As you can tell from this review, I highly recommend you grab a copy of the Five Minute Journal if you’ve been on the verge.

Take a look at this article too to learn more about keeping a gratitude journal: How a Gratitude Journal and Positive Affirmations Can Change Your Life This notebook, however, is special in a way that it doesn’t have any negatives. It promotes optimism, joy and happiness, through exercises for gratitude, daily planning, positive self-affirmations and reflection. Journal prompts are a useful tool for self-reflection and personal growth. They can help you gain insights into your thoughts, emotions and behaviors, and can aid in developing self-awareness.Sometimes, awareness is all it takes to make a radical change, leaving behind old and unproductive habits. Why I love the 5 minute journal?

You don’t have to go out of your way or stress about finding something GOOD to feel thankful for every morning. Even meditation experts propose the habit of practicing gratitude daily, as a healthy behavior, capable of adjusting your expectations, promoting positive emotions, and nurturing a state of calm. The five-minute journal as a productivity planner These weekly challenges are things that we all know we “should” be doing more of, and it’s nice to be reminded of this by the journal. Right below these two sections, you will have the opportunity to practice daily affirmations. These, according to one study published in the Journal of Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience can help individuals maintain a positive self-view, by reflecting on self-worth. For example, let’s use a fictional character of a guy named Sam. Sam’s gremlins are telling him “you’re a lousy parent, a terrible spouse, and mediocre at work.”The following are journaling prompts ideas for daily journaling. Choose one prompt at a time and use it as a starting point for free writing: A Daily Affirmation is a simple statement that defines you as you want to be. Every time you write the daily affirmation, you prime your brain to start building this belief in your mind. With consistency, you will begin to create that change from within.

We brainstormed hundreds of questions of The Five Minute Journal before finally deciding on the 5 precise questions contained within the journal. When you do this, your mind will go looking for the positives and how you can actually make today nothing less than amazing. For most of my life, I never really knew or cared why writing for even 5 minutes made me happier, I just knew it worked. At this point, it needs to be said that journaling isn’t only good for getting out the nasty feelings, it’s also super useful for recording the good stuff of life which leads me to the fourth writing prompt. 4. When you’re in a funk, focus on gratitude.

So my last and final 5-minute journal prompt for you, uninspired one, is to wake up and let yourself keep dreaming on paper. When I was in grad school, I took this awesome class on creativity and in it read a book called From Where you Dream by Robert Olen Butler. The book is mostly about fiction writing but essentially, he says that the best time to tap into your subconscious (where your “flow” lives) is when you first wake up in the morning. Since you’re fresh from dreaming, your brain is still tuned to that frequency, so to speak, and not clouded by “reality” from your day-to-day life.

Reflect: After completing your writing, take some time to reflect on what you wrote. You can ask yourself questions like, “What did I learn about myself?” or “How can I apply this to my life?”Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing | Advances in Psychiatric Treatment | Cambridge Core In my experience, if you struggle to fill in the lines, it is best to sometimes leave them blank. However, make sure to write down at least one thing, irrespective of how small it was. Sometimes, the experience of drinking a cup of tea, within the right context, can be filled with joy. Write that down. Improving your day It’s both hilarious and embarrassing that as a coach and a writer (and a coach who works with writers), that I hadn’t thought of this myself. Alas, as the saying goes, doctors are the worst patients. One of the greatest gifts of being human is the ability to choose what to focus on. If you are perfectly calm and still on the inside, you can handle anything. For those of us without Zen training, the best way you can begin your day is through gratitude.