What If You Don’t Know What to Write?

Journal Prompts: Questions That Make You Think

A good journal prompt does not tell you what to think. It gives your mind somewhere to begin.

It can take a simple question and turn it into a memory, a realisation, a difficult conversation, an old dream, a forgotten person, a new idea or even a story you never realised was waiting inside you.

Sometimes, one good question is all you need.

So, What Exactly Is a Journal Prompt?

A journal prompt is simply a question, statement or idea that gives you something to respond to in your journal.

Instead of asking yourself: “What am I supposed to write?”
You begin with: “What is something I have been avoiding thinking about?”

That is a much easier place to start.

Journal prompts can be simple. They can be playful, they can be uncomfortable, they can make you laugh, they can take you back twenty years, they can make you question a decision you made, and sometimes, they can reveal something about you that you had never put into words before.

The important thing is that there is no single correct answer. You do not have to impress anyone.

The Best Prompts Are Not Always the Deepest Ones

There is a temptation to think that every journal entry has to be profound.
It doesn’t.

Some days, your journal might contain a serious reflection about your life. Other days, just normal everyday entries. Your journal is allowed to contain ordinary life. In fact, ordinary life is often what becomes interesting later.

Years from now, you may not remember the major news event everyone was talking about. 

But you might remember what you were eating.
What music you were listening to.
Who you were texting.
What your room looked like.
What you were worried about.
What you were hoping would happen.
Who you were becoming.

That is one of the beautiful things about journaling. You are not only recording your thoughts. You are recording a version of yourself that will eventually become history.

1. Prompts About Who You Are Right Now

Sometimes the easiest person to write about is yourself. Not the version of yourself you present on social media, not the person your family thinks you are, and not the person you hope to become.

You, right now.

Try these:

• Who am I at this stage of my life?
• What matters most to me right now?
• What am I currently excited about?
• What am I currently worried about?
• What do I wish people understood about me?
• What part of myself am I still trying to understand?
• What have I changed my mind about recently?
• What am I pretending not to know?
• What am I becoming?
• What do I like about the person I am becoming?

Don’t rush these questions. Sometimes the first answer is only the answer you have learned to give. Keep writing, the more interesting answer may appear underneath it.

2. Prompts About Your Childhood

Your childhood is full of material, and you don’t need to have had an extraordinary childhood for it to be worth recording.

Think about the ordinary things.

• The house you grew up in.
• The smell of food.
• The sound of a particular radio programme.
• School uniforms.
• Church or mosque.
• Family gatherings.
• Summer holidays.
• Grandparents.
• Neighbours.
• Siblings.
• The person who lived down the street.
• The teacher you still remember.

Try:

• What is one childhood memory I can still see clearly?
• What did our home feel like when I was growing up?
• What did my family do that I thought every family did?
• Who made me feel safe as a child?
• What did I believe about the world when I was ten?
• What was my favourite place to go?
• What childhood rule did I never understand?
• What did I dream of becoming?
• What is something from my childhood I miss?
• What is something from my childhood I am glad I left behind?

You may be surprised by what comes back. A question about your childhood can unlock an entire afternoon you thought you had forgotten.

3. Prompts About Family

Family can give you some of the richest journaling material. Family stories are particularly important because many of them disappear when nobody writes them down.

Ask yourself:

• What do I know about my parents’ lives before I was born?
• What family story have I heard repeatedly?
• Who was the storyteller in my family?
• What did my parents sacrifice that I understand better now?
• What family tradition do I want to preserve?
• What family tradition would I like to change?
• What did my parents teach me without ever saying it directly?
• What have I inherited from my family besides physical traits?
• Which family member has influenced me the most?
• What is something I wish I had asked an older relative while they were still here?

That last question is particularly powerful, because sometimes journaling reminds us that there are questions we should ask while we still have someone to answer them.

4. Prompts About Nigeria, Home and Where You Come From

For many Nigerians and Africans, identity is layered. You may have grown up in one city, studied somewhere else, moved to another country and still carry several versions of “home” inside you.

Journaling gives you space to explore that.

Try:

• What does home mean to me?
• What part of Nigerian culture am I proud to carry?
• What part of my culture do I question?
• What Nigerian experience has shaped me?
• What did growing up in my community teach me?
• What do I miss when I am away from home?
• What don’t I miss?
• What Nigerian stereotype about my generation do I disagree with?
• What does success mean to me beyond money?
• If I could preserve one part of the Nigeria I know for future generations, what would it be?

