90+ Powerful Sentence Prompts

Questions to provoke new perspectives on your problems, strengths, identity, & ambitions.

I’ve written before about the importance of introspective journaling.

It’s a mainstay of my morning routine.

Over the years I have gathered and curated a list of journaling questions to stimulate this reflective process.

Whenever I’m not sure what to write, I return to this list for some inspiration.

It contains over 90 powerful sentence prompts and questions.

Much has been written about good questions. They’re open-ended yet exacting, provocative yet welcoming, surprising yet so obvious they’re easily overlooked.

I hope some of these prompts throw you “off-balance” in search of something deeper.

I want to provoke the emergence of new perspectives, shine light on the shadow, and dream the inconceivable.

A Few Notes on The Reflective Process

Most of these are rooted in uncovering the nooks and crannies of your individual psyche. I want to point out this bias toward an individual, psychological worldview.

Asking how these inquiries can inform our actions and commitments towards a collective reimagining of our world is an equally important step.

Individual transformational and collective transformation must go hand-in-hand.

I am sad to say I have not tracked the various sources of these questions. They have been pulled from numerous books, articles, podcasts, conversations, and meditations.

I want to give credit to any and all of the people whose wisdom this represents. I also want to acknowledge the timeless nature of these questions and the long tradition of deep inquiry itself.

With our questions, we make the world.

I hope you enjoy them. My suggestion is to be creative and have fun!

Ways To Get Started

If you’re looking for a few ways to get started, you can try:

• A Question A Day: Pick one prompt for journaling each day.

• Power Hour: Set a timer for 3min and free-write to each prompt.

• Beholding: Choose a question. Read it and just sit. Don’t write anything. Be with the question. Let yourself daydream.

• Ask A Friend: Pick one prompt and share it with a friend. Listen mindfully to their response.

• Creative Expression: Respond to a question through anything other than written words. You can sing, dance, draw or express yourself creatively.

• Group Check-in/Icebreaker: Use one of these as a question for a group to stimulate conversation.

• Double-Take: Spend 5min answering one question. Then pause and answer it again with an entirely new response. Compare the two. Which feels more true to you?

Stay Mindful of Your (Judgy) Reactions

If you’re choosing to write, challenge yourself to write as boldly, honestly, and vulnerably as possible. 

You will get out what you put in. The more you’re willing to divulge, the more of you will emerge.

That said, it is important to recognize that your psychological immune system will likely kick in to protect you from uncomfortable truths. For now, let’s just call these knee-jerk reactions to not deal with the difficult stuff “protectors parts”.

Protector parts are neither good nor bad, positive nor negative. They just are natural parts of our storytelling selves.

Protectors come in many flavors. Two that are most important for this exercise are the inner judger and an inner perfectionist.

The perfectionist in us is keen to make the most idealized, polished, and positive meaning of the questions below.

The judger will try to avoid, evade, and deflect responsibility.

Your job is to stay aware of both as you reflect.

Both are concerned with looking good, getting praise, or appearing to have figured it out. Both can be disempowering, stripping you of your creativity. Both can be dodges for honest answers.

There are no “right” answers. You’re not being graded. There is no prize for completion.

This is an ongoing practice of noticing what is true for you in this moment.

Orienting Yourself Before You Begin

Notice your experience as you read through the questions and write:

• What easily came to mind?

• What felt more difficult to write about?

• What were you experiencing in your body as you were writing? 

• Did you notice sensations stir within you?

• Did anything surprise you?

• Wich questions jumped out at you?

• Which questions did you immediately want to avoid?

We cannot heal what we ignore.

We cannot live happily and healthfully if we keep running away from taking an honest look at ourselves.

Take all these questions as invitations to embrace your shadow and become more whole.

If you cannot accept the resistance or judgy aspects of yourself and choose to return to a humble, honest inquiry, now is not the right time to do this exercise.

Good luck!

