Spiritual Journal Prompts: 36 Questions

By the Awaken Library Editorial TeamEditorial Team Updated October 20, 2026Oct 20, 2026 How we write

Spiritual journal prompts are short questions about your inner life to write about. Here is one for today; all 36 are below.

An open journal with a pen, a cup of tea, a candle and a sprig of rosemary on a wooden table, with a woman sitting by a sunrise window behind

The prompts ask you to notice: what happened in a sitting, what you were glad of, what you dreamed, what mattered today. Pick one, write for five to twenty minutes, and stop.

All 36 spiritual journal prompts

Every prompt has a depth. Level 1, Notice: you write down what is there. Level 2, Connect: you look for a link or a repeat. Level 3, Name the cost: you name what you avoid or what something costs you. Start at Level 1 in any theme. Under each prompt is the idea it came from; 14 of the 36 are simply ours, and we say so.

After meditation

For the few minutes after you sit, pray or do yoga, while the session is still fresh.

Level 1 · Notice When the sitting ends, what do you notice first: the body, a sound in the room or a thought? Write one or two lines. Our prompt.
Level 1 · Notice What did your attention keep returning to today? Write it down without grading the sitting as good or bad. Our prompt.
Level 2 · Connect Did anything come up that you did not expect: an image, a memory, a mood? Describe it as you would to someone who was not there. Idea (adapted): Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Diary (1544–45), a record of what moved him in prayer.
Level 2 · Connect Where does your mind go when it wanders? Look back over your last few entries: is it the same place? Our prompt.
Level 3 · Name the cost Which part of your life do you use the sitting to step away from? Name it plainly. Idea (adapted): John Welwood (1984) on using meditation to bypass “unfinished business”.
Level 3 · Name the cost If you stopped this practice tomorrow, what would you miss and what would you not miss? Answer honestly, not loyally. Our prompt.

Gratitude

Once a week is enough; see the research section for why more is not better.

Level 1 · Notice List up to five things from the last week that you were glad of. Pick one and write what it was like in the moment. Idea (from the source): Emmons & McCullough (2003), gratitude lists; Lyubomirsky and colleagues (2005), once a week.
Level 1 · Notice Whose small act made today easier? What exactly did they do? Idea (adapted): Emmons & McCullough (2003): gratitude may have “interpersonal benefits”.
Level 2 · Connect Pick something you use every day without a thought. Write what your day would look like without it. Our prompt.
Level 2 · Connect Write about a good thing that came with a cost. Can you keep the thanks and the cost side by side without canceling either? Idea (loosely related): Emmons & McCullough (2003) compared “blessings” with “hassles”.
Level 3 · Name the cost Write a thank-you note to someone you find it hard to thank. You do not have to send it. Idea (loosely related): Gratitude letters, a common type of gratitude exercise (Cregg & Cheavens, 2021).
Level 3 · Name the cost Is gratitude ever the thing you reach for to avoid a complaint you have every right to make? Write the complaint plainly first. Idea (loosely related): Spiritual bypassing (Welwood, 1984); small effects of gratitude (Cregg & Cheavens, 2021).

Dreams

For the first minutes after waking. Record first, interpret later or never.

Level 1 · Notice Write whatever you remember of last night: a whole dream, one image, or only a feeling on waking. No interpreting yet. Idea (from the source): Schredl (2002): a dream diary raised recall in people who remember few dreams.
Level 1 · Notice If you remember nothing, write how you woke up and what your first thought was. Idea (adapted): Schredl (2002): in people who already remember many dreams, a diary lowered recall.
Level 2 · Connect Which parts of yesterday show up in the dream, in any form? List them, then list what is new. Idea (from the source): Schredl & Hofmann (2003), the continuity between waking life and dreams.
Level 2 · Connect What was the strongest feeling in the dream, and where in your day was that feeling last present? Idea (loosely related): Schredl and Erlacher (2007): some dreams are reported as giving emotional insight.
Level 3 · Name the cost Does an image or scene come back? Write what stays the same each time and what changes. Our prompt.
Level 3 · Name the cost If someone else had dreamed this, what would you want to ask them? Write the question, not an answer. Our prompt.

Meaning and values

For a quiet evening or a Sunday, when you have twenty minutes.

Level 1 · Notice When did today feel worth the effort? What were you doing and who was there? Idea (loosely related): Steger and colleagues (2006): having meaning vs searching for it.
Level 1 · Notice Name three things you spent time on this week. Which would you choose again? Our prompt.
Level 2 · Connect Write for twenty minutes about your life ten years from now, if things went as well as they reasonably could. Idea (from the source): Laura King (2001), the “best possible self” exercise.
Level 2 · Connect Which value do you say matters most? Look at last week’s calendar: where can it be seen? Our prompt.
Level 3 · Name the cost Which two things you hold dear cannot both win this month? Write what each one costs you. Our prompt.
Level 3 · Name the cost What have you been putting off that you would regret never doing? Name one step toward it that fits into twenty minutes. Idea (from the source): Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.4: “Remember how long thou hast been putting off these things”.

