Most women over 50 who write in a journal regularly do so to clearly define some variation of “Who am I?” or “What Do I Want from my life in the future?” or “Where do I go from here?”
While this may not be the specific focus of your personal journal entries each day, answering those questions and ones like them is a really powerful reason for starting and maintaining a journal.
Journaling is a way for Women over 50 to define their identity, clarify who they are and what they believe (leveraging the past and the present), figure out what they want, and help uncover their real selves.
Journaling helps you read your own thoughts, which leads to understanding (and, just perhaps, redefining) your true identity even more clearly.
The Importance of Defining Your Authentic Self-Identity and 3 Reasons Why It’s Crucial to Do It
One of the most important tasks we can accomplish as humans is to know ourselves well and connect who we are with what we do. Journal writing is an activity that helps you achieve both things.
But why is self-identity so important? Here are a few reasons.
Reason 1: An Authentic Self-Identity is Key to Accomplishing Your Goals
Knowing yourself is crucial to realizing and controlling your thoughts, emotions, and actions in your daily life. Your identity guides everything you do, including your reasons for doing them.
When you do not really know yourself, you make decisions based on whims or because of other people, not based on what is important to you. Self-identity is crucial if you want to set goals for yourself that are meaningful and important to you as well as for helping you engage in the actions and decisions that will help you realize these aims.
Reason 2: An Authentic Self-Identity Promotes Happiness and Self-Love
It is impossible to love yourself when you do not know who you are.
Understanding your real/authentic identity is necessary if you really want to appreciate who you are, be content with the life you create, and learn to genuinely love everything about yourself.
And the happier you are with yourself, the more love and understanding you’ll be able to share with the rest of the world. Loving yourself is crucial if you ever hope to love others.
Reason 3: An Authentic Self-Identity Helps Create Balance in Your Life
Contentment in life comes when all parts of your existence find balance and harmony with each other. When your values and beliefs are in line with your actions and emotions, when your goals are consistent with your decisions, and when your motivations are in sync with your habits, you will enjoy contentment.
This type of balance is impossible without knowing your authentic self and understanding your true identity.
Journaling for Authentic Self-Identity
Writing in a journal every day can help increase your understanding of who you are as well as help you clarify those parts of your identity that are not aligned with other parts of your life.
Journaling helps get you in touch with who you are, but it’s also a way to see and understand how your identity changes and evolves over time.
Whether you are ready to take the plunge and start journaling, or you already write in your journal every day and are looking for ways to use your habit to improve your self-identity, then these prompts may help.
The following are journal prompts that can promote self-identity and help you understand yourself better. Happy writing!
- If you could design your ideal career, what would it be?
- What is something you have always wanted to do but haven’t done (yet)?
- What are the biggest regrets in your life?
- What is one thing about your life that you would really like to change over the coming year? What would success look like a year from now?
- What is your biggest strength? How do you use this in your life?
- How would your partner or best friend describe you?
- How are the most important people in your life, and why are they important to you?
- What do you think is something others misunderstand about you?
- What are you most afraid of?
- What is one problem in the world or your community that you would like to help solve?
- What is the best advice you have ever received?
- What is your most challenging flaw, and what are you doing to improve in this area?