The Living List of Questions:

1. How far does my love extend?

2. My biggest challenge in life is…?
   

3. What have I failed to grieve?
   

4. The most wonderous thing is…?
   

5. I’ve inherited…?
   

6. When I am at my best, I…?
   

7. How would I impact others if I showed up at my best? What prevents me from doing so?
   

8. What would love do in this situation?

9. The world became a fundamentally different place when…?
   

10. The quality I wish I had more of is…?

11. I am bothered by…?
    

12. The joy I share most easily is…?
    

13. I cannot afford to…?

14. The hardest thing for me to accept is…?

15. My greatest strength (i.e. personal superpower) is…?
    

16. A thing I judge others most for is…?

17. When I look at the world and see ____ my heart breaks? 
    

18. What do I risk when I fight? What do I lose when I choose not to fight?

19. I give love by…?
    

20. A belief I’m afraid to say is…?

21. The voice I listen to most is…?
    

22. I prefer to receive love in the form of…?

23. I exist for…?

24. The person I most need to forgive is…? (including yourself!)

25. I have harmed others by…?

26. In 5 years I will be…?

27. The habit I have the hardest time letting go of is…?

28. The thing I am most afraid to admit is…?
    

29. I could use more accountability with…?
    

30. The gift I feel called to give the world is…?

31. The one thing my future self most wants to tell me is…?

32. The one thing my younger self most needed to say but never got the chance is…?

33. The emotion I am most scared to feel is…?

34. My deepest hopes are…? 

35. My opponents are…?
    

36. If my situation were perfect, it would look like...?
    

37. If our situation were ideal, it would look like…?

38. If I had a magic wand, I would...?

39. My favorite hero (role model, guru, etc.) would tell me to...?

40. If I had one week to live, I would…?

41. I say I value _____, but really…?

42. The social norm I most dislike is…?
    

43. How can I be a generative force of social justice?

44. A belief I accept as true is…? 

45. The thing/person I am most afraid to lose is…?

46. The aspect of myself I’m most scared to let go of is…?

47. I believe the purpose of life is…?

48. My best childhood friend would tell me…? 

49. If I could erase the last year and do it all again, I would…? 

50. These are my darkest confessions…? 

51. I have changed my view on…?

52. The lesson I need to practice is…?

53. I no longer claim to understand…?

54. The really original advice I would give myself is...?

55. I feel ashamed to admit that I…?

56. I would surprise myself if I…?

57. I could be wrong about…?
    

58. A person I admire for their ___ is…?
    

59. I am most hypocritical when it comes to…?
    

60. A lesson I learned from heartbreak was…?
    

61. The conversation I know I need to have with myself is…?
    

62. The best piece of advice I received was…?
    

63. I knew I was no longer a child when…?
    

64. A lesson from my family that I want to hold onto is…?
    

65. I am not an easy person to live with because…?
    

66. If I had a different career/studied a different topic, I would…?
    

67. The person I want to become is… (but…)?
    

68. The most challenging thing about being me is…?
    

69. The most wonderful thing about being me is…?
    

70. I am pretending…?
    

71. Parts of myself I have learned to hide include?
    

72. What would my partner or favorite person in the world say are my top 3 strengths?
    

73. What would my partner or favorite person in the world say are my top 3 weaknesses?
    

74. The part of myself I love the most is…?
    

75. The part of myself I struggle with the most is…?
    

76. Describe the superhero that would save me from myself?
    

77. I am most committed to…?
    

78. Who or what am I avoiding coming into an authentic relationship with right now?
    

79. How and when am I unavailable to those who need me?
    

80. The conversation I need to stop having with myself is…?

81. How am I going to last?

82. If nothing changed, would that be ok? Why?

83. What is the real challenge here for me? Why is that so hard?

84. Who is the future self I’ve confined myself to be?
    

85. In what ways am I different from who I once was? In what ways am I the same?

86. How am I ignoring my body? What if I listened?
    

87. If I let go of ___ I would…?
    

88. How can I be more compassionate with myself?
    

89. I owe an apology to…?
    

90. Where am I not being honest with others?
    

91. How am I taking care of the things/people that take care of me? 

To be continued...

p.s. If you have a question that has been influential in your life, please do share it with me via email or post below in the comments.