Reflective writing prompt
32 Journal Prompts for Self-Reflection and Self-Care
There’s nothing like cracking open a new journal, grabbing your favorite pen, and sitting down for a writing sesh.
It’s a tried-and-true form of self-care. Research shows that journaling can help you achieve your goals, increase your emotional intelligence, boost your confidence, and even heal from difficult experiences.
But a common challenge people run into when they want to start a journaling habit: What do I write about?
That’s where guided self-reflection prompts and questions can help you out. When you're feeling overwhelmed or do not know what to do, taking a moment to pause and reflect is one way you can ensure you're checking in with your needs and moving forward with your journey.
'Facing your front' is the mantra that emboides this—and it's the mantra behind actor Ncuti Gatwa, star of the Netflix show "Sex Education."
"Don't look right and don't look left, because these are other people's journeys and if you're looking at their journeys, you're going to get lost. So face your front and worry about what you're doing," Gatwa shared in Teen Vogue. "You don't need to compare yourself. Your journey is fine."
Here are 32 of our favorites to help you kick off your next journaling session and reflect on your personal journey. They’re inspired by our Daily Discussion feature in the Shine app—a safe space where you can reflect on a new self-care question daily with a global community of supportive people.
Pick one or a few of these questions, and give yourself permission to free write your answers without any judgment or pressure. The goal: Simply see what you can learn about yourself and the way you take care of yourself.
1. What makes you feel powerful?
2. What makes you feel calm?
3. What makes you feel in control?
4. How do you encourage yourself when you're trying something new?
5. What's a choice you can make this week based on your needs?
6. How do you shift your mindset if it isn't working for you?
7.
How do you recharge?8. How can you celebrate yourself today?
9. What does your situational best look like today?
10. What helps you slow down and feel more present?
11. What can you do today that you didn’t think you could do a year ago?
12. What's a goal you want to accomplish and why?
13. How do you put yourself first without feeling guilty?
14. How do you practice self-acceptance?
15. How do you stay focused and steer clear of distractions?
16. How do you trust yourself to make big decisions?
17. How do you set boundaries and avoid absorbing someone else's emotions and stress?
18. How do you savor the time you get alone?
19. How do you notice when you're nearing burnout?
20. How do you share your feelings with the people who care about you?
21. How do you swap envy for joy when other people accomplish things?
22. How do you advocate for yourself?
23. How do you forgive yourself when you make a mistake?
24.
How do you ask for help or support when you need it?25. How do you practice self-love and self-kindness?
26. How do you calm your nerves in a difficult situation?
27. How do you make the time you spend with people more intentional?
28. How do you embrace your authentic self, even if it looks different from what others expect?
29. How do you set and protect your boundaries?
30. What new opportunities have come out of challenges you’ve faced?
31. How can you step outside your comfort zone to grow?
32. How do you remind yourself that you're enough?
Read next: 25 Best Journals and Planners for a New Chapter
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70+ Journal Prompts for Self-Reflection
Well Being4 min read
Here are 70+ journal prompts and ideas to help you self-reflect and introspect to understand yourself better.
Let’s spend some time self-reflecting today.
Here is a list of 70+ journal prompts and ideas to help you introspect and discover yourself.
Writing is an effective way to become more aware of ourselves and these prompts will give you direction in this process.
Bonus! Download this free Printable Gratitude Weekly Worksheet that has prompts for a whole week that you can keep reusing to upscale your gratitude practice.
Writing tip: Don’t think too much before writing. Just let the words flow. You can use the Gratitude app to start gratitude journaling today!
- What makes you feel calm?
- What makes you feel in control?
- What makes you feel powerful?
- How do you encourage yourself when you're trying something new?
- How do you stay focused and steer clear of distractions?
- How do you savor the time you get alone?
- How do you swap envy for joy when other people accomplish things?
- How do you set boundaries and avoid absorbing someone else's emotions and stress?
- How do you trust yourself to make big decisions?
