Journals are kept for all sorts of reasons, including self-reflection and personal growth, problem-solving, decision-making, inspiration, creativity, tracking health and fitness, or just to document their lives.
It’s a highly personalized working document, somewhere safe for people to divulge their innermost thoughts and feelings. Need to vent? Your journal has a blank page just waiting for some ink. Thoughts can often get lost or conflated when they exist only in our minds, so a journal is a chance to make sense of them on paper and park them for later reflection.
One way to improve your journaling practice is to use prompts. Prompts are great because they can help to channel your writing in a particular direction.
It’s easy for a journal to become an indiscriminate brain dump. The right prompts can elicit responses that will focus your journaling in a way that’s constructive and more helpful.
What Is Manifestation Journaling?
Manifestation journaling combines the power of writing with intention-setting, attraction, mindset, and taking positive action.
Manifestation journaling involves writing about your goals, dreams, and desires, committing them to paper, and creating a clear vision of what you want to achieve and how.
Manifestation involves developing a positive mindset and believing that something can be achieved by focusing and aligning your thoughts, actions, and energy. Keeping a journal directly supports that by including, for example, gratitude statements, affirmations, and detailed descriptions of ideal outcomes. Regular entries help reinforce positive thoughts and maintain focus.
Prompts
These thought-provoking questions and statements are designed to get you thinking and writing about what’s most relevant to your goals, rather than aimlessly meandering through what happens to be on your mind at the time.
Prompts related to manifestation specifically can be a powerful aid, by choosing ones that focus on:
- The clarification of goals
- Visualization of dreams and desires
- Alignment of thoughts, aspirations, and actions
- Developing greater self-awareness
- Boosting confidence
- Confronting limiting beliefs
- Gratitude statements
- Shifting focus from lack and scarcity towards abundance and possibility
- Maintaining a positive outlook
Benefits
Using journal prompts might not seem like much, but they offer some huge benefits:
- Improved self-awareness by prompting reflection on values, priorities, and aspirations.
- Boosts motivation by keeping goals front and center.
- Writing about desires/outcomes regularly can increase confidence and belief in the ability to succeed.
- Journaling also serves as a stress-reduction tool. It provides an outlet for expressing emotions and working through obstacles.
- Improved clarity in decision-making. By articulating goals clearly, individuals often gain insights into necessary steps for achievement.
- Consistent journaling can lead to increased positivity and optimism.
- Focusing on possibilities rather than limitations can shift perspective and approach to challenges.
What to Include in a Journal Entry
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all for journal entries. Prompts are incredibly helpful and formatted journals can be purchased too. But there’s no getting around the fact that experience wins the day. In other words, you’ll get better the more you practice, gradually refining your process over time with consistent effort, honing in on what works for you.
That said, do start each entry with the date (sounds obvious but when you look back, you’ll want to know when the entry was made!) and a quick check-in with yourself. How do you feel? What’s your current state of mind? How is that going to influence what you write? There’s no right answer, I just like to be mindful of where my head is at.
Getting started can sometimes be difficult. I get hit with writer’s block all the time. An easy way to get the ball rolling is with gratitude. I think anyone can benefit from writing down anywhere from 3-10 things they’re thankful for. That could be done as part of a morning or end-of-day journaling session. Other questions you might like to ask:
Use vivid and detailed language to paint a full picture of what you want to manifest. The more specific your journaling, the clearer your intentions become.
A vague statement like “I want to be happy,” misses the mark because it’s unspecific and conveys lack. In terms of manifesting journaling, that’s putting out negative energy into the Universe and what becomes embedded in your subconscious is that you’re not happy now.
Specify what happiness looks like for you. Write in the present tense as if your desires have already manifested. For example, “I feel joy and contentment in my fulfilling career and working relationships.”
This helps shift your mindset, raise your vibration, and align your energy with your goals. This also feeds into the actions you’ll take, based on what you already believe to be true.
Incorporate these elements into your entries:
- Expressions of gratitude
- Positive affirmations and statements
- Visualizations of your desired outcomes
- Action steps toward your goals
- Daily reflections
- Challenges and actions to overcome them
Emotions are important to manifestation. Don’t hold back, express your feelings, both positive and negative. Acknowledging emotions helps you process them, take any corrective action, and move on.
Prompts: Daily Manifestation
Morning
The purpose of these prompts is to keep them focused on intention setting, gratitude, and affirmations.
- What are three things I want to achieve today that align with my manifestation goal(s)?
- What activities can I do today that will raise my vibration?
- What manifestation rituals will I do today?
- What three (or as many as you can think of) things am I grateful for this morning?
- Who am I thankful for in my life and why?
- Write, or select (from a list if you have one) three positive affirmations to start the day.
Evening
The evening is a chance to reflect and look ahead to tomorrow. So you might want to choose prompts that focus on achievements (as they relate to your manifestation efforts), lessons, and planning for tomorrow.
- What progress did I make towards my manifestation goal(s) today?
- What did I learn about getting closer to my manifestation goals?
- What signs or synchronicities did I notice today?
- What activities did I do today to help raise my vibration?
- What drained my emotions and/or time today?
Prompts: Goal Setting and Actions
Specifying and Detailing Your Manifestation Goals
- What are my top three goals for the next year? Are they specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART)?
- What would my ideal life look like in five years? What steps can I take to create that reality?
- Why is this goal important to me?
- How will achieving my goals positively impact my life, and/or the lives of others?
- What rewards will I give myself for achieving my goals?
Steps, Progress, and Milestones
- What steps can I take to move closer to my manifestation goals today?
