In this series of posts, I’m putting two ideas together—the idea that smart, creative, sensitive individuals are confronted by special challenges and the idea that journaling is a valuable self-help tool—and turning them into a set of journaling prompts designed to lead you on a personal journey of discovery.
I hope that you enjoy these prompts. Here are five more challenges, and four journal prompts to go with each challenge. Engaging with any one of them may well serve you. I hope you find these valuable! And I hope you’ll take a look at Why Smart People Hurt and at my latest journal, Affirmations for Self-Love.
- A sensitivity to mystery
It seems intuitively true that a smart, sensitive, creative person would find both life and the universe on the mysterious side. More existentially attuned than the next person, he or she is likely to wonder about life’s imponderable mysteries, from why there is life to why there is anything.
+ Are you bothered by mystery? Do you find mystery a strange sort of unsettling challenge?
+ Are there certain mysteries that particularly trouble you? Any mysteries with which you are particularly obsessed?
+ Do you see yourself as a spiritual person but have trouble understanding what that exactly means to you?
+ Do you find yourself annoyed at too-simple answers to life’s profound mysteries and likewise annoyed with people who act like everything is clear and transparent to them (because, say, a book has explained everything to them)?
2. A complex relationship with rationality
On the one hand, a smart person knows that two plus two equals four. On the other hand, he or she is unlikely to find life satisfactorily explained by rationality alone. Life doesn’t feel the equivalent of mathematics and logic.
+ Do you find yourself in a tense relationship with rationality?
+ What do you see as the relationship, if any, between intuition and rationality?
+ Do you have the sense that rationality is overrated, underrated, or both?
+ What annoys you the most about the dictates of logic?
3. Complex relationship with emotionality
A smart person can wonder about and even doubt the legitimacy of emotions. Isn’t the brain supposed to reign supreme? Isn’t a feature of rationality the ability to control our emotions? On the other hand, what would a life without emotions feel like or amount to?
+ Do you experience some tension between emotionality and rationality?
+ Do you find feelings suspect?
+ Can you remember a situation where your emotions cost you?
+ Can you remember a situation where your emotions served you?
4. Seeing through the arguments of others
Because a smart person intuitively understands how logic and logical arguments work, he or she is likely to be made upset by arguments with false premises, by arguments whose conclusions do not follow from their premises, and by arguments that simply pander or make no sense.
+ Are you made upset by arguments that make no sense?
+ Have you encountered relationship difficulties because you didn’t believe or couldn’t accept another person’s arguments?
+ What do you do when you see through someone’s argument? Counter-argue? Debate? Shake your head and walk away?
+ What troubles you the most about poorly-constructed or illegitimate arguments?
5. Competitiveness
Smart, creative individuals often choose careers that are highly competitive in nature. Whether it’s in law, fine arts, academia, novel-writing, business, or some other competitive sphere, supply outweighs demand and only a percentage of the folks engaged in those professions will succeed.
+ Is your profession necessarily and naturally competitive? Have you reconciled yourself to that reality?
+ Have you found a way to “not compete” that is working for you?
+ How has this built-in competitiveness played itself out in your life?
+ Would you like to become “more competitive,” for the sake of succeeding? How would that look?
Enjoy! More to come!
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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