I Ask Myself These 3 Questions Every Month

And how they determine the flow of the rest of the year.

Most people never achieve their goals, no matter how hard they try.

The reason? They don’t set goals, track progress, and review their growth.

Journaling and reviewing your goals is important to:

know where you’re headed,
understand what new skills you need to develop,
gain perspective on how far you’re from where you want to be,
build better habits,
double down on what worked, and
eliminate what didn’t.

I’ve been journaling since I was a teenager, and it’s a habit that has helped me build consistency, self-awareness, and a channel for my emotions.

If you’re a beginner at journaling, I’ve got your back.

Journaling doesn’t mean sitting with a blank page and introspecting for hours. Sometimes, it can be as simple as picking the right prompts and answering them in the most honest manner.

In this post, I’m sharing three review questions I ask myself each month. Even if you’ve never picked up a journal before, these will help you know yourself better and build a skillset to crush your goals faster.

1. The question to trigger fear

Take a fresh page in your journal, and write this at the top:

What steps did I take to leave my comfort zone in the past month?

Staying in your comfort zone means settling in and lowering your expectations from life.

While for some, it might be a safe space, to many, it signals the end of all personal growth.

Personally, I feel your comfort zone’s the worst place to be stuck in. It fosters in you a false sense of security and kills your drive. The faster you leave it, the quicker you grow.

To make the most of this journal prompt, write all the small actions you did that terrified you in the past month.

These can be small steps you took not just in business, but also in your personal life. Reflect on:

what new challenges you took,
how these improved your self-confidence, and
what you’d like to continue doing in the next month.

If you can’t think of anything that required you to venture out of your comfort zone, that’s alright. You can use this as a reminder to try out more new things that challenge you in the coming days.

2. The question to rewire your perspective

As humans, we try our best to steer clear of failure. We think of each failure as a personal affront that brings our morale down.

To keep up this elusive bubble of happiness and self-preservation, we prefer not to try, and hence, never to fail.

To make yourself immune to this debilitating fear of failure, answer this journaling prompt —

How did I fail last month?

Keeping track of your failures is important. Failures either remind you:

how big of a risk-taker you are, or
they redirect you to a new path that can alter your life.

Write down all the failures you had last month, and list what can you learn from each.

Let these lessons from your failures show you the path your conscious mind might be missing.

“My dad encouraged us to fail growing up. He would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn’t have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome — failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.” — Sara Blakely, Founder of Spandex

3. The question to boost your morale

In our mad rush to always move ahead, we forget to cherish how far we’ve come in our journey.

To change this perspective, answer the following journal prompt:

What were my biggest wins of the past 30 days?

Celebrate small wins. This is a great way to shut off imposter syndrome and appreciate how far you’ve come.

You also feel more confident knowing you’re progressing. Here’s how to move ahead with this monthly review journal prompt —

Write all the big and small wins you had last month.
Reverse-engineer what you did right that brought these wins.
Double down on these steps the next month so you progress quicker.

3 Journal prompts for an effective monthly review: Final words

Journaling is never easy.

Sometimes, the words flow freely, while at others, you’d have to struggle to come up with a single coherent sentence.

The point of this article is not to teach you to journal better. It’s to provide you with some food for thought that might make your life easier.

I’ve always found monthly reviews to be powerful tools to set things into perspective. They help you reflect on the bygone month and carve out a plan for the days ahead.

Summing up, here are the three monthly-review questions to ask yourself to hit your goals faster.

What steps did I take to leave my comfort zone in the past month?
How did I fail last month, and what can I learn from these failures?
What were my biggest wins of the past 30 days?

Hope these help you perform effective monthly reviews. Don’t forget to let me know your experience in the comments.

Once you get the hang of journaling, you must also perform annual reviews to see the bigger picture and how you’re growing year-on-year.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do an effective annual review —