A Creative Journal

Creating Personal Journal Contracts

by Heather Goldsmith on January 4th, 2007

I came across the idea of creating a personal contract some time ago in the excellent Inspirare* project Susan Letham created in 2000. The project went for one year. One of the best journal writing exercises I did came from that project.

The exercise involved creating a contract with two conflicting parts of yourself; your inner editor and your inner creative. I went through with the exercise, not really giving it too much thought, but I found the contract I created between my inner editor and creative held. They were bound by this agreement they had both signed.

Here’s a definition of contract thanks to Wikipedia.org.

Since then I’ve not used this again, even though I knew the idea to be effective from my personal experience. Recently, though, my daughter came up with a challenge for the adults in this family. Instead of making a resolution to lose weight or eat better she created a contract, which each of us signed and witnessed, agreeing to not eat any junk food, expect on specific and designated days for 2007.

All the details were noted in the contract. My daughter defined junk food, wrote the days we were permitted to eat junk food, and the penalty for not completing the challenge. She also included the reward. Once again, I read it, signed it and didn’t think too much more about it. That is not until I was shopping and felt like a little something. The idea of the contract I’d signed came straight to mind. I was once again surprised by how effectively my desire for junk food died.

You might like to adapt this idea to use in your own journal. Let me know if you do create a personal contract. I’m happy to act as witness if you need one.

* The Inspirare project is now closed.

Heather
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POSTED IN: Journal Styles and Techniques