- How did I make progress towards my goals today?
- How can I break down my goal into smaller, manageable tasks?
- The steps I will take today to move closer to my manifestation goals are…
- What obstacles might I face in achieving my goals? How can I overcome them?
- The resources and support I need to accomplish my goal(s) are…
- What milestones can I set to track my progress?
- Thinking back about the day/ week/month, or another period…note down what you’ve done to move towards your manifestation goal. Write 2+ points as evidence.
- I will reward myself with [state your incentive here] for achieving [insert goal(s) here]
- I am going to do [insert objective].
- This is what I’ve done that goes against achieving that, and this is what I’ll do to stop that from happening again
- This is what I’ve done towards that goal [insert action], and now this is what I’ll do to improve that further
Prompts: Gratitude
- What are three 3-10 things you are grateful for today? Listing three to get you into the right frame of mind is absolutely fine. But I know that some practitioners are listing 10 or more. Do what feels best and most comfortable.
- Write statements of gratitude for the things you’re trying to manifest, as if they’ve already manifested.
- How has practicing gratitude benefitted my life?
- How can I better express gratitude to the people in my life?
- What small things do I overlook that I should be grateful for?
- What difficult situation has happened recently and what can I find to be grateful for?
Prompts: Prosperity and Abundance
- What limiting beliefs do I hold about money, and how can I reframe them?
- How can I shift from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset regarding money?
- I am good at managing money because [insert 1-5 reasons]
- What are the different opportunities I have to make money? (include main income stream, i.e. a job, and other streams such as an online side hustle or odd jobs on Airtasker)
Prompts: Overcoming Challenges
- What was a recent challenge I faced and how did I persist despite the difficulties faced?
- How can I stay motivated and focused on my goals when faced with challenges?
- [Consider a bad thing that happened to you and ask…] How is this the best thing that could have happened to me? You’re looking for the positives in a genuinely adverse/overwhelming/disheartening/awful situation, trying to reframe your thinking.
- To overcome the challenge of worry/anxiety about something happening in the future…
- What are you feeling worried or anxious about?
- What could you do to remedy or at least mitigate the issue?
- Being as realistic as possible, what is the most likely outcome that you would bet on happening?
- When you need evidence to bolster your self-confidence when trying to achieve a new goal…
- I am confident that I can [insert a skill or a goal such as achieving health outcomes or completing a course of education] because I have already achieved/improved [state something that you have already proved that you can achieve].
- This statement can apply to any size of achievement. You’re just trying to give yourself a boost in confidence.
Prompts: Relationships, Love, and Connection
Self-love and self-worth
- What things do I love most about myself?
- The affirmations I will use to boost my self-worth are…
- List 2-5 things that I’m good at (
- List five ways I can show more love and appreciation to myself daily.
- What qualities do I most admire in others, and how can I nuture them in myself?
Attracting Healthy, Kind, and Supportive Relationships
- In detail, describe my ideal romantic partner and relationship.
- What does a healthy relationship look like to me?
- What steps can I take to attract more positive, supportive people into my life?
- What steps can I take to meet new people?
- How can I attract relationships that align with my values?
Healing from Past Relationships
- In what ways are my past relationships the best things that have happened to me?
- What am I grateful to have learned from my past relationships?
- I’m grateful for my past relationships because [reasons ABC], happy with my life today [reasons DEF], and excited about my future because [reasons XYZ]
- I forgive those [replace with names if appropriate] who have harmed me in the past and calmly push any thought of them from my mind
- Write a letter of forgiveness to someone who has hurt me
Better Managing Existing Relationships (manifesting an improved relationship)
- What am I most grateful for about my current partner?
- How do I communicate what I’m most grateful for about my current partner?
- What boundaries do I need to set to maintain healthy relationships?
- In what ways could I make my partner feel more loved?
- How do I offer support to those that I care about and love?
- How have I self-sabotaged relationships in the past? What I’ll replace those negative patterns of behavior with…
- How do I respond when someone opens up to share their feelings and emotions with me? Is that the right way to respond and what would I change?
- If I was a friend who was giving me advice on my current romantic relationship situation right now (and I really wanted that relationship to succeed). What advice would I give?
- What past relationship patterns no longer serve me, and how can I change them?
Prompts: Career
Employed
- Describe my ideal career in detail. How does it make me feel?
- What job/career would I want if I knew that I could not fail?
- Write a letter to my present self from my future self, describing the amazing career I’ve had.
- What does work-life balance mean to me? How can you manifest it in my career?
- Visualize your ideal salary. How would manifesting that change your life?
- What did I learn [today / this week / this month] at work?
- What goals do I want to accomplish this [month/quarter/year]? And how will I achieve them?
- What am I grateful for in my current role?
- How can I improve my current role to better prepare me for my next career move?
- How are the negative things I have or am experiencing in my current role, in fact benefitting me?
- What is holding me back from making a career change? And what actions can I take to overcome those blocks?
Self-employed / Entrepreneur
- If I were to start my own business, what would it be? (in detail)
- What positive things do I believe about myself as an entrepreneur/business owner?
- Visualize my business in 12 months [or a different point in the future]. What is happening? How much is it making? How does it feel to be successful? Describe this is full detail.
- What are the biggest challenges I face in my business? What fixes can I put in place to overcome them?
- What is holding me back from growing my business? And what actions can I take to overcome those blocks?
Use these prompts to guide your manifestation journaling, raise your vibe, help take the right actions, and set you on course to achieve the outcomes you want. Please share your own manifestation journal prompts and experiences in the comments section!