Presence in ordinary life

Short exercises you do first and write about afterward.

Level 1 · Notice Step outside for five minutes. Write only what the senses report: what you see, hear and feel on your skin. Our prompt.
Level 1 · Notice Describe one ordinary task from today as if you were seeing it for the first time. Idea (loosely related): Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.5: “do what thou hast in hand”.
Level 2 · Connect Whom did you really listen to today, without composing your reply? What did you hear? Our prompt.
Level 2 · Connect Marcus Aurelius wrote that you can retire into yourself whenever you choose. Where in today could you do that for one minute? Idea (from the source): Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.3.
Level 3 · Name the cost Who in your life do you only half attend to? What would full attention cost you? Our prompt.
Level 3 · Name the cost Spend five minutes with no phone and no task. Write what rushes in to fill the gap. Our prompt.

Evening review

A five-minute look back at the day, adapted from the Ignatian Examen.

Level 1 · Notice Name two or three things from today you are thankful for, small ones included. Idea (from the source): Ignatius, the General Examen, point 1 (“give thanks”).
Level 1 · Notice Walk through the day in three parts: morning, afternoon, evening. One line each: what happened and how it felt. Idea (from the source): Ignatius, the General Examen, point 3 (“hour by hour, or period by period”).
Level 2 · Connect Look at today’s thoughts, words and actions. Which one would you repeat, and which would you change? Idea (from the source): Ignatius, the General Examen, point 3 (“thoughts … words … acts”).
Level 2 · Connect What would you like to see more clearly about today before you sleep? Idea (adapted): Ignatius, the General Examen, point 2, in a secular form.
Level 3 · Name the cost Does anything from today call for an apology, to someone else or to yourself? Write the sentence you would say. Idea (adapted): Ignatius, the General Examen, point 4, in a secular form.
Level 3 · Name the cost What is one thing you will do differently tomorrow? Keep it small enough to finish before noon. Idea (from the source): Ignatius, the General Examen, point 5 (“purpose amendment”).

What is spiritual journaling?

Spiritual journaling is writing regularly about your inner life, with attention rather than a goal. There is no single method, and the old examples look little like a diary.

Ignatius of Loyola made a short daily review, the Examen, part of his Spiritual Exercises (first printed in Latin in 1548). In the 1914 English translation by Elder Mullan it “contains in it five Points”: to give thanks, to ask to see clearly, to go over the day “hour by hour, or period by period”, “first as to thoughts, and then as to words, and then as to acts”, to ask pardon, and to resolve to do better. Ignatius also kept a spiritual diary himself, from February 1544 to February 1545, noting what moved him in prayer. The Examen is a prayer addressed to God and built around sin and forgiveness; the Evening review prompts above are our secular adaptation of its order. If you pray, the original text is free online.
Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 to 180, wrote the Meditations as notes to himself; the Greek title means “to himself”, and he almost certainly never meant them for readers. They are not dated entries. They are reminders, such as “Look within. Within is the fountain of good” (7.59, George Long’s 1862 translation).
Quaker journals, like George Fox’s, are often cited as spiritual journaling. A 2024 study of Fox’s Journal describes it as a life story written looking back, “not a journal in the sense of being written serially, in the moment, day by day”. So it is a different genre from a daily notebook.

What these have in common is a regular look at your own attention, and a short record of it.

How to start a spiritual journal

Pick a time you already have. Right after meditation, right after waking (for dreams), or the last five minutes before sleep (for the evening review).
Use one prompt. The question for today at the top of the page is enough. If nothing comes after a few minutes, press “Another question”.
Write what happened first, then how it felt. In a study of 122 students (Ullrich and Lutgendorf, 2002), writing only about emotions went with more symptoms than writing about thoughts and emotions together.
Keep it short. Five minutes for a review, up to twenty for a big question. Laura King’s “best possible self” study used twenty minutes on four days.
Do gratitude weekly, not daily. In one six-week study, counting blessings once a week helped and three times a week did not (more below).
Read back once a month. Look for what keeps coming up. A repeat tells you which prompt to take next.

A paper notebook or a file on your phone both work. The tool at the top does not keep anything: copy or download your answer if you want to keep it.

What an entry can look like

This is a made-up example, not a reader’s entry, for the evening prompt “Walk through the day in three parts”.