- How do you forgive yourself when you make a mistake?
- How do you advocate for yourself?
- How do you make the time you spend with people more intentional?
- What new opportunities have come out of the challenges you’ve faced?
- How do you embrace your authentic self, even if it looks different from what others expect?
- How do you remind yourself that you're enough?
- How do you calm your nerves in a difficult situation?
- When do you feel happiest in your skin?
- If you were stranded on a desert island, what are the one thing and the one person you would choose to have with you and why?
- If you could relive an experience in your life, what would it be?
- What does growing older mean to you?
- How do you handle a bad day?
- Are you a city, a country, or a beach person?
- Are you an introvert or an extrovert? How has it shaped your life?
- What are your top life hacks?
- If you had a theme song, what would it be?
- How does it feel to be the age you currently are?
- Write about a book, movie, or song that has made a huge impact on you.
- What is your earliest childhood memory?
- What do you wish others knew about you?
- If you could have a superpower, what would it be?
- Do you prefer to read fiction or non-fiction? Why?
- Describe your dream life.
- What do you struggle to love most about yourself? What can you do to begin to love that part of yourself?
- What are the five things that you currently accept about yourself?
- What are you holding onto that you need to forgive yourself for?
- What do you judge yourself for? How can you let go of that judgment?
- What are your talents?
- What is one thing you can do today that will make you feel great?
- What clothes do you love wearing and feel good in?
- What do you love about your mind?
- What do you love about your body?
- What do you love about your personality?
- What are the 5 things that your past self would love about your current self?
- What is a challenge that you have overcome?
- What makes you unique? How can you use this uniqueness more in your life?
- What would you do today if you loved yourself?
- What’s a commitment you can make to yourself to love yourself every day?
- What did you love to do as a child? How can you bring more of that into your life?
- How do you treat people that you love? How can you treat yourself the same way?
- What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
- What natural gift would you most like to possess?
- If you were given $1 million that you had to spend on yourself within a year, how would you spend it?
- How do you define love?
- Write about a person you admire.
What qualities do you share with this person? - What scares you?
- What would you like to do more of?
- What would you prefer to do less of?
- How have you grown in the past two years?
- How would you like to be remembered?
- What makes you feel most energized?
- What has caused you happiness and joy this week?
- What is the one thing that you want to go back in time and change?
- What frustrates you the most?
- What will that one message or letter that you wish to give to your childhood self?
- What’s your favorite self-care activity?
- How will someone closest to you describe you?
- When was the last time you helped someone? What did you do?
- Which dream of yours do you wish to come true?
- If you win a lottery today (a big one) where would you invest it?
- Think of the happiest moment in your life and reflect on it.
- What is your most treasured possession and why?
- Name one moment that you are truly proud of.
Why are you so proud of it? - What are you most grateful for?
And, that's all! Have a wonderful journaling time! It's going to help you a lot through life. I wish you the best :)
👉 Continue reading: 50 Insightful Self-Love Journal Prompts For Self-Development
Find joy in little blessings
Download Gratitude App
Aarushi Tewari
The writer and affirmations speaker at Gratitude, Aarushi believes that one of the most effective ways of feeling inner peace is by being grateful and having a loving self-relationship.
How to write about your experiences and memories to make it easier?
As early as 30 years ago, it was discovered that if you write about your experiences in a certain way, then health improves, not only mentally, psychologically, but also bodily. How to do it right?
Psychologist, PhD in Psychology, Narrative Practitioner
Daria Kutuzova
30 years ago, University of Texas professor James Pennebaker discovered that if you write about your experiences in a certain way, your health improves, not only mentally, psychologically, but also physically .
Since he began his research, more than 300 papers on this topic have been written and published. This huge amount is quite enough to test the effectiveness of any psychological practice.
