Struggling with perfectionism can be rough. Appearing “perfect” is rewarded in school, the workplace, and in plenty of other facets of life. Perfectionism provides us with the illusion that we can gain acceptance, love, belonging, and safety with hard work. But in the end, perfectionism takes a heavy toll on the body, mind, and soul, and it robs us of an authentic connection with ourselves and others.
Perfectionism has been a long-time struggle for me. I grew up in a household with a mother who used perfectionism as a coping mechanism to deal with an abusive childhood she refused to acknowledge, and she passed both the abuse and the coping mechanism of perfectionism on to me. I could still lower the standard I hold myself to (I definitely consider dealing with perfectionism an ongoing journey), but I cannot describe how freeing it was to finally “give up” and look at the reasons behind my drive for perfection rather than distracting myself with to do lists, tasks, and activities.
On the journey to let go of perfectionism, one of the early things I worked on was changing the way I talk to myself. At first, I thought all the going on about positive self talk was really hokey, but I now understand just how important talking to myself gently is. Affirmations for perfectionism were game changing for me, so below I’ve put together a few examples of positive self talk for perfectionism that I hope will be helpful to you as well!
Finding yourself often involves uncovering the things about yourself that you’ve hidden away based on messages you’ve received from the world about what is and isn’t acceptable to think, feel, do, and be. We all want to be loved, accepted, and connected to other humans. From the time we’re an infant we’re dependent on human connection for our very survival. We go throughout life with this hard-wired desire to connect and belong, and sometimes the need to connect and belong causes us to lose touch with deep parts of ourselves that we believe pose a threat to belonging and connection. Because living life as the full and complete you can feel like a threat to human connection, sometimes the journey to find yourself can be a bit scary and confusing. These journal prompts for finding yourself are designed to gently guide you through a conversation with yourself to help you re-discover the you that exists beyond the fear of what the world has to say about it.
Your dream symbols are unique to you, but sometimes it helps to have guidance about what a particular symbol in a dream might mean to get started interpreting your dream. Use the information here about snake dreams as a guide, but don’t let it override your intuitive sense of your snake dream’s meaning for you.
Before you read about what your snake dream might mean, try answering these questions to tap into your intuitive sense of the meaning of your snake dream before you’re too influenced by the information in the rest of this article. It can also help to write out the answers to these questions in a dream journal.
What did the dream snake look like? What color or colors was the snake? What size was the snake?
How was the dream snake behaving? Was the snake sitting still? Was the snake moving? If so, how was the snake moving? What was the dream snake doing? Was the snake aggressive? Was the dream snake interacting with you or anyone or anything else in the dream? If so, how was the dream snake interacting with people and things in the dream?
Where was the dream snake located? What were the surroundings like? What was the dream snake near?
When was the last time you saw a snake?
Does the dream snake remind you of any particular snake you’ve seen before (in real life, a movie, television show, art, another dream, etc.)?
What was your emotional reaction to the dream snake? If there were other people in the dream, how did they respond to the snake?
Happy birthday! These birthday journal prompts have been put together to help you celebrate yourself. As you reflect on the last year and look forward to being another year older and wiser, take a few moments to recognize how far you’ve come and spend some time meditating on what your heart wants in the coming year.
My three birthday wishes are: ____.
One thing that surprised me about being [the age you were this year] was ____.
When I think about being [age you are turning], this is what comes to mind ____.
In the last year, I learned that ____.
Something I’m proud to have accomplished this year is ____.
One thing I want to accomplish in the next year is ____.
I celebrated (or I plan to celebrate) my birthday by ____.
One thing I want to remember about this birthday is ____.
I remember when I really wanted to work on self growth, but I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. I wish I’d understood then that self growth was already happening, but sometimes it can be hard to recognize progress! One of the first really meaningful ways I found help early in my self growth journey was through self growth tests like those I’m going to share in this article. I remember taking the Myers Briggs test and thinking, “Oh, I’m not abnormal or somehow wrong or defective; this really helps me to understand myself better.” I was fairly obsessive about it after that, and had many friends take the test and tell me their personality types. Once I knew my friends’ types, I would try to guess people’s types from observation or having them answer a few questions. I actually got pretty good at it!
Now, no personality type can describe everything about a person, but tests like this can be really helpful on the self growth journey. These self growth tests can help you learn new things about yourself, confirm things you already know about yourself, and bring together a series of disconnected ideas about who you are. All of these things can be incredibly helpful for self growth! Personality tests are also a fun way to get started with self growth because they’re pretty easy to take and the results can be amusing.
Here are a few tests that I’ve found helpful for self growth.
Sadness visits us all from time to time, and sometimes its hard to know how to help yourself when you’re feeling sad. These journal prompts for sadness are here to help you find comfort in yourself when you’re sad.
What does the sadness physically feel like in your body? Where in your body do you feel the physical sensation associated with sadness? What do the physical sensations feel like? If you had to describe the physical sensations as a color and shape, what color and shape is the physical sensation? Where in your body are the physical sensations located? How big or small does your sadness feel?
If you take deep breathes and move around a bit, do the physical sensations associated with sadness change? If so, how?
Is there a location in your body that feels nice (or neutral) right now? If so, spend a few moments breathing in and out deeply and focusing on this location in your body. Write about what this experience was like.
How movies and television shows can help build your intuition
Intuition doesn’t really speak literally, it speaks in symbolism and concepts, and some of the ways intuition expresses itself might seem a little bit strange to the modern conscious mind. If you can get comfortable with “strange” things and the use of symbolism, that will really help you on your journey to build your intuition. There are plenty of movies and TV shows that can help you increase your comfort with the strange and symbolic. I’ve put together a few ideas below to help you get started, but first let’s take a couple of mintues to explore what intuition is and why building your intuition is important.
I love reading and I love journaling, but I’m more of an emotive journal writer. That’s why I love the idea of making your reading journal a place not just to record what you read, but to reflect on what the book meant to you and what you can learn about yourself and the world around you from your reading. These reading journal prompts were created to help you explore what your reading meant to you. Let’s get started!
My favorite quote from this book is: ____. I really connected with this quote because: ____.
The character I’m most like in this book is ____, because ____.
The character I’m least like in this book is ____, because ____.
The most important thing I learned from this book is ____.
