Journaling is a great tool for self-reflection. This video describes 5 specific journaling prompts to develop a rich and deep sense of life purpose and help you live a meaningful life, and how you can adapt them to your own personal search for meaning and purpose.
Why these 5 prompts? Because they are specifically formulated to help you reflecting on your recent memories and create a personal narrative in a way that helps impart meaning and purpose into your life. However, you should feel free to adapt these prompts to your personal preferences if these questions do not resonate with the way you prefer to formulate your thoughts. The key is to have questions that help you engage in self-reflection and instill meaning and purpose into your experience of daily life.
Try such journaling every day for the upcoming week. Then, at the end of the week, review your journal and note bigger takeaways that you gained from writing down your reflections. I would encourage you to integrate journaling and regular reviews of your journaling into your everyday life practice, as a way of gaining the research-based benefits of journaling, including a greater sense of life meaning and purpose.
P.S. For additional resources, check out this workbook with exercises on finding meaning and purpose using science-based strategies; this free science-based web app to evaluate your current sense of meaning and purpose; this free online class on finding meaning and purpose using science; and the wide variety of other resources on meaning and purpose available at Intentional Insights.
