How To Keep a Daily Affirmation Journal: Ideas, Prompts, and Examples

Positive affirmations are a powerful way to raise your energy, increase your happiness, and create lasting, positive change in your daily life. They are a great tool for setting daily intentions to succeed at whatever area you choose.

Writing affirmations is simple and easy, but if you’ve never worked with positive affirmations before, there are a few guidelines to consider, so I recommend you read this post on How To Use Positive Affirmations before you start working with your journal.

In this post I’ll cover how to use this powerful tool to keep a daily affirmation journal. I’ll lay out five core tips you can follow to make the most of your affirmations, and then give a few more examples, ideas, prompts, and exercises to help get you started.

Are you ready?

5 Tips for Writing The Perfect Affirmation Journal

While there’s no one “right” or “wrong” way to keep an affirmation journal, I’ve found the following tips are extremely helpful to keep me focused and on point, while supplying enough creative inspiration for me to really dive into the process.

1. Follow a Standard Format

Firstly, it helps for you to establish a standard format that you’re going to use for your daily entries.

How many affirmations are you going to write?
Are you going to use the same phrases each day, or vary the sentences that you affirm around your chosen topic?
Are you going to write just one sentence or phrase per idea, or are you going to write a short paragraph or two to affirm the topic?
Are you going to include inspiring quotes or other prompts?

Personally, I like to have a few core affirmations, which remain the same every day, but then vary the ways in which I express them. I like to write the “standard sentence” once to get me started, and then flow with my intuition to see where the energy takes me and write a few follow-up ideas. This is similar to the rampage of appreciation process I explain how to do in this post.

2. Keep Your Affirmations Short

The next tip is to keep your affirmations short. The broader your phrase, the more likely you are to be able to get in tune with the energy it contains.

When your affirmations are long, it not only is more difficult to remember them, but they will tend to focus on more specific events and outcomes, rather than general ideas about who you want to become. Being too specific about something you want but don’t yet have can create resistance, which will slow your process.

Some of the best affirmations simply follow the format: I am ____.

If you can shorten your idea into just a short phrase, you’re already well on your way to embodying that goal.

3. Focus on the Emotion

Remember that the primary reason you’re doing affirmations is not to memorize a specific word or phrase, but to tap into the emotion that phrase holds for you.

This means that there is never a right or wrong sentence to use. It also means that what works for one person might not work for you. Just because a sentence “sounds positive” does not mean it will help you to align with that energy. For example, if you try to affirm: “ am a millionaire,” when you know you’re really broke, then that sentence might be creating more resistance and negative energy than positive energy.

The goal is to find the sentence on that topic that makes you feel good. So, instead of proclaiming you’re rich when you know you’re not, you might have a more general statement about how your finances are improving, or how you know you have the ability to earn more money. If you believe these statements more easily, they will be better affirmations for you.

4. Repeat Each Phrase You Write

One of the most overlooked benefits of affirmations has to do with building momentum around each idea you use.

You build momentum through repetition and focus, and by honing each idea into something that feels exciting. Writing a sentence once may build some momentum, but you can increase the positive impact of the phrase by repeating it, or at least sitting to reflect quietly on the idea for a moment before moving on.

I offer a great positive affirmation exercise that takes full advantage of this trick.

5. Target Different Areas of Your Life

Lastly, don’t forget that affirmations can apply to all areas of your life, not just the topic about which you’re currently struggling. Many people focus so intently on the “one big issue” they have, that they miss the incredible opportunity to affirm well-being across all areas of their life.

Not only that, but changing topics to affirm positive ideas about topics you already feel good about helps to increase your positive vibration, and makes it easier for you to come into alignment on the topic that’s more difficult. See below for a few topic areas you might consider.

Positive Affirmation Journal Ideas, Prompts, and Examples

To get started with your daily journal, take a few moments to write out a list of prompts or ideas you can use every day. First, read through this list of 20 affirmation examples. Then I’ll walk you through a short exercise to create your own prompts.

One of the best, and easiest ways to get started is simply to fill in the blank on the following sentences:

I am _______.
I have _______.
I am looking forward to _______.

As I mentioned above, you want to focus on the feeling you want more than any specific idea. Keep it general, and play with different types of answers.

For example, if your topic is area is money and finances, you might write:

I am abundant.
I am grateful for everything I have.
I always have more than I need.
I have the ability to earn a lot of money.
I have the ability to provide for my family.
I am looking forward to feeling free about my finances.
I am looking forward to enjoying my wealth.

Use this same approach to try writing prompts for each of the following areas:

Physical health and well-being,
Romantic relationships,
Friends and family,
Finances and money,
Work and career,
Hobbies and leisure,
General peace and love.

If you want to hear more examples, I recommend you try this guided meditation by Louise Hay, which does a good job of going through a variety of affirmations that can give you new ideas.

Or, read more tips on How To Stay Positive in a Negative World.