Overcome Mental Blocks with Guided Journaling
Sitting down in front of the keyboard: What to write? How to write? Why write? Some days, it’s a chore. A flavor of perfectionism creates an obstacle to starting when I don't have a clear vision of where I want to go or what the final outcome should look like.
Guided journaling can be a useful tool to get unstuck. It provides the writer with a prompt to reflect on, compared to free-form journaling where thoughts simply flow from your fingertips onto the page. Guided journaling has some structure, directing your thoughts toward specific topics of self-discovery.
Photo by Cathryn Lavery on Unsplash
A quick detour…
Labels are a funny thing. They make things relatable and help us communicate, but they also put a box around whatever they’re defining. Reflecting on “guided journaling,” it's a practice I engage in regularly, though I've never labeled it as such. For that matter, I rarely call my writing "journaling"; to me, it's always been just writing, with little need to name it anything else.
Moving past my labeling hang-ups, I have previously declared that writing does not come easily to me; I have to work at it. Guided journaling removes some of the onus by providing a starting point to focus my thoughts.
Benefits of Guided Journaling
Creating Focus: Prompts steer your thinking toward specific areas, making the writing and reflection process more manageable and less onerous.
Deeper Insights: Guided prompts encourage you to explore topics you might not have considered (or might have avoided) on your own, taking you to places you might not have examined.
Enhanced Self-Awareness: As you continue to journal, patterns and recurring themes in your thoughts and behaviors emerge.
With reflective writing, you are both the author and the audience. Playing both roles can be revealing but also taxing. Reflective Rhythm offers an AI companion that listens and responds, acting as the audience. It tailors prompts to guide your journaling and explore your thoughts more thoroughly.
Reflective Rhythm is not a guided journal, per se, but it offers a guided process for reflective writing. The journey of reflection starts with you. What are you thinking about? The AI companion collaborates with you to explore ideas, asking questions—prompts—to examine the facets of the topic at hand. In essence, it’s a semi-guided process (you're still at the wheel).
Don’t know where to start? Here are some example prompts to reflect on:
What am I grateful for right now? (I am guilty of writing about a good cup of coffee more than once…)
Did you experience a challenging situation recently? Describe the situation and how it made you feel.
Did something go well recently? Celebrate the win. What was it, and how did that make you feel?
Here’s a light example with a small gratitude and appreciation for a good morning cup of coffee:
Me
I am grateful for a good cup of coffee in the morning.
Reflective Rhythm
What is it about a good cup of coffee in the morning that you find most satisfying? Is it the taste, the ritual, or something else entirely?
Me
There is the ritual aspect of brewing coffee: Getting out the scale and measuring out precisely 30 grams of beans. Hand grinding the beans. The sound and the effort of the grinding. The first smell of the bloom. Sitting down at the breakfast table for the first sip. But also a good cup of coffee is smooth. And heat warms the body and soul.
Reflective Rhythm
It sounds like the whole process of making coffee, from the precise measurements to the grinding, creates a mindful morning ritual for you. How does this ritual impact the rest of your day? Does it set a specific tone or mindset?
Me
That's right. Not by design, per se; it's more of a mindfulness activity. Also, regardless of the chaos of the day, the cup of coffee creates a predictable start.
I would argue that a gratitude journal is a very precise form of guided journaling. What are you grateful for today? That seems trivial, but it causes you to focus and reflect.
A Mini-Challenge: What is one thing that you are grateful for today? Reflect on that for a moment. Bonus points: Why?
Guided journaling helps reduce friction in reflective writing. Life’s small frictions can create barriers that slow us down or prevent us altogether from starting a consistent habit. Use the tools that work for you. If guided journaling helps you reflect regularly, embrace it.
If you’re curious to try a reflective writing practice through Reflective Rhythm, you have a standing invitation.
