by Kelsey Smythe | Apr 8, 2020 | Personal Development
Welcome to the continuation of my journaling series! Sometimes as a society we tend to assume journaling is only for preteen girls to talk about their crushes, but if you leverage the practice well, it can be a phenomenal way to grow as a person. Using prompts to guide your journaling is a quick and easy way to make the most of your journaling habit. I recently shared how to get started journaling and why you should and 40 journal prompts for personal growth, and today I’m sharing 40 journal prompts to help you get to know yourself better.
Why You Should Get to Know Yourself
This might seem like a weird thing to spend a lot of time thinking about at first. It’s tempting to believe that if we spend less time actively thinking about ourselves, our personality, our preferences, that we’ll become more humble and selfless. In reality, oftentimes it just means that we’re not very self-aware, which can make room for more pride and selfishness. Off the top of my head, here are some quick reasons why it can be beneficial to get to know yourself better:
- knowing your preferences gives you the opportunity to willingly lay them down for those you love
- it helps you understand how others might be different, which will improve your relationships
- knowing yourself better helps you become a more genuine, authentic person
If you’re interested in reading more, then you can read my post 6 reasons why you should get to know yourself here.
40 Journal Prompts to Help You Get to Know Yourself Better
I had some help thinking of these prompts and got ideas from here, here, here, and here. Check out their posts and see if they have other ideas you’d like to try. New to journaling? Read this.
- What are your best qualities?
- What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received? Why did it mean so much to you? (if thinking of the best seems overwhelming, just write about the first one that came to your mind).
- What would paradise be like for you?
- As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
- What’s your first memory?
- What’s one of your most vivid childhood memories?
- How would you describe yourself?
- What did you most enjoy doing this week?
- What would your perfect day be like?
- If you could instantly become an expert in any subject or activity, what would it be?
- What makes you unique?
- What are your best character traits?
- How would your best friend describe you?
- What are you really good at?
- At what point yesterday did you feel most like yourself?
- What is your greatest strength? Describe a time this strength served you well.
- What do you love about yourself?
- How would you like to make this world a better place? How can you best share your gifts with the world?
- What is your greatest weakness? Describe a time this weakness held you back.
- Do you lean into challenge or away from it? Describe a time you were given a challenge you weren’t sure you could complete. How did the situation make you feel?
- How have you been misjudged lately?
- What traditions do you most look forward to?
- How do you think others see you when they meet you for the first time?
- What makes you feel sad?
- How has your life ended up different than you expected?
- What’s your favorite ritual?
- What makes you feel stressed?
- How do you indulge yourself? Do you need to indulge yourself more or less often?
- What’s something you often take too personally even though, logically, you know better? How has this habit affected your life?
- What do you do to cheer yourself up? What are more ideas you could use but never have before?
- When’s the last time you laughed really hard? What made you laugh?
- What would you love to learn?
- Do you have any idiosyncrasies? What are they?
- What sounds fun to you right now?
- Where do you feel most like yourself right now? Job, relationships, situations, hobbies, etc.
- What’s your favorite color right now? What do you think it says about you?
- Is there a hobby that you’d secretly love to pursue?
- What are some of your favorite smells? Why do you like them?
- What’s something true about you that you need to embrace more openly and lovingly?
- What makes you feel most nostalgic?
Want to print these out?
If you’d like to print these prompts out, I created a printable PDF you can snag here. I printed mine out and slipped them into my journal so that I didn’t have to go looking for them in my early morning journal sessions.
Let Me Know How it Goes
I’d love to hear if and how the journaling prompts helped you in your personal growth. If you used them, leave me a comment or shoot me an email.
Have any other journal prompts to get to know yourself better? I would love to hear those too!
by Kelsey Smythe | Apr 4, 2020 | Lifestyle, Personal Development
Wow, what a month. It’s hard to know what to say about such a historical period that we’re currently experiencing. I think it’s safe to say that all of us are a little different than the people we were at the beginning of March 2020. There has been a lot of sad moments and a lot of uplifting moments over the last few weeks. And though March didn’t go like anyone expected it to, I’ve been so encouraged to see people rise to the occasion and overcome. Here’s a recap of my March Goals and my stay-at-home April 2020 goals!
March Goals – 13 out of 17 completely complete!