These questions can become more than personal reflections. They can become social history, because millions of ordinary experiences are happening every day that may never appear in official records.

Someone has to remember them.

5. Prompts About Love and Relationships

Relationships can produce some of our happiest memories and some of our hardest lessons.

But journaling about relationships does not have to mean documenting every argument. You can explore what relationships have taught you.

Ask:

• What does love mean to me now?
• What did I once believe about love that I no longer believe?
• What makes me feel genuinely respected?
• What is one relationship that changed me?
• What have my past relationships taught me about myself?
• What kind of person brings out the best in me?
• What boundaries have I learned to set?
• What do I find difficult to communicate?
• What does a healthy relationship look like to me?
• What am I no longer willing to accept?

And sometimes the most revealing question is:

What do I keep asking other people to give me that I need to learn to give myself?

Sit with that one.

6. Prompts About Friendship

Friendships deserve their own category.

Who were your closest friends growing up?
Who did you lose touch with?
Who unexpectedly became important to you?
Who made you laugh during a difficult period?
Who knew a version of you that no longer exists?

Try:

• Who are my oldest friends?
• What makes someone a good friend to me?
• Which friendship taught me the most?
• Have I ever outgrown a friendship?
• Have I ever stayed in a friendship for too long?
• Who can I call when life gets difficult?
• What kind of friend am I?
• What friendship do I miss?
• Is there someone I should reconnect with?
• What have friendships taught me about people?

Sometimes journaling helps you recognise that losing a friendship is not always losing a person; sometimes it is losing a chapter of your life.

7. Prompts About Work, Money and Ambition

Work occupies a huge part of adult life, yet many people rarely stop to ask what they are actually working towards.

Your journal can become a private place to examine ambition without pretending.

Try:

• What does success mean to me?
• Am I pursuing my goals or someone else’s definition of success?
• What kind of work gives me energy?
• What kind of work drains me?
• What would I attempt if failure were not embarrassing?
• What am I willing to sacrifice for my goals?
• What am I not willing to sacrifice?
• What is my relationship with money?
• What does financial freedom mean to me?
• What would I do differently if I had enough money?
• Am I building the life I actually want?

These questions can reveal something important:

Sometimes the problem isn’t that we lack ambition. We simply haven’t defined what the ambition is for.

8. Prompts About Decisions

Some journal entries can function almost like a private boardroom.

When you are confused about a decision, write it down. Not because your journal will magically tell you what to do, but because writing forces vague thoughts to become visible.

Try:

• What decision am I currently struggling with?
• What are my actual options?
• What am I afraid will happen?
• What would I choose if nobody judged me?
• What would I advise a friend in this situation?
• What information am I missing?
• What am I assuming?
• What happens if I do nothing?
• What happens if I choose the uncomfortable option?
• Which choice is consistent with the person I want to become?

Sometimes clarity doesn’t arrive while you are thinking. It arrives when you see your thinking on the page.

9. Prompts About Failure and Mistakes

Nobody enjoys admitting that they got something wrong, but some of the most valuable journal entries begin there.

Try:

• What mistake taught me the most?
• What would I do differently if I could go back?
• What failure am I still carrying?
• What did that experience teach me about myself?
• Did I actually fail, or did something simply not work?
• What did I learn about other people?
• What did I learn about my own limits?
• What am I afraid of trying again?
• What would I tell my younger self about failure?
• What mistake am I determined not to repeat?

Your journal does not have to become a courtroom where you prosecute yourself. It can become a place where you understand yourself.

10. Prompts About Dreams and the Future

Your future deserves some pages too.
Imagine meeting yourself five or ten years from now. What would you want that person to know?

Try:

• What kind of life am I trying to build?
• Where do I hope to live?
• What kind of relationships do I want?
• What do I want my ordinary day to look like?
• What do I want to learn?
• What do I want to create?
• What do I want to be remembered for?
• What experience do I want to have at least once?
• What am I afraid I will regret not doing?
• What would make me proud when I look back at this period?

Your journal can become a conversation between who you are and who you are becoming.

11. Prompts About the Small Things

Here is where journaling becomes particularly beautiful. Don’t only record the major milestones, record the little things.

Try:

• Today I laughed because…
• Something I noticed today was…
• The best part of today was…
• The strangest thing that happened today was…
• Someone made me feel…
• Something I almost forgot today was…
• Today reminded me of…
• A sentence I want to remember is…
• If I could replay one moment from today, it would be…

These may look insignificant today, but five years from now? They could be priceless.