Pennebaker's most famous, key experiment, which became the basis of his subsequent work, was as follows. He recruited a group of young people, mostly students. Each participant in the experiment entered an empty room, where there was a table and a sheet of paper, a pen and a task. A person wrote for 15 minutes, then, on a call, he stopped writing, folded the sheet, and either left it in a special box in the corner of the audience, or could take it with him. Subjects wrote for 15 minutes for 4 days in a row.
The participants of the experiment were divided into 2 groups - control and experimental, the tasks for written work were different. The control group wrote about something completely mundane, such as what these people did yesterday or what they ate for breakfast.
While the second experimental group wrote according to the instructions, which included the task to write about something extremely exciting, significant, and about something that these people never told anyone about.
At the end of the experiment, with the permission of the subjects, the researchers obtained data from the university polyclinic about their visits to doctors and prescribed medications before and after the study. This turned out to be a very interesting result deserving further investigation.
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It turned out that about half of the subjects from the experimental group began to visit a doctor half as often and use drugs half as much as before. In the control group, these indicators remained practically unchanged.
Writing for 15 minutes in patients with asthma reduces the frequency and intensity of attacks, reduces the intensity of pain in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, reduces the number of awakenings during a night's sleep in patients with cancer.
How does writing practice improve health for many people? Moreover, not only in generally healthy 2nd year students on whom this psychological experiment was conducted - in other studies there were samples of people with serious chronic diseases. For example, it was found that writing for 15 minutes about something significant in asthma patients reduces the frequency and intensity of attacks, reduces the intensity of pain in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, and reduces the number of awakenings during a night's sleep in cancer patients. In a recent study, it was found that in older people, surgical wounds heal faster if writing is used as an additional therapeutic intervention.
These are simply amazing results, and after their publication, many began to study and effectively use this technique in practice. Moreover, it costs practically nothing, does not give side effects, unlike drugs, and, in principle, it is not so difficult to learn how to conduct therapeutic writing sessions for those who cannot access traditional psychotherapy.
Currently, written practices are used very intensively and effectively in labor exchanges and hospitals, in places of detention and in schools.
What is the first thing to keep in mind in order for a letter to be useful? After all, a letter is a fairly powerful tool, and if you do not know about safety precautions, you can seriously harm yourself. What must be taken into account when a person writes about his life, so that it is really good for his health?
First of all, it should be noted that Pennebaker's writing is always like two approaches to a projectile: first it is expressive writing, and then reflexive. Expressive writing means that a person plunges into the flow of feelings and expresses them, simply pouring onto paper without self-censorship, trying to grab his experience in all its complexity and let it go as it is. There is absolutely no need to make a beautiful text, it is not even necessary to write correctly, punctuation marks are not needed.
This is the experience of the moment, actual, most exciting now or in memories.
After that, a short break is made, as if a step back, a retreat. And, after reading his written text, a person takes a different position. He is not in the flow of experiences, he came out of it, stepped aside - and looks, comprehends, reflects. He is already writing about what, as he now understands, was important to him in the process of writing, what feelings came to him and what awareness, how he feels now, rereading it; what turned out to be new for him, perhaps surprised, or, on the contrary, confirmed what he knew about himself, and where it leads him further. Maybe this leads him to some kind of reflection or action - talking, communicating, deeds, or to inaction - refraining from deeds.
The first rule to follow in order for a letter to be useful is no self-censorship .
It is necessary to write it in such a way as not to be afraid that someone will read what is written, and that it will then be used in one way or another against the author.
Therefore, in order to avoid self-censorship, you need to be very careful about your right to privacy and respect it. If it is possible that someone else might be able to read these notes, it is important to choose a safe place to store them in order to avoid this danger.
In addition to external readers, external interlocutors, letter recipients, people also have internal interlocutors. And when a person writes about his experiences, it is important to understand to whom he is addressing, how this person or creature listens to us. Many have a very strong inner critical voice, and when such people write about their lives, he breaks out to the surface, one might say, pulls out a pen, and begins to write for them - how bad they are, and how unworthy they are, and why once again step on the same rake.
