How to do Future Self Journaling (and an Easy Template!)

Sometimes life gets messy and we often end up looking back at the past few years (or many years) wondering how we ended up so far from where we really wanted to be in life.

 

If you’ve found yourself wondering how to create a better future for yourself in spite of your past, you might find future self journaling helpful.

 

While there are a ton of things in life we can’t control or predict, we can control the decisions we make moving forward and how we’ll handle setbacks that come our way.

 

In this post, we’ll take a look at the benefits of future self journaling and how it can make a positive impact on your future, as well as a provide future self journaling template to get you started!

 

We also made a quick web story about journaling if you prefer to get your information that way!

Future self journaling is a type of journaling where you journal about where you’d like your life to be in the future.

 

It includes journaling about where you are right now (such as things you’re grateful for and habits you’d like to change), but the emphasis is placed on your future self: what you’d like to accomplish, things you’d like to change as time progresses, etc.

 

Future self journaling is different from regular journaling in that the focus is mostly the future, and not as much the present.

 

Benefits of future self journaling

Journaling in general has been shown to provide so many mental and physical health benefits. Over the past few years since journaling has become more popular, psychologists have done studies to pinpoint in what ways journaling really helps us. 

It’s been shown that reflective journaling can improve your work, your mental health, and self-monitoring can also help with weight loss.  

Here are some of the benefits of future self journaling (and reflective journaling) that can help improve your life today and tomorrow:

Delayed gratification

If you have clearly defined goals for your future, you are more likely to skip immediate self gratification in exchange for delayed gratification with longer lasting benefits. For example: not buying an expensive purse so you can work toward being debt free.  

Increased self awareness

When you journal, you become more aware of how your choices today affect your life tomorrow.

Better decision making

Because your self awareness is increased, you’re more likely to make better life choices when you continually remind yourself that your choices today impact your future tomorrow. When you’re conscientious about your choices, you are more likely to make healthier choices.

Reduced stress

When you engage in future self journaling, you’re able to write down your goals and how you want to achieve your goals. Creating a plan like this helps to reduce stress! 

Problem solving

Journaling (whether reflective journaling or future self journaling) can help us with problem solving. Writing down issues can often show us new ways to address those issues. 

Clarification

Writing your thoughts down helps you to clarify your thoughts and feelings on different things and can often help to bring resolution to past mistakes. 

Anticipation and excitement for the future

Writing down your dreams and aspirations for the future helps us to see the future in a positive light and reminds us that we have good things to look forward to!

Grab our free journaling template here!

Tips for successful future self journaling

If you love the idea of future self journaling and want to jump in, here are a few tips to get you started in creating a habit of journaling. 

Remember: there is no right or wrong way to do this! The only “wrong” way to journal is not to do it at all. 

Start with gratitude

List the things you’re grateful for each day and what you hope to be grateful for in the future.

List habits that you’d like to change (and focus on only one at a time!)

Journal about where you are right now where you’d like to be in the future and how changing those habits can help move you to the place you’d like to be in the future.

List your goals

Write down your future goals, both long term goals and short term goals, and specific steps you can take today to meet those goals. 

Focus on things you can control

Don’t focus too much on things you can’t control, and try to focus your journaling on things that you can actually change in your life.

Try to journal daily

Set a schedule for yourself to create a daily journaling habit, but don’t beat yourself up about missed days.

Don’t expect huge breakthroughs or massive shifts in your life

Creating a future self journal is more about creating self awareness and improving life choices, so you’ll notice benefits but they’ll likely not be massive groundbreaking changes. And that’s okay!

Create a template

If you’re having a hard time finding what to write, create a template to follow to make journaling a bit easier.

Grab our free journaling template here!

Include flexibility in your future self journal

Remember that not everything can be planned, and life has unexpected twists and turns. Include in your journal how you’ll respond when things go wrong and find ways to include how you’ll respond when some fo your goals aren’t met. 

Future self journaling template

 

Follow the writing prompts in our template to get your mind thinking about the future and what you’d love to see in your life in the coming days, months, and years. Once you get the hang of creating a future self journal, you can create your own customized templates that have questions specific to your needs! 

 

We’ve included journaling prompts that you can use to get started.

 

 

Grab our free journaling template here!

You may also like our 99 Inspirational Birthday Quotes for Self.