12. Prompts for Days When You Are Stuck

There are those days when even the prompts above feel like too much work.
Use the simplest possible questions.

• What happened today?
• How did I feel about it?
• Why did it matter?
• What am I thinking about right now?
• What do I need?

That’s enough.

You do not need to write three pages. You do not need to discover the meaning of your entire existence.

Sometimes:
“Today was difficult. I don’t fully understand why yet, but I know I need to think about it.”

is a perfectly good journal entry.

A Prompt Can Become a Story

This is one of the reasons we encourage journaling at Naija Diaries.

You might begin with a simple prompt: “What is one decision that changed my life?”

You write about choosing a particular university. That reminds you of the day you received your admission letter, that reminds you of your parents’ reaction and that takes you back to the house you lived in.

You remember your mother crying.
You remember your father pretending not to.
You remember the person you called immediately afterwards.
You remember what happened three months later.

Suddenly, you are no longer answering a journal prompt.
You are telling a story.
And that story may be worth preserving.

This is how journaling can gradually become something much bigger than a private notebook. It can become the raw material for a memoir.

Your Journal Can Become Your First Draft of Your Life

You don’t have to decide today that you are going to write a memoir.

Just keep writing.
Record the experiences.
Write down the names.
Describe the places.
Capture the conversations you still remember.
Write about the people who shaped you.
Write about the decisions.
Write about the mistakes.
Write about the moments nobody else saw.

Years later, those pages may become invaluable. They can help you reconstruct your own story, they can help your children understand where they came from, they can preserve family history, they can document a career, a business, a migration journey, a community or an era, and eventually, with the right guidance, those scattered memories can be organised into something more lasting:

a memoir.

That is part of the larger vision behind journaling at Naija Diaries. We don’t just want to encourage people to write, we want to encourage people to “preserve their stories.”

You Don’t Have to Answer Every Prompt

There are hundreds of journal prompts online, you don’t need all of them. In fact, don’t turn journaling into another task you have to complete.

Choose the question that speaks to you.
Ignore the ones that don’t.
Return to a question months later.

Answer the same question differently at different stages of your life. Because you are changing, and therefore, your answers will change too.

The question: “What does success mean to me?”
might produce one answer at 20.
Another at 30.
Another at 45.
Another at 70.

The question stayed the same.
You changed.
And that is part of the beauty of keeping a journal.

Try This Today

Don’t overthink it. Open your journal and answer this:
What is something happening in my life right now that I might want to remember ten years from now?

Write freely.
Don’t worry about grammar.
Don’t worry about making it beautiful.
Don’t worry about whether anyone else would find it interesting.

Write it as if you are leaving a message for a future version of yourself, because you are.

Your Story Is Already There

You may think you have nothing to write about. You probably do, you just haven’t found the right question yet.

A journal prompt is simply a key.
Sometimes it opens a thought.
Sometimes a memory.
Sometimes a wound.
Sometimes a dream.
Sometimes a story.

And sometimes, it opens a part of yourself that has been waiting to be heard. So the next time you sit in front of a blank page, don’t ask: “What am I supposed to write?”

Ask a better question, then follow the answer.

Join the Journaling Circle

Journaling doesn’t have to be a completely solitary experience.

The Naija Diaries Journaling Circle is being created as a supportive space for people who want to write, reflect, share ideas, discover new prompts and become more intentional about recording their lives.

You don’t have to be an experienced writer.
You don’t have to journal every day.
You don’t even have to know exactly what you want to write about yet.

You simply have to be willing to begin.
Different lives. Different stories. Different pages. One circle.

If you are interested in joining, send us a direct message and let us know.

What’s Coming Next?

We’ve talked about what journaling is, why it matters, the difference between digital and paper journals, common journaling myths, how to start your first journal and now the questions that can help you fill the blank page.

Next, we’ll go a little deeper:
How to Journal When Life Is Messy

Because sometimes life doesn’t arrive neatly organised into chapters.

Sometimes it arrives as uncertainty, change, heartbreak, excitement, disappointment, transition and a dozen unanswered questions at once, and your journal can become one of the places where you make sense of it.

Today’s Journal Prompt:
What is one question about my life that I genuinely want to answer?

Don’t answer it immediately, write the question first and then begin.