But a person also has another position inside, which is more or less familiar and mastered to many. This is the position of a benevolent researcher, a sympathetic witness who understands everything, and, perhaps, knows a person better than he knows himself.
For some it is God, for others it is someone else. This interlocutor may not have a name, but when a person writes about his life and what is significant to him, it is best to tune in to address this interlocutor, this listener, who will accept the person as he is, in shame, in self-dislike, in disgust, in fear, in doubt, this inner interlocutor will still say: “So it is! Let's see what's next?"
Another very important point - if a person is going to write about something very significant for himself, it does not have to be scary or sad things at all - it can be something joyful or just very exciting. It must be borne in mind that one should not dive too deeply into experiences so that at any moment there is an opportunity to emerge back, to return to everyday existence. To do this, it is good to keep a scale of subjective distress on hand to measure the intensity of the experience. You can draw it on paper or just keep it in your head. Any disturbing situation is evaluated on this scale using a 10-point system, where 0 is the absence of excitement, when everything is fine and calm, and 10 is the highest degree of excitement - when a person is internally worried, and everything is so terrible at this moment of writing that he wants to crumple this sheet, throw it away, cry and run away.
You can't bring yourself to such a state, and you should stop writing, when the intensity of feelings goes off scale, approaches 8 . Do not force yourself to be in a state where it is scary and uncomfortable. Usually paper or a screen is a wonderful fuse, it is difficult to write something that at the moment a person is not ready to realize and accept. But many people are accustomed to forcing themselves to endure, believing that suffering cleanses, and that it must necessarily get worse before it gets better. These people force themselves to plunge into unpleasant experiences too deeply, and may stop feeling not only pain, but also joy. In this case, the letter is not useful, but harmful.
Structuring the letter can also help make the letter more useful and safe. Many are familiar with freewriting, or Julia Cameron's Morning Pages method.
In the original, the exercise is that in the morning, first thing after waking up, everything that comes to mind is written down on 3 A4 sheets, pouring out a stream of thoughts and feelings onto paper. This is described as a sewer for the brain, a kind of cleaning of consciousness. This is very useful for many, but for some people it can be downright dangerous. For example, people who are depressed or people with post-traumatic stress disorder feel really bad first thing in the morning. And, if at this moment you start writing about yourself, about what is on the surface and what is swarming in your head, then you can strengthen the negative idea of yourself as a weak, sick, worthless, worthless person. Almost always, this approach does not lead to an improvement in the situation.
The more vulnerable a person feels, the more structure they need in a letter.
Kathleen Adams, director of the Institute for Writing Therapy, has done research on the importance of structured writing as opposed to free-flowing writing.
In the course of this work, it was found that the more tension, stress, grief, fear and other negative components a person has in life, the more structured his writing should be. Kathleen developed a special scale, the so-called structured ladder. This scale lists the main types of diary exercises, depending on the degree of their structure.
At the very top of the scale is freewriting, freewriting. This means that in order to get the maximum benefit from freewriting, you need to immerse yourself in it when everything in a person’s life is quite good and calm. When not everything is good, it is better to set a timer, that is, write not 3 pages for an arbitrary time, but, say, 5-6 minutes. During this time, it is very difficult to hurt yourself really seriously, but it is quite enough to take out some material from the boundaries of your consciousness and the unconscious, with which you can continue to work.
The most structured exercises are focusing on a single word, for example choosing the word of the day, and writing down unfinished sentences.
You can write lists, draw mind maps or clusters (mental or associative maps). This, too, may not take more than 5 minutes a day, but it brings great benefits. A cluster is especially useful if it seems to a person that his head is running in different directions from thoughts, and he does not know what to grab onto. In this case, you can set a timer for 5 minutes, and throw in all the ideas swarming in your head, literally one or two words each, just to get some coherent picture.