Grout and caulk our shower to prevent mold problems DONE! Our bathroom looks so much cleaner now!Paint our kitchen I crossed this off by electing not to do it at allPaint our bathroom Done! Follow this cleaning routine every day. I didn’t do it every day, but most days! Such a great way to maintain a clean home that we’ve been spending ALL our time in!Read Prayer by Tim Keller. Crossing it off because I’ve been steadily chipping away at it each morning. Still have half the book to get through, but it’s been such a blessing so far!Memorize a portion of Scripture. I sort of want to give this a half check. Last month I memorized one verse, so I’m counting it. I would like to have memorized more, but had a hard time figuring out my system. I finally realized that writing the verses on index cards and reviewing them as I brush my teeth or blowdry my hair works great!Call one person every day on my walk home from the metro. Well, the metro thing didn’t happen for the majority of the month, but I did make a lot of phone calls on my daily walks out of the house!Text/message at least one person every day to check-in. Who knew that a pandemic would be the perfect opportunity to check in on all your friends?Run the St. Patrick’s Day 4 Mile Race. Unfortunately, this was canceled 🙁 — I’m counting it a win though because I did run 4 miles! Woohoo! Run 3x a weekStart HIIT workouts 3x a week after the race. It’s been a surprise to see how much stronger I already feel! Schedule and go on a Spring Break adventure. We managed to squeeze an adventure in JUST in time! We walked around the national mall and went to the top of the Washington Monument the day before everything shut down!- Post on Instagram 20 times. I posted 16 times.
- Schedule writing sessions at the beginning of each week. Didn’t do this at all. Womp womp.
- Publish 9 posts this month. Published 4; it would have been more if I had done the above goal I think! 😉
Attend small group weekly. Done! We started meeting virtually once social distancing started! So thankful I was still able to meet with my group. - Attend at least one book club. Unfortunately the social distancing started before I could attend any book clubs. Such a bummer! I’m cooking up some ideas for a virtual one though!
Lessons learned
All in all, I’m surprised I was still able to tackle so many goals despite the fact that the month did not go at all like I anticipated. I could have easily given in to the circumstances and decided that my goals were impossible to reach in a time like this. But in reality, staying at home gave me MORE opportunities to work on most of my goals. I tried to keep all this in mind as I set my April 2020 goals!
April 2020 Goals
Since we’re now entering into the 2nd quarter, I did a Goals Refresh in my power sheets. Many of them stayed pretty much the same! Some of them were tweaked quite a bit though. One of my big focuses for the 1st quarter was to get our home organized and looking beautiful. I’m so thankful now that I poured all that energy into that! Of course, there’s still plenty more I could organize or beautify, but I think I’m mostly in a maintenance phase, which frees up a little time and energy to focus on some other things!
Here are my April 2020 goals:
- Read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taub. Reading books like this always motivate me to make changes in my health.
- Write a blog mission statement. I’ve been having a hard time knowing what to focus on here and I think that’s making it tough for me to gain momentum in writing new blog posts. Hoping some clarity will help!
- Write 2 blog posts a week.
- Complete my journaling series on the blog.
- Go on a Friday Adventure. These will certainly look different than I expected at the beginning of the year. I’m hoping to find some walking/hiking trails that aren’t at all crowded. If all else fails, we can go for a drive and not get out of our car 🙂
- Purge 2016 Phone pics. This is part of my overarching 2020 goal of becoming a good memory keeper for our family.
- Schedule 5 Instagram posts a week. This is another micro-goal branching out from my memory-keeper goal.
- Try a new recipe every week. I’m specifically looking to add more veggies to our diet!
- Make a healthy breakfast every morning. Most days this will likely be a smoothie. Eating a good breakfast can change how my entire day goes so I’d really like to make this a habit.
- Do 3 HIIT workouts a week
- Go for 3 runs each week
- Journal every day. This is branching out from my goal to learn to love God with my whole heart. I tend to be a person that avoids emotions, and journaling helps me become more aware of my feelings. It’s hard to bring your whole heart to God when you’re not even sure what’s going on in said heart.
- Text a friend or family member every day
- Call a friend or family member every day
What are your stay-at-home goals?
For some of us, taking care of ourselves might mean we have little to no goals. For others, taking good care of yourself might mean you plan a lot of activities to keep you busy and active. I’d love to hear what you have planned for this stay-at-home month ahead of us!
by Kelsey Smythe | Mar 20, 2020 | Lifestyle, Personal Development
I absolutely love how Emily Freeman always shares some things she learned each season and gives others the opportunity to do the same. When I was writing my list, a lot of the things that came to mind felt trivial or elementary. I also questioned why on earth I should share with the general public. Would they get anything out of it? Would anyone want to read? It’s silly, because I love reading posts like this. And then I thought about how writing down a list of things I learned could be beneficial in the long term. Not only could others learn along with me, but I could look back at these lists as a reference for the things God taught me and the particular challenges of each season. My overthinking made me miss the party, but I’m sharing 7 things I learned this winter anyway.
