A Fun Journal Exercise to Boost Happiness & Get Creative

Using journal prompts to start writing is a great way to have fun, get creative and lift your spirits.

Purposefully and intentionally focusing on positive thoughts can help boost happiness levels, because focusing on the positive helps us to see the possibilities, beauty, and humor in life.

Writing in a journal is not only a fun and happy activity, but is also a way to focus your mindset creatively. Brainstorming, making lists, and using fun journal prompts can be so satisfying when you feel the need to get your creativity flowing.

Journal prompts are my version of the adult coloring book. Journaling using journal prompts is fun in the same way as using coloring pages to create art. Although using a different part of the brain. Want to get started with some fun journaling prompts? Alright, let’s go!

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Using journal prompts or journal exercises for list-making, brainstorming, and creative inspiration is a great way to distract and redirect negative energy.

Writing in a journal using fun prompts creates a shift in thought or a distraction from what’s unpleasant. Sometimes what you need is a change of mental scenery, however temporary. You need a new visual or a random idea to make you smile.

So kick your worries aside for a moment, and try this fun journal exercise. (For your entertainment and mine, I included my own answers to these journal prompts!)

5 Journal Writing Exercises to Boost Your Mood

1. List your top 20 favorite happiest places ever

These could include your bedroom, the beach, a favorite restaurant, a place you’ve visited, a fictional setting in a novel, wherever. The place doesn’t even have to be real, so long as you visualize it and write it down. These are happy places. If you can’t think of 20 places you love, then make some up.

2. Journal your favorite jokes

Jokes are a happy and fun journal prompt idea. Write them down and LOL! Oh, you’re sitting in a public space and that would be weird? Ok, scratch that. Or what if you find jokes lame? Maybe you don’t know any good ones? I can remedy you that with one to get started:

“Why does a chicken coop have 2 doors? Cause if it had 4 doors it would be a chicken sedan!”

There’s more where that came from, don’t be afraid to ask, LOL.

3. Journal your favorite inspirational quotes

Write them down and be re-inspired! I enjoy the words of Einstein, the author SARK, and Andy Warhol, to name a few. Inspiration quotes can be fun to deeply ponder, can prompt mind expansion, and can be great creative kindling. One of my favorite inspirational quotes is “Art is whatever you can get away with.” -Andy Warhol.

If inspirational quotes make you happy and seem like a fun journal exercise idea, check out the following blog posts:

15 Cute Happy Quotes About Life

15 Positive Quotes for Women to Feel Strong and Confident

15 Inspirational Quotes to Start Your Day

4. Brainstorm 50 things you are grateful for right now

You’ve likely heard before about how gratitude journaling can increase happiness. That’s because it works. It’s more of focusing on the positive. Realizing what you do have as opposed to what you don’t. I’m grateful for my ears, warm socks, kittens, the sky, and color. And of course my family and avocados.

5. List exactly what you would do right now if you could do anything that you want

Sometimes, after a long day with the kids, I like to imagine that I’m at a luxury spa beach-front resort in Hawaii.

I have a wide-brimmed hat and coconut-scented sunscreen. I’m eating a fresh gourmet meal someone else prepared. There are no dishes to clean up and I can take my time eating. The kids have an amazing babysitter, so after I eat I’m getting a hot lava stone massage. I’m then sitting in a hot tub with the smell of pink tropical flowers all around and a Toucan in a Palm tree.

Ah, goals.