Oh yeah. I think you’ll enjoy this absolutely wonderful list of mindfulness journal prompts. You could use them for your own writing or in your classroom. Indeed mindful writing is an excellent way to get into alignment with your best self. Take a look now and enjoy!
Mindfulness Journal Prompts to Help Writers Find Inspiration
Journaling is an excellent way for student writers — of all ages, really — to learn mindfulness. Plus, using mindfulness journal prompts may also help kids master the practice of mindfulness while reflecting on their personal experiences and thoughts.
You see…
Being mindful allows one to be intentionally aware of present moments, something that’s critical in a day where many people have short attention spans.
Of course…
The right mindfulness journal ideas for writers can help them get honest and real with themselves. Further, this type of writing allows writers to discover new things about themselves and their lives.
Best of all, journaling in this way can bring writers new insights they’ve never realized when they take some time to dig deeper.
That’s why…
We’ve put together a list of mindfulness journal prompts to help students turn mindfulness into a daily habit.
Now, go for it and have your student writers grab a notebook as these mindful writing ideas make a great addition to classroom lessons (or to your own morning routine of self-care journaling sessions).
31 Mindfulness Journal Prompts
Enjoy this list of mindfulness writing prompts and journaling ideas.
- When I think about the people in my life who love me, what do I feel grateful for?
- Sit quietly and just think for five minutes. What thoughts go through your head?
- What things do I love the most about my life?
- What are my biggest pet peeves? Why?
- Some areas that I’d like to improve in my life include:
- What are my most important values?
- What are the three qualities I love most about myself?
- Do I procrastinate in my life? Why?
- What are my top fears? How are these fears holding me back?
- What are the three things I spend most of my time on every day?
- How am I impacting other people around me daily?
- What do I want to achieve in the next week, month, and year?
- What things in my life can I be grateful for today?
- What things in my life make me smile? How can I incorporate them into my life more?
- How do I feel about myself right now?
- What things do I want to learn next in life outside of school?
- What can I do to lower my stress levels?
- What have my biggest successes been in the last year? In my entire life?
- What are the things I look forward to the most every day?
- What things make me feel alive and fulfilled?
- What are my most significant weaknesses, and how can I work to improve them?
- What can I do to become more present when I spent time with people I care about?
- Sit in nature for a few minutes. Listen to everything. What do you hear and what do you feel?
- What could I do to make success in school easier?
- If today was my last day alive, what would I want to write?
- What things in my life do I feel do not make sense?
- What are the top characteristics of the people I want to be like? Can I bring those characteristics into my own life?
- When was the last time you really laughed? What did you laugh about?
- If you could get beyond your fears today, what would you do?
- What things in my life cause me the most stress or anxiety? Can I change them?
- Would my five-year-old self be proud of the person I am today?
I hope you enjoyed these Mindfulness Journal Prompts for students and use them in your journaling practice. Oh, and please share them on social media, too, via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more. I appreciate it!
140 More Free Writing Prompts for You
- 35 Great Gratitude Journal Prompts for Kids
- 52 Spectacular SEL Journal Prompts
- 53 Reflective Journal Prompts for Students
A Few Closing Thoughts
Being mindful and living with intention helps students learn how to make decisions that align with their values instead of making choices on impulse. And becoming more mindful is always a work in progress, but it helps both kids and adults become more calm, relaxed, and grounded.
Use these mindfulness journal prompts in your daily life and journal reflections. The benefits of daily journaling are immeasurable, potent, and accessible to all.
My best piece of advice is for you to use these writing topics today as you’ll be sure to improve your overall wellbeing by doing so.
Sincerely,
Jill
journalbuddies.com
creator and curator
More Mindfulness Resources
The following bonus content was originally published
on this page of my blog in 2011.
Integrated Journaling and Mindfulness—
Today I came across a fascinating study about writing in a journal entitled “Outcomes of an Integrated Journaling and Mindfulness Program on a US University Campus”. Being about journaling I, of course, was instantly intrigued. Upon further investigation, I found this journaling study quite interesting and insightful.
I want to share two highlights of this study with you. The first is about the writing in a journal portion of the study and the second is about a mindfulness scale the writers referenced.
So without further ado, here is a journaling gem just for you!
Writing in a Journal: Integrated Journaling and Mindfulness
Here is some excellent information about writing in a journal from the study (bold added by me for emphasis only):
“… another component of our sessions was journal writing, which served as a preliminary stage to mindfulness and helped students prepare their minds for the subsequent mindfulness exercises.
The reason that we incorporated journaling into our study was two-fold. On the one hand, in terms of their benefits, they have lots in common: journaling helps focus on one’s inner world, increase positive thoughts and decrease negativity. In addition to numerous psychological benefits, it enhances physical health (Pennebaker, 1997) and academic performance, for example, it helps high-school students become more active in their pursuit of learning (Scherer, 2002).
On the other hand, journaling shares several advantages listed above for mindfulness: it is cheap, does not require special equipment, can be done almost anywhere and by people of all ages and cultures.
The two types of journaling (based on their content and objectives) that we incorporated into our study were gratitude and reappraisal.
Research by positive psychologists revealed that writing about positive events – “three good things in life” – increases happiness and decreases depressive symptoms for six months (Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson, 2005). Thus, on a good day, we encouraged our participants to write about their positive experiences.
However, when one is upset and cannot really feel positive, it helps to acknowledge these feelings and to be honest with oneself (Niederhoffer & Pennebaker, 2002). According to Pennebaker (1997), it is not just the act of writing about an upsetting event and letting off the steam that has a positive effect but rather making sense out of it.
Thus, we suggested to our participants that on a day when they were upset, they honestly share their thoughts and feelings in confidential writing and then try to change their attitude about what happened (if possible).” (Read the entire integrated journaling study here.)
Mindful Attention Awareness Scale
One of the tools the study’s authors mentioned is the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). I am fascinated by simple questionnaires and find them very helpful. I love to complete them and paste them in my journal. Then later on when I find them again I marvel as I reflect upon how much I’ve grown and changed. Sometimes I even re-take the questionnaire.
Use the following “Mindfulness Questionnaire” for your day-to-day experiences.
Instructions:
Below is a collection of statements about your everyday experience. Using the 1-6 scale below, please indicate how frequently or infrequently you currently have each experience. Please answer according to what really reflects your experience rather than what you think your experience should be. Please treat each item separately from every other item.
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| I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until some time later. |
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| I break or spill things because of carelessness, not paying attention, or thinking of something else. |
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| I drive places on “automatic pilot” and then wonder why I went there. |
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Scoring information
To score the scale, simply compute a mean (add your score for each of the 15 items and divide by 15). Higher scores reflect higher levels of dispositional mindfulness.
Well, that’s all from me for today. I hope you enjoyed this journal writing gem as much as I did. Actually… I hope you enjoyed it even more!!! 😀
Until next time, journal on!
Most kindly,
Journal Buddies Jill