7 Things I learned this Winter
I can change the narrative I have about myself.
This isn’t a new idea, but I was most struck by the possibility of changing our narratives about ourselves when reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. Each time we do an activity or complete a task, we’re either reinforcing an existing identity box or creating a new one. Which means we can change the way we see ourselves. For me, this meant giving up the identity of being lazy and out of shape and slowly building up the identity of being a runner. I’ve already been on 32 runs this year and have run further distances than I expected I could. How’s that for changing my self-identity?
Small progress really does add up
Not to keep tooting my own horn about running, but it shocked me how much progress I made just by consistently showing up. When I first started running a mile, anything further than 1.5 miles sounded impossible. I seriously didn’t think I’d ever get there. And while each run felt difficult, it didn’t feel like it was that much harder than the one before. But because I stayed so consistent with it, I worked myself up to running 4 miles. I know I could definitely keep building on that now. It was good to prove to myself that showing up really does count for something.
Action isn’t always exhausting as it sounds. Sometimes it’s energizing.
I’ve been wanting to paint our apartment for about a year but completely dreaded the task. It sounded like such a big job and I worried that I wouldn’t be able to work up the energy. One day I just made a plan. I assigned days to pick the color, buy the paint, and get started. It was exhausting. But I was also surprised to discover that freshening up our home is something that I really love. So it was also totally energizing. Next time I’ll be careful not to put too much weight on the cost of the energy I think it’ll take to do something, especially if it’s something I really want to do.
There can be just as much pride + sin in not buying the thing as there is in buying the thing
This year I decided to do Nancy Ray’s 3-month contentment challenge. The first step is to buy any necessary things you’ll need before you begin the challenge. This is when I realized that I had SO MANY THINGS I was planning on buying that I was putting off for a future time. I really struggled with buying those things. After much soul-searching, I realized that it was largely because I thought I was a better person for constantly saying no to myself.
But here’s the thing, while God has instructed us to be wise and generous with our money and to remember that it all belongs to Him, He never said that we should never buy the things we want but don’t strictly need. If that were the case, we could never support our dear friends and neighbors in their businesses and livelihoods! I’m learning to confess my pride in this area and find a healthier balance of spending and saving.
Your life isn’t as boring as you think
This is one of my favorite things I learned this weekend. As an Enneagram 5, I admittedly have a difficult time sharing personal things. My default belief is that people will find it at best uninteresting and at worst offensive and obnoxious. But this year I’ve made it a point to share more about our daily life on Instagram if for nothing else than to keep memories for ourselves. Here’s what I learned: People are more interested in your life than you realize. I’ve been surprised and delighted by the level of engagement I’ve received on posts about ordinary ol’ me.
All the research in the world doesn’t always yield to a desired outcome
This was a somewhat bitter lesson to learn, partially because I love to research and partially because it meant we had a tough outcome that we didn’t love. I carefully scoured the internet for the perfect kitten for us to adopt. We found her and for the first few days, everything was wonderful. She was EVERYTHING we wanted and it seemed like all my research had paid off. And then she became ill, resulting in several very stressful weeks followed by the heartbreaking decision of taking her back to the amazing rescue we adopted her from. Even my careful planning and research didn’t guarantee we’d get the perfect kitten. It’s impossible to 100% guarantee a desired outcome.
Now it’s your turn
I just shared my things I learned this winter. What are some things you’ve learned lately?
by Kelsey Smythe | Mar 2, 2020 | Personal Development
These posts have quickly become one of my favorite things to create. I love the accountability it creates for myself, the lessons learned–sinking even deeper when I take the time to articulate them– and the joy of seeing all that was accomplished in the last month. February was the busiest month I’ve had since moving to DC a year ago. It was also the one that was most outside my comfort zone, but felt the most productive and accomplished. I made huge progress on all of my February goals, despite being sick for a week and adopting a kitten. Let’s take a look back at February before we look at March 2020 goals.
February goals Goals – 14 out of 18 completely complete!
Paint our apartment. This took so much more time than I anticipated, but I completed everything but our bathroom and tiny kitchen.- Grout and caulk our shower to prevent mold problems
Follow this cleaning routine every day. (I did about half the days. For a while everything was so torn apart from painting that it was hard to complete and I lost my groove.)Create a prayer spread in my bullet journal.Do a study on the book of James using the process in this book.Play worship music every dayCreate a ‘must call’ list. Pick a time or day to make phone calls- Go on 16 runs this month (I did 12! Being sick for a week threw me off)
Put our next adventure on the calendarGO on our adventure this time (It ended up being small and solo, but still fun!)Decide on a time of day that I’ll post on InstagramShare 20 pictures on Instagram.- Plan time slots to blog every week. (Didn’t do this, which is also why I probably didn’t do the next one!)