Morning: rushed, snapped at my son about his shoes. Felt tight in the chest all the way to work.
Afternoon: long meeting, but the walk back in the sun was good. First time I noticed the trees have turned.
Evening: cooked with my partner, laughed about the shoe fight. I want to say sorry to him tomorrow before school, not after.

Three lines: one tense moment, one good one, and one small step for tomorrow.

What research says about writing it down

We found no study of “spiritual journaling” as such. The closest research is on gratitude lists, writing about goals, dream diaries and writing about emotions. Most of it was done with students, and most effects are small.

Study	What was done	What it found
Emmons and McCullough, 2003	three experiments: weekly or daily lists of blessings, burdens or neutral events	gratitude groups had higher wellbeing on several, “though not all”, measures; positive mood was the clearest result
Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and Schkade, 2005	students counted blessings once or three times a week for six weeks	happiness rose only in the once-a-week group; the authors guessed the others got bored
Davis and colleagues, 2016	meta-analysis of gratitude exercises	small gains in wellbeing; no clear effect on anxiety; no better than other active exercises
Cregg and Cheavens, 2021	meta-analysis, 27 studies, 3,675 people	a small effect on depression and anxiety symptoms; the authors suggest better-tested treatments for those
King, 2001	81 students wrote for 20 minutes on four days about trauma, their “best possible self”, both, or a neutral topic	writing about goals was less upsetting than writing about trauma and raised wellbeing
Schredl, 2002	285 people kept a dream diary for two weeks	recall went up in low and medium recallers and down in high recallers
Frattaroli, 2006	meta-analysis of 146 randomized studies of writing about personal topics	a real but small average effect (r = 0.075)

In short, the effects are modest. Short, regular writing tends to lift mood a little and can help you remember more of your dreams. It is not a treatment for depression or anxiety, and we found nothing showing that it speeds up spiritual growth.

When writing doesn’t help

Writing can bring feelings up. Feeling more stirred up right after a session is common and usually passes the same evening. Some signs that the journal is not helping right now:

you return to the same painful question every day and feel worse each time. That is closer to rumination, which research links to longer and deeper low moods (Nolen-Hoeksema and colleagues, 2008), than to reflection;
a prompt brings back memories that keep flooding in after you close the notebook;
low mood, anxiety or poor sleep have lasted for weeks and get in the way of work or people.

Then put the journal down for a while and talk to someone: a friend, your doctor or a therapist. Our help page lists free lines in the US, the UK and elsewhere. If the practice itself is what feels wrong, our page on spiritual bypassing covers using practice to step around a problem, and dark night of the soul covers long dry spells in practice.

Christian prayer journals, dream dictionaries, shadow work: where this page stops

This is not a Christian devotional, and it doesn’t give Bible verses to reflect on; a church or a devotional book does that better. It doesn’t interpret dream symbols either: the dream prompts only help you record and compare. And it doesn’t ask about envy, shame or childhood rules. Those questions are on our shadow work prompts page, with the background in what shadow work is.

What this page does not promise. The prompts won’t make you more spiritual, wake anything up or heal anything. A dream journal doesn’t reveal what your dreams “mean”. The tool keeps nothing: when you close the tab, your answer is gone unless you copied or downloaded it.

Frequently asked questions

What is spiritual journaling?

Writing regularly about your inner life. Ignatius’s Examen and Marcus Aurelius’s notes to himself are two old models. More: What is spiritual journaling? ↑

How do I start a spiritual journal?

One prompt, five to twenty minutes, then stop. A one-line entry counts. More: How to start a spiritual journal ↑

What should I write in a spiritual journal?

What happened first, then how it felt. The meaning can come later or not at all. More: How to start a spiritual journal ↑

How often should I write in a spiritual journal?

For gratitude, once a week worked better than three times in one study. For the rest there is no data. More: What research says about writing it down ↑

Is journaling a spiritual practice?

It can be: Ignatius made a daily review part of his Spiritual Exercises. More: What is spiritual journaling? ↑

Does a dream journal help you remember dreams?

For people who remember few dreams, yes. For people who already remember many, recall went down. More: What research says about writing it down ↑

Can journaling make you feel worse?

Sometimes, right after writing. Feeling worse for days is a reason to stop. More: When writing doesn’t help ↑

What is the difference between spiritual journal prompts and shadow work prompts?

These are about practice. Shadow work prompts ask about irritation, envy and shame. More: Where this page stops ↑

Spiritual Journal Prompts: 36 Questions

Your question for today

All 36 spiritual journal prompts

After meditation

Gratitude

Dreams

Meaning and values

Presence in ordinary life

Evening review

What is spiritual journaling?

How to start a spiritual journal

What an entry can look like

What research says about writing it down

When writing doesn’t help

Christian prayer journals, dream dictionaries, shadow work: where this page stops

Frequently asked questions

Sources (18)