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This month’s journaling prompts on the theme of SELF-CONFIDENCE are designed to help you build a steady, grounded belief in yourself. Not by forcing positivity, but by gently understanding how you think, feel, and show up in your everyday life.
Mini-theme: Awakening Awareness and Compassion
Today’s Prompt: List three ways my struggles connect me to the shared human experience, fostering kindness toward myself.
These are my personal responses to today’s prompt designed to encourage you to use the prompts to develop your journaling practice. If you are not already receiving the monthly themed prompt calendar there is a sign up box below and you are very welcome to come and join us.
I am learning to be kind towards myself but it is not something that has come naturally in the adult years of my life. I felt that being kind towards myself was probably something that I needed to deserve.
So I’m finding this prompt rather hard. List three ways my struggles connect me to the shared human experience….
Well, difficulties in life are a shared human experience.
Rather naively I previously thought that difficulties could be avoided, and even were to be avoided, if at all possible. I look back now and think about people who talked about difficulties they were experiencing and I just thought, ‘Well, don’t do it.’ I just thought, if it’s that painful, don’t do it.
I didn’t realise that the struggle is part of the whole experience. And that it connects us. We all struggle. There’s no shame in that.
Even as I write this now this is still such a revelation to me. The struggle is part of the whole experience. Like Jim Rohn said, ‘Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.’ (That might have been Earl Schoff via Jim Rohn). And Zig Ziglar who I love said, ‘There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.’
The struggle is part of the whole experience. I wanted to run and hide from any struggle I might have been facing, and yet that struggle/difficulty was the very element that connected me to humanity.
Humility is also part of my struggle. Accepting that I’m not perfect. Actcepting that I’m ordinary, flawed, full of contradictions, yes. But also that I’m trying my best. Humility is grounding. For a while I didn’t want to accept my flaws and contradictions because I didn’t want to be imperfect. And what we don’t accept in ourselves we are critical of in others, and I was probably critical of other peoples’ flaws and contradictions because I didn’t want to accept that in others which I couldn’t accept in myself. Being humble and accepting myself as I am has enabled me to not only be kinder to myself, but help me to view this as a shared human condition.
Time. I have let time tie me up in knots. I should have achieved something bigger when I was younger. It’s too late now. Why have I wasted my time. Where has time gone. The ways I have used time against myself is crazy. Because I can’t control time. It just rolls on by. I thought that in some way I could control time, hoard time, not let it go. But there is nothing any of us can do. And we’ve all been there. Well most of us. For many of us we’ve taken detours in our lives, veered off course, taken the long route when we thought it was a short cut. We’re just all on this planet together, bound by time. Accepting that has been hugely releasing and has made me kinder on myself. And a bit wiser too. There are events that have happened in my life that I wouldn’t want to happen again, that were seriously derailing. And now I realise that it is not that they have happened that is the important factor. It is it the way that I have responded that is the important factor. And I’m really proud of myself, not only for realising that, but also for living it out. In the world. With all you other wonderful humans.
Loved this prompt. Found it hard, ended up loving it.
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You can also view previous month’s themes here:
December Journal Prompts CLOSURE
November Journal Prompts PRACTICE
October Journal Prompts SEASONAL SHIFTS