- Publish 2 new blog posts each week (Did 3)
Attend a book club meeting. (was so proud of myself for this!)Plan my next book club Attend the welcome meeting at our church. (We did! I took it one step further and also joined a small group!)
March 2020 Goals
Many of these goals are similar to last month’s, and all stem from my annual 2020 goals.
- Grout and caulk our shower to prevent mold problems
- Paint our kitchen
- Paint our bathroom
- Follow this cleaning routine every day.
- Read Prayer by Tim Keller
- Memorize a portion of Scripture
- Call one person every day on my walk home from the metro
- Text/message at least one person every day to check in
- Run the St. Patrick’s Day 4 Mile Race
- Run 3x a week
- Start HIIT workouts 3x a week after the race
- Schedule and go on a Spring Break adventure
- Post on Instagram 20 times
- Schedule writing sessions at the beginning of each week
- Publish 9 posts this month
- Attend small group weekly
- Attend at least one book club
What are your March 2020 goals?
To be honest, mine don’t feel like a lot. I thought about adding some new things in just to keep it exciting and fresh, but that defeats the whole purpose of mapping out what’s important to me at the beginning of the year. I’m also learning that it’s good to have margin. Maybe this month I’ll get more reading in! Not to mention taxes. How about you? What are your March 2020 goals?
by Kelsey Smythe | Feb 28, 2020 | Personal Development
An incredibly useful concept that I first heard about from Gretchen Rubin is the distinction between being a maximizer or a satisficer. One type tends to be happier than the other, so figuring out which one you are can lead to some easy happiness boosting in your life. Read on to figure out whether you’re a maximizer or a satisficer.
Maximizers
A maximizer is someone who loves to squeeze all the potential out of something. Why settle for a good enough shirt when you could have the best possible shirt for your budget? Gretchen Rubin defines maximizers as those who want to make the optimal decision.
Satisficers
A satisficer is someone who has a few small criteria and is satisfied once those are met. When they’re shopping for new clothes, they buy a shirt once they find one that they like and that fits well. They don’t have to look through the whole store (plus maybe another two) like a maximizer would.
Why Knowing about Maximizers and Satisficers Matters
In a world that is increasingly full of choices, knowing how you make them can make your life a lot easier. We make about a million little choices every day (that’s a scientific estimate 😉 ), from what to eat for breakfast to which neighborhood to live in, to what size of family you want to have.
It can make you happier
Unfortunately for me, satisficers are usually happier than maximizers. Psychologist Barry Schwarts argues in The Paradox of Choice that an increased range of options doesn’t necessarily lead to higher satisfiaction with the outcome of a decision. It seems backwards, but having more choices often makes you less happy. If maximizers can learn to quickly narrow down their choices like satisficers, they’ll have a much greater chance of being happy with their decision.
In addition to this, maximizers are often more prone to buyer’s remorse. When you’re considering more criteria, inevitably not all criteria are met. This leaves people wondering and worrying whether or not they made the right choice.
It can help you understand those around you
My husband is a satisficer through and through. I’m a maximizer. As you can imagine, there’s sometimes tension when I’m wanting to investigate allll the options. But now that I know that people who are satisficers tend to be happier anyways, it makes me more willing to compromise and call it a day once we find something that meets our criteria. Plus it makes it easier for me to resist the temptation to agonize about the decision we ended up making, both before, during, and after.
On the other hand, if there’s a decision we need to make that I know is more important to me than to my husband, I know that I need to be the one who does the research. That’s because I’m the one who cares more about meeting the most criteria. Chances are, he’ll be happy with whatever I find. But if I ask him to do the research, it’s hard for me not to worry that he’s done enough research to make the best choice. Me doing the research yields the happiest results for both of us 🙂
Tips for Maximizers
Sometimes being a maximizer can be a superpower, but not if you use said superpower for everything. It’s totally unnecessary to find the very best $1 pen in the whole world. The first one you come across will surely do. Instead, try using your maximizing superpower for things that are either really important to you or really expensive. And remember that you’re never going to find something that meets every possible criteria you can think of, so try to focus on the ones that are most important to you.
Are you a maximizer or a satisficer? Leave a comment and give me your best advice!