Approximately in the middle of the Kathleen Adams scale are the so-called lists of 100, for example, “100 things that I dream of doing” or “100 feelings that I experience every day”, meaning traps are sketches about what a person in this day pleased, or what question interests him most of all now. About the same level are portraits. These can be portraits of significant people, or a portrait of who a person would like to become, or who he cannot become in the current relationship, in the current situation.
Pretty much anything you can imagine can become an interlocutor in a written dialogue.
More difficult, requiring complete immersion in the process of writing, are such exercises as writing dialogues. It can be not only a dialogue with some person, but also, for example, a dialogue between different inner voices, a dialogue with pain, a dialogue with money. Virtually anything you can imagine can become an interlocutor in a written dialogue. Dream work and poetry therapy are roughly on the same level. Perhaps the most structured exercise in poetry therapy is called the Acrostic.
What is an acrostic? An acrostic is a poem, it can be in rhyme or not, of any size, rhythm, but each line of it begins with the letter that makes up this word. To begin the writing exercise, it is good to take a few deep breaths, close your eyes, and try to find in yourself that line between what is known for sure and what is not known at all. This line is always colored by a feeling of excitement, it can be something quivering, something igniting, something that makes you take a deep breath.
Exercise "Acrostic"
Take any word that is emotionally charged for a person at a given moment in time, which excites and worries. This will be the basis of the poem. The word is written in a column, and then a word or expression corresponding to the emotional state of the author is added to each letter. It is better to start with a not very long word, for example, the word "again":
C now I understand or
H ET, which is each time, and
about b the same,
in , perhaps,
97777 how else to inform those who care to know?
Then you can turn this poem over in your head, ask yourself questions about it, maybe talk to someone. Performing this exercise allows you to decompose your experience into components, which makes it possible to analyze it and find out the cause of this condition.
Pennebaker's research has shown that writing is most useful for those who, in the process of self-expression, create a coherent story out of a chaotic experience, out of a tangled tangle of feelings and emotions. A story that has a plot and where the hero changes as he moves towards his goal. And in this story, not only events are described, but also the experiences of the hero himself. He can be clumsy, make mistakes, be wrong in many ways, but by and large he is a positive character, and the attitude towards him is sympathetic, but without condescension. He is likable in general, and I want everything to work out for him.
People who wrote only about events, without touching their feelings, did not get much benefit from writing. However, as well as people who wrote only about feelings, and not about how certain episodes were prepared and how they influenced other people.
The people who write most of all from writing are those who write in general more about the positive than about the negative, not only about what they lost as a result of what happened, but also about what they learned in the course of these events, overcoming their consequences.
. It is likely that during this difficult period for them they even managed to notice something good, and understand that unpleasant, sometimes tragic events do not capture their lives 100%.
When writing stories, it is very important to change the point of view from which the action is described. You can write in the first person - "I went, I did", you can write about yourself in the 3rd person, as if you look at yourself from afar, from the outside, from the outside - "she went, she did, she felt at that moment." This is also a way to step back from the flow of experiences and look at yourself from the outside. Sometimes this is not easy to do, but what is useful is very simple?
It can be very helpful to look at the situation from the opposite side, and write the story from the point of view of another person involved in the events.
It is possible to write a story from the point of view of another person involved in the events.
In any story, the hero is not alone, there is always someone with whom he is in some kind of relationship, often this is a conflict or an unclear situation. It is very helpful to look at the situation from the opposite side, and write down what these people may have felt and wanted, what may have hurt them and what inspired them.
And, of course, we should not forget about the addressee of history, to whom we are writing this letter. An inspector, a boss, a judge, a friend who is ready to receive us in any form, as they say, in a greasy old dressing gown? To yourself in the future or in the past, to another person with whom we have a difficult relationship? Every time a person determines to whom he writes, the story itself changes, the style of its presentation, and, most importantly, changes the meaning that a person extracts from it, what he, as the author of this story, learns by creating it.
