have you shown much appreciation in relationships, whether with your partner, parents, or colleagues?

• Do you criticize yourself for not being good enough, never doing enough, or feeling like a failure?

• Do you trust people?

• What are your “discomfort” zones? Talking to strangers, eating outside alone, being at home by yourself. 

• What aspects of you could be more relaxed? Perhaps less stressful, more patient. 

Communication

• When in conflict, do you try to communicate as much as possible or give up easily and avoid contact?

• Do you get irritated, emotional, or impatient when someone says something you don’t agree with?

• When in conflict, do you have the strong urge to resolve it as soon as possible or hold on to it for hours or days without communication?

• Are you a good listener? Do others complain to you that you’re not listening? 

Beliefs

Belief could be a trap and self-imposing constrain. For instance, the idea of “no pain no gain” helps you endure the pain going through the process, perhaps workout, startup, learning new skills, etc. However, on the flip side, you might continue enduring unnecessary pain without reconsidering the alternatives and possibilities.

• Do you have a set of beliefs or motto? “Be all that you can be,” “never give up,” “believe in yourself,” “work hard, play hard,” “failure is not an option,” etc. While they are meant to inspire, we might find ourselves trapped by those beliefs. What issues have you noticed about those framing?

Personal values, social norms, and morality

• How do you define success?

• What’s morality? How do you define good and evil? Are people inherited good or bad, or neither?

Activities

• Do you have a particular activity or hobby you enjoy doing?

• Do you do exercise that require focus attention on whole body or functional movement, like yoga, Taichi, weight training?

Feeling Stuck?

You might feel stuck since you may have exhausted your answers to the questions and feel not moving forward, then it’s time to dig deeper through reading. Gaining knowledge is crucial to go beyond our current framework of thinking and breakthrough the limitation. Here is a list of articles might offer you insights and help you through the process. 

Consider joining our Reflective Journaling. We’ll introduce key insights to help you through the process. Together, we can do it!