Morning Pages
A Simple Practice That Changes Everything
✧ ✧ ✧ ✧
There is a very simple practice that has the potential to literally change your life. Morning Pages is a practice I began many years ago while doing The Artist’s Way workbook (which is completely amazing, if you’ve never done it).
It’s one of those practices that seems so simple it is hard to believe it’s worth the extra time in the morning to do it. It’s hard to believe it actually has the potential to change your life. But truthfully, it most certainly has changed mine. It has helped me to see parts of myself that I couldn’t until they were on the page. It has helped me to realize what was holding me back, what it was that really mattered to me. It is what led me down the path I am on today!
It’s a simple practice. And with commitment, it has the potential to change everything.
Here’s the deal
You wake up and write 3 pages in a journal first thing in the morning. Every day.
What you write is brain-drain. You are not writing to create a final product. You are not writing to eventually share with others. You are not even writing to make a cohesive sentence. You are writing whatever comes to your mind in this moment. And then in this moment.
You write continuously until you fill up 3 pages. And you do this every day. First thing.
What you get out of it
You become the observer of your own brain. You begin to train yourself to watch the thoughts moving through your mind and then write them down. You begin to create a little space between your thoughts, your feelings and your reactions. It’s a form of meditation, really.
By writing first thing in the morning, you are closer to that liminal space of the dreamtime. You are closer to your subconscious brain, your creative self. Before the time where your logical, planning, action oriented (and sometimes critical) self takes over. This is where dreams and ideas, possibility and creativity live. This is where you can really get to know your whole self.
You begin to notice patterns. After writing 3 pages of raw self day after day, you will begin to notice a lot about yourself. How many pages you need to take up with complaints before you get to the juicy stuff. How you are truly feeling in your life, about your relationships, or about yourself day after day. How you’ve been writing for 3 months every single day about the dream you have for yourself... and you thought you didn’t know what you wanted in your life!
“The pages are a pathway to a strong and clear sense of self. They are a trail that we follow into our own interior, where we meet both our own creativity and our creator.”
Check it out. Challenge yourself to a 7 day Morning Pages commitment. Wake up 30 minutes earlier, get out your notebook and write.
Commit to yourself, and see what begins to reveal itself to you through the page. And let me know how it goes! I would LOVE to hear from you.