Pennebaker's 4 Stories Exercise
We need to recall a recent event that is somewhere in the middle of the Kathleen Adams scale - not a superficial level of conversation over a cup of tea, small talk, but not the other extreme - not a tragedy, not a drama from which immediately tears come to the eyes.
Perhaps this is some moment of dissatisfaction with oneself, a situation not fully clarified, or a feeling that there was some potential in the event that was not fully revealed because the person was in a hurry and did not have time to realize it. And this story needs to be written 4 times for 5 minutes in the following ways:
1. As objectively as possible, tell this story to a fellow traveler on the train - a complete stranger, met for the first and, most likely, the last time.
2. Describe this situation from within, completely frankly, as a friend or girlfriend, ready to accept in any condition, without looking back at anything, expressing all feelings and emotions.
3. The most difficult task is to describe an event from the point of view of another person involved in it, look at the situation from your opponent's point of view, get into his shoes. This story can be addressed both to someone else who understands and accepts this person, and to the author of the stories himself.
4. The final story should be addressed to some higher intelligence, a universal source of compassion, whose goal is harmony.
In conclusion, you need to write a reflective response - what it was like writing these stories, which turned out to be surprising, which caused the strongest feelings.
Reflective Essay Examples 2021 See Topic Ideas and Writing Structure: Current School News
Filed in Teaching by TMLT Editions April 12, 2021
Reflective essay : Reflective writing helps us think more about ourselves, who we are and how we have changed. Read on to learn more about what and how reflective essays are! Where would I start? Where would I end up?
Thoughts frantically raced through my mind as I imagined the treacherous journey I was about to embark on. But before I continue, pay attention to these few points.
- Reflective essay format
- Reflective essay structure
- Sample Reflective Essay
- What can you write about?
- Topic Ideas for a reflective essay
- Places you have been
- Life-changing events
- Recurring or Significant Thoughts
- Impressive experience
- Important people
- Reflective essay: how to organize reflective paper?
- Introductory paragraph
- Body points
- Conclusion
Reflective essays are a kind of essay that seem so easy, but at the same time so difficult to write.
Simply put, the Reflective Essays are critical analyzes of life experiences and, with the right guidance, are easy to piece together.
Reflective essay is akin to a diary entry, except that it will be read by others, so it should have more consistency and good structure. In this respect, a reflective essay is very similar to any other. essay there.
Reflective essay: reflective essay format
A reflective essay is an essay in which the writer analyzes his life experience. The author then writes about that experience, exploring how he or she changed, developed, or grew out of that experience.
The format of the reflective essay may change slightly depending on the audience. For example, writing a reflective essay for a college course is and an academic audience will have little change in how the essay is organized, from writing a reflective essay to for a magazine or collection of essays that has a wider audience, without people who necessarily went to college .
However, some basic elements are included in a typical reflective essay : introduction, body and conclusion.
The structure of a reflective essay
Reflective essays always have an introduction where the speaker directly or indirectly shares the general focus of reflection. Many popular essay writers may be a little oblique about their main topic or what part of their life they will focus on.
However, the academic writer should be more direct about which aspect of his or her experience he or she will be talking about.
Game machine body reflective essay explains how the writer has changed or what he has learned. It also explains what made the writer change.
For example, many academic writers are asked to think about how they improved as writers in a semester or quarter. These writers often talk about how different assignments and lessons have made them better writers.
A strong reflective writer will not only share the changes, but also provide examples as supporting details.
For example, if the writer is discussing how to become more optimistic in life, you should provide examples of what led to that change, such as sharing an incident in which the writer used a positive approach to resolve the incident.
In folder conclusion In a reflective essay, the author summarizes how he or she has changed or what the effect of these changes is. The writer can also look forward or backward.
Looking to the future, the writer shares his thoughts on how the experience gained in the essay will change him or her in the future.
Looking back, the writer will notice how much he or she was in the past. Often the writer will compare the past and the future to highlight the difference.
