How to Create A Journal Persona

By Lael Johnson

First of all, I often become too intense when I journal. Sometimes it’s easier for me to be serious then to write fun entries. There’s always a season to journal about serious topics. I am going to introduce one simple way to have fun when you journal.

Create Your Persona: Create a whole new personality, a person who has all of your favorite character traits, mannerisms and work skills. To avoid boredom, make sure that your persona is interesting to you.

Picture Your Persona: Remember that this is symbol for this persona, draw a simple image. You can use this symbol when you write entries or you may just use your persona’s initials.

Give Your Persona A Backstory: Write a three sentence history of your persona, so you can differentiate this persona from other people that you might write about in the future. Stop, reread your three sentences and add any extra details in a fourth sentence.

Chat With Your Persona: Practice journaling with your persona, using letters, sharing pictures, and doodles. To enhance your entries, experiment using colored pens, crayons and other materials.

Reread Your Entries: Finally, after you finish your first dialogue, stop and reread your conversation(s). What surprised you? What bothered you? What do you want to repeat in future conversations? Do you want to continue chatting with your current persona? Do you want to create new persona? Did you have fun with this exercise? If not, what could you do to increase the fun potential with your next persona?

Feel free to experiment with this exercise at least one more time, before you move on to another technique. Enjoy creating and interacting with other parts of yourself! •

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