In my last post I explored how a journal of professional practice can easily turn into a superpower at work. Whether you are writing by hand, typing away on your laptop, dictating into your phone or sketching with pen and paper, I am a BIG fan of journalling (and after over 30 years of journalling for both work and in my personal life, I have tried every which way to make it work).
As a coach, I often work with clients who just need to find the right way to articulate their thoughts, and once they’ve unlocked that, they are good to go. You know it’s working when you are able to sustain a reflective journal when you need it, and over time it becomes a habit that turns into a superpower: for example, I find it helps me enormously with gaining perspective, making a big decision or finding my path forward that I can revisit the pages I wrote on my first day as a CEO or the day I got my PhD. I can also revisit times when things were tough, like during the pandemic.
But… what if the thoughts don’t come?
Some of my clients find that regardless of the approach they use, words don’t flow. It can be hard at times to know where to start or what to reflect on. Instead of finding clarity or deep reflection, you end up narrating days, or making lists of things to do. Or maybe you are just staring at a blank page, and your mind goes blank.
If you find that a particular method doesn’t unlock things for you, I would suggest you leverage the power of prompts, or rather, the right prompt for you. Prompts are powerful and can be transformative to our thinking (which is why so called “powerful questions” are the foundational tool in coaching and coaching leadership).
A few years ago I struggled to effectively reflect. Finding the right prompts for your context can be difficult, so I looked for inspiration in Warren Berger’s The Book of Beautiful Questions, Hermina Ibarra’s Working Identity and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic.
I found three types of prompts that helped me and subsequently many of my clients through this kind of block: first, prompts that related to the physical self, next prompts that help identify tangible examples and last, prompts that helped us understand our reactions to situations.
Example prompts and why they work
Prompts that help you get out of your own head
In much of the work I do I coach and train highly skilled professionals who spend a lot of time in their head. I can empathise, as it’s one of my favourite places to be as well. That said, being in one’s head isn’t always conduce to reflective journalling or finding clarity. Which is why when I am stuck, I find prompts that relate to my senses or focus on my physical self super helpful.
Example prompts to try:
- What physical signals do you perceive when you contemplate this decision?
- How does it feel to be in this place [i.e. an office, a lecture hall, a stage]?
- What activities give you energy?
Prompts that help calm overwhelm
Another common reason why reflection can feel hard is a sense of overwhelm. I often work with clients facing big decisions or very high workloads, or juggling A LOT. In situations like that, everything feels… too much, too difficult, too complicated. That’s when prompts that focus on specific examples can help.
Example prompts to try:
- Describe a recent positive interaction?
- What has boosted your mood or encouraged you?
- When did you find yourself enjoying an activity or experience?
Prompts to think through reactions
One of the things my clients tell me they value the most about coaching with me is to have a trusted thinking partner to think through difficult situations with. To talk about awkward or emotional encounters, and to reflect on how they reacted in the moment. This is a difficult thing to do on your own, as usually the focus is on how it feels. My role is to offer prompts that shift that perspective from how it feels to why, and to help us understand the reactions.
Example prompts to try:
- How did it feel?
- How did those feelings manifest themselves?
- How did you react?
- What would you do differently in future?
- What can you learn from the situation?
I’m always curious about how the power of the right prompts unlocks reflection and opens up new perspectives. If you have different prompts you use in situations like this, I’d love to learn about them, so get in touch.