Sample reflective essay
Author: prefers to remain anonymous
Being an English language specialist, I have learned to appreciate the calming yet uplifting moment when my mind is occupied with the author's thoughts on the page.
As Toni Morrison says in The Dancing Mind, "[Reading] is to experience the dance of one's own mind with another." When I was a college student, I wanted to know the "true" meaning of a work, or what the author intended, but now I realized that this would rob literature of its most remarkable complexities. Individual interpretations contribute differently to the work, and it is also interesting to point out messages that the author may not have realized but included in the work.
I have always been a thinker, but throughout my course work I have greatly honed my critical analysis skills. Instead of focusing on intended meanings or biographical background, I have learned to constantly ask "why" on many different levels. I make it my mission to delve into the text as deeply as possible and unpack every detail in order to obtain a satisfying close reading. Also, by reading several novels by the same author, I have learned to identify different styles of writing and make connections that tie texts together; it helped me develop a deeper understanding of the novels.When I look at one of my first level novels and see blank pages, I realize that I haven't actively read the book. I think you could say that I learned to read with a pen, which has taken my writing to a whole new level because I can go back to my original ideas marked on the page.
Writing has always been one of my strengths, but it was difficult for me to take that first step beyond the five-paragraph essay form that had limited my ideas for so long. However, the rejection of this form greatly expanded my mind. My thoughts can now be more complex because I have learned how to organize logical arguments. My text has become increasingly concise and I no longer have room to add "nonsense" or "indentation". Another improvement is my ability to point out multiple complexities in text instead of sticking to one-sided arguments in my articles. In addition, learning how to find peer-reviewed journal articles and book orders through interlibrary lending has greatly expanded the scope of my research, resulting in more scholarly articles with credible citations.My works are much more interesting than before.
It's hard to spot gaps in my English language skills just because I feel like I've learned a lot. I feel that I have greatly expanded my skills in literary analysis and writing, but I must be ready to teach high school students the necessary literature. I think it would be useful to identify the novels that are usually taught in our local universities and study them on our own. By studying the required literature and thinking about how to teach it, I will have a solid foundation to work with as soon as I am in class.
What can you write about?
The most common reflective items including the following:
- True Experience
- Something you imagined
- Place or special object
- Something you have read, seen, seen, touched, tasted, smelled or heard.
Topic Reflective Essay Ideas
The above items may already have given you an idea of what you would like to write.
If not, here are some topics or clues to think about.
Places you have been
- Beach, mountains, countryside or desert
- Special shelter or special room
- The house you grew up in
- House of a relative
Life-changing events
- Special date
- Failure or success in something
- The time you learned something new
- New experience
- The time you overcame one of your fears
- Important memory
- Significant conversation
Recurring or Significant Thoughts
- Dream or Dream
- A conversation you would like to have or something you would like to do
- The story you told about yourself
- Awkward moment
- The person you would like to be
- Strong emotion
Impressive experience
- Book, film, TV show, song, play or other media
- Social media post
- Journal or article
- Concert
- Vacation
Important people
- Your grandparents, mother and/or father, aunt and/or uncle, nephew and/or niece, or siblings
- Your best friend
- Someone who hurt you
- Special teacher or life coach
Reflective essay: how to organize reflective paper?
The organization of the reflective essay is very similar to other types of essays.
Great 9 sketch0091 reflective essay is posted below for your use.
Introductory paragraph
- Your first paragraph should be an introduction in which you define the subject and give the reader a general overview of the impression it has made on you. Your introductory paragraph should also include a thesis that will serve as the basis for your paper.
- Sample thesis: “Why did I feel so calm walking along this beach? I realized that it happened because the beach has always been a place for me to relax.”
Body Points
- In the first paragraph of the body text, write about one reason why your topic impressed you. Then write about why. This is a reflective essay which means you can speculate. There are no right or wrong answers in this essay.
- In the second text of the paragraph, write about the second reason why your topic impressed you. Then write about why.
- In the third paragraph, write the third reason your subject impressed you.