Here are some of my other personality posts you may like:
How to Get More Enjoyment out of Life
6 Major Reasons to Get to Know Yourself
Are you an Opener or a Finisher?
by Kelsey Smythe | Feb 3, 2020 | Lifestyle, Personal Development
Hi, friends! Are we ready for February 2020 goals already? January was a month to remember. It certainly felt like the first month of a new year and a new decade. Charles and I started off the month with a bang, jumping right into new routines and tackling our goals. The last half of the month? It was a little rough.
We adopted a kitten, which was definitely a highlight! But then she developed a rash a couple of days after we brought her home, which resulted in her being coned so she couldn’t scratch her ears bloody. The cone made her miserable, depressed, and skittish, and then she developed a fear of our litter boxes! After 3 vet visits, countless phone calls to the vet’s office, and even more loads of laundry, we ended up taking her back to the place we adopted her from. The rescue was amazing through it all and so helpful. We’re incredibly grateful they took her back, even though we’re sad to have had to say goodbye to such a sweet kitten. It sounds like she’s steadily improving back at their house, so we’re thankful for that!
Having a sick kitten in one’s house is crazy time-consuming! The first half of our month started off SO strong, but the last half was derailed by our poor kitten. We’re kind of grateful to leave a hard, exhausting January behind us and say hello to February. Here’s a recap of my January goals and my February 2020 goals!
January Goals – 13 out of 18 completely complete!
Many of my January goals involved setting up systems and foundations for the rest of the year. I can already tell such a difference and am so glad I took the time to set us up for success.
Declutter + organize key pain pointsSet up a paper system for mail, forms, etc.Clean out and organize the fridge. It’s crazy how much these bins help!Figure out a mindless + easy cleaning schedule. I saw a lot of suggestions for this website in a Facebook groups I’m in. Without overthinking it (if busy moms can do it, I can too!), I downloaded + printed her freebies and jumped right in. You guys. This is life changing! Our apartment has been so much more effortlessly clean this month.Create a prayer/gratitude system.Read Women of the Word. Purchase and designate birthday cards for the whole fam. I have a couple more to purchase, but nearly done.Go on 16 runs this month. I went on 14 runs this month, so I’m counting this a win! It was a great running month for me.Set up reminders in my phone to pack exercise clothes the night before. Did this and it’s annoying but helpful.Sign up for a race. Done. We’re doing a 4-miler in January. I’m simultaneously excited and terrified. It sure is keeping me motivated though.Print adventure list and put it somewhere visible.- Put our next adventure on the calendar. We planned one out for January but then had to cancel to better take care of the kitten and basically just survive.
Start a note in my phone with pics to take. Did this but I always forget to reference it! I might need another phone reminder.- Think about a good routine for posting on Instagram. Didn’t do this… which is probably why I didn’t complete the next goal either!
- Share 20 pictures on Instagram. I posted 13 times, which is more than usual!
- Plan time slots to blog every week. I kind of winged it and it worked out, but I need to do a better job planning.
Start a note on my phone with the next 5 posts. This helped me jump right in a lot!Research meetups and/or book clubs and/or Bible studies in my area. First book club next week!
February 2020 Goals
The first month of new goals is always the most exciting for me. The second month is much more difficult when it becomes more ‘maintenance’ and less ‘exciting change.’ But since I was so thorough in preparing my goals with Power Sheets, I know that these goals actually matter to me. Knowing this gives me the extra motivation to keep at it!
Cultivate our Home
- Paint our apartment, and feeling super excited about this one!
- Grout and caulk our shower to prevent mold problems
- Follow this cleaning routine every day
Engage God with my Whole Heart
- Create a prayer spread in my bullet journal again and use it daily.
- Do a study on the book of James using the process in this book.
- Play worship music every day
Connect with Loved Ones
- Create a ‘must call’ list. It sounds so ridiculous to write this out as a goal. I feel like I should just be able to do this instinctively? But last year proved that I can’t, so I’m getting more organized this year.
- Pick a time or day to make phone calls / Facetime / Marco Polo
Strengthen my Body
Explore our Neck of the Woods
- Put our next adventure on the calendar
- GO on our adventure this time!
Be a Memory Keeper
- Decide on a time of day that I’ll post. I know that if it’s too random I’ll let it slide.
- Share 20 pictures on Instagram.
Deposit my Words Online
- Plan time slots to blog every week. I’m still not sure yet if these will be the same every week or if I need to plan time slots each week.
- Publish 2 new blog posts each week – 8 in total!
Build a Local Community
- Attend a book club meeting
- Plan my next book club – whether it’s the same group or a different one
- Attend the welcome meeting at our church – this is about a year overdue and I’m excited to finally go!
What are your February 2020 goals?
