A prompt is a doorway, not a test. After a session you are often a little spacious and a little blank, and an open page can feel like too much. A single question gives the writing somewhere to start.
Here are thirty, grouped by what they are for. Pick one that fits how you feel. Write for two minutes at most, and stop when you run out. You are not trying to produce an essay.
Right after you meditate
These work in the first minute, while the session is still fresh. Answer fast.
- What is one word for how that felt?
- Where was my attention most of the time?
- What was the very first thing I noticed when I stopped?
- Was I more tired, restless or settled than I expected to be?
- What did I do when my mind wandered?
- Is there anything I want to remember about this session tomorrow?
Understanding your mind
For the days when the interesting part was what your thoughts were doing.
- What kind of thoughts came up most: planning, replaying, worrying, something else?
- Which thought kept coming back, and how did I treat it?
- When did I notice I had drifted, and how did that moment feel?
- Was there any moment of quiet, however brief? What came just before it?
- Did I try too hard at any point? What did trying feel like?
- What was I most reluctant to look at today?
The body and the feelings
Easy to skip, and often the most revealing.
- Where in my body did I feel the most sensation?
- Was there any tension I did not know I was carrying?
- What emotion was closest to the surface?
- Did that feeling change while I watched it, or stay the same?
- How did my breathing feel: shallow, deep, uneven, easy?
- What did my body seem to need that I had not given it today?
Looking for patterns
Best saved for a weekly review, when you can read several entries together.
- Which sessions this week felt best, and what did those days have in common?
- What time of day suits me, honestly, not in theory?
- What gets in the way of meditating, and what helped on the days it did not?
- Which practice do I keep returning to, and which do I keep avoiding?
- Has anything shifted since last month, even slightly?
- What is one small thing I want to try next week?
Carrying it into your day
For the evening, or whenever you want the practice and the rest of life to speak to each other.
- Where today could I have paused for one breath, and did I?
- What was I rushing through that deserved a little more attention?
- Who or what am I grateful for right now, specifically?
- What was hard today, and how did I treat myself about it?
- What would I like to bring to tomorrow's session?
- What is one thing I did today that I want to do again?
Making them work for you
- Choose one prompt before you meditate, so you are not hunting for it afterwards.
- Set a limit of two minutes, or two sentences.
- Write the first honest answer, not the best one.
- If nothing comes, write "nothing today" and close the page. That is a real entry.
When a prompt will not come
Some days a question lands on nothing. That is not a failure of the prompt or of you. Try a sentence starter instead and let it finish itself:
- "Right now I notice…"
- "The hardest part was…"
- "I was surprised that…"
- "If a friend had sat beside me, I would tell them…"
- "I am not sure, but maybe…"
It is also fine to skip a prompt that does not suit the mood. A gratitude question asked on a hollow day tends to produce a forced answer. Swap it for one from "Right after you meditate" and write something true instead.
A simple week of prompts
If choosing feels like one decision too many, let the week choose for you. Use a different group each day and you will cover the ground without thinking about it.
- Monday and Tuesday: a prompt from "Right after you meditate".
- Wednesday: one from "Understanding your mind".
- Thursday: one from "The body and the feelings".
- Friday: one from "Carrying it into your day".
- Sunday: two from "Looking for patterns", written after you reread the week.
Weekends and travel days are allowed to be blank. A journal with gaps is still a journal, and the gaps are part of the record. When you do the Sunday review, read the week's answers in one go before you write anything, and notice which words or feelings turn up more than once. Those repeats are usually where the next question comes from.
If you are not sure what a good entry looks like, a simple shape is how it felt, what your mind did, and one thing to remember, each in a phrase. And if you would like to know why writing after a session is worth the minute, there is a post on the research.
In Solvance, the reflection after each session has a notes area where you can write your answer, and you can save a favorite prompt as a template so the question is waiting for you each time. The Free plan includes two templates per list.