Name: Morning Pages | 15 Tips to Get the MOST Out of this Exercise (TODAY)
Uploaded: 2024-08-21T12:33:02.000Z
Duration: 17 min 42 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Gerund

I started writing my morning pages something like three years ago, and it wasn't something I expected to stick, it wasn't something that I was intending to, you know, make some grand changes in my life, but it did.

It absolutely revolutionized the way that I live my life, as hyperbolic as that sounds.

Without the morning pages, I wouldn't have had the clarity and the self-confidence and the drive to get where I am today.

The morning pages is a technique from a book called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.

This book is designed to help artists and creatives get past their mental blocks and into the realm of creativity.

Now, it's actually incredibly simple, and I think that's why it was so effective for me personally.

All you do is you write three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing every day.

The point is to just keep the pen moving and just get whatever's floating around in your head onto paper.

The only caveat to the morning pages is that you need to keep your writing completely private.

Not your spouse, not your kids, not your best friend.

It's not being written for someone else to be read.

It's being written for the pure act of writing.

Three pages a day, long handwriting, stream-of-consciousness, totally private just for your eyes.

That's the entirety of the morning pages.

It's something that literally anyone can pick up and do, as long as you know how to write and hold a pen.

So, here are 15 tips to help you get the most out of your morning pages.

This might not be the most fun tip, but I promise you that it is totally worth it.

The morning pages can take anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes.

So try to set your alarm about 30 minutes earlier than you typically get up, and try to imprint it as the morning routine.

Two, don't look at your phone or the internet or the newspaper or anything else before you write.

You might be tempted to wake up and check your phone, but I want you to try to check that impulse and write your morning pages first.

I always find whenever I do my morning pages before I check in on the rest of the world, I find that I'm a lot clearer, more level-headed, and just, I'm able to really process things a lot easier.

When you wake up and immediately bombard yourself with news and text messages and memes and anything else like that, it clogs up your head a little bit.

It makes it a little bit harder to think straight and focus.

Three, make a ritual out of your morning pages.

Make it something enjoyable and comforting so you're excited for it every day.

That can be something like having a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, light a candle, or burn some incense.

You might want to write your morning pages right after you get out of the shower in the morning when you're very relaxed.

Whatever you do, just curate your morning pages ritual to be something that is simple and easy to do, but relaxing, calming, something that helps you just ease into it and write.

You don't need to do this. This is definitely not a requirement, but it's something that I found to be immensely helpful when I started writing my morning pages.

These materials help me feel good every time that I sat down to write.

The thing that I think is kind of the most important is the pen.

You want it to have smooth ink. You want it to feel good in your hand.

Writing three pages longhand, if you're not used to it, can kind of wear on you, especially at first.

You get used to it after a while, but having a pen that flows really nicely and just writes really easily is incredibly helpful to just getting your thoughts out.

I can link the materials that I personally enjoy in the description down below.

Just make sure you're not using materials that you absolutely hate, because if you don't like the pen, if it annoys you, if the paper is crappy, then you're not going to want to write, and you'll avoid it.

So get stuff that you at least are able to tolerate, but preferably get something that you actually enjoy writing with.

It's really nice to just have a breeze, to smell the fresh air, to hear the birds.

There's something about it, at least for me, that just completely takes it to a new level.

I have written while sitting on a loud balcony in Chicago, and I have written while sitting on a rock during a hike.

Both of them are great. They're different, but they're great, and it's just nice to be able to sit outside and listen to the world around you while you write your morning pages.

Tip number six, don't worry about your handwriting.

Remember what I said that the morning pages are for you, you only, no one else can read them, totally private?

Well, part of that means you don't have to make it legible.

No one's going to be reading it, no one's going to be grading it, no one's going to be judging it.

So your handwriting can be complete and total chicken scratch, and it does not matter.

As long as you know what you're saying whenever you're writing it down, you don't even need to be able to read it.

Don't write slow because you're trying to make everything all neat and nice and tidy.

Just let it rip, just write as fast as you can.

And on that same note, don't worry about grammar or spelling or anything like that.

Again, no one's going to be reading it, no one's going to be trying to figure out what it is you're saying, so it doesn't matter.

If you misspell something, don't go back to fix it, just plow on.

If you use the improper type of their or your, just move on.

You don't need to fix it, you don't need to have everything be nice and perfect.

Just keep the pen moving, keep it going, and by the time you are done with your three pages, you're not going to remember those mistakes.

This is kind of on the same thread as the last two tips, but it still is worthy mentioning.

Don't worry about having nice, rounded, complete thoughts.

If you're writing something about subject A and then suddenly subject B pops into your head, start writing about subject B.

You can cut off your first thing mid-sentence and just completely start a new thread.

You can do that and change gears and switch entirely, and it's totally fine.

Consciousness is not, in fact, in nice, neat little bubbles with nice, neat little conclusions.

So you don't need to worry about doing that on the page.

If something pops into your head, write it down.

Clearly, it's something that's going on in your mind, so you might as well get it down on paper while it's visiting you.

If it interrupts another thought, then so be it.

There is nothing more distracting and annoying than being in the middle of a writing session and really being in the flow, and then an ad pops on.

It's just really a—it's a frustrating experience.

So my suggestion is, if you're listening to music, listen to ad-free music, wherever you can get that.

If you have CD, go ahead and listen to that.

If you want to listen to YouTube videos, as long as they're really long and there's no ads popping in halfway through, that's a fine option.

Prime Music is great because I already had Amazon Prime, and I had no idea that it came with a music subscription, but it did, and when I discovered it, it blew my mind.

You have access to millions of songs, and it's just—it's great.

If you want to try out some ad-free music and see how it fits on you, then I would suggest you give Prime Music a shot because I personally think it's awesome.

I will put a link in the description below if you want to give that a shot.

There's over 2 million songs available, and it's completely ad-free.

Tip number 10, don't let anyone interrupt your writing.

This one is a particularly important one because it's really easy to feel like writing your morning pages is an indulgence and that you are somehow being selfish for taking 30 minutes to write in a journal, and in reality, you're not.

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Morning Pages | 15 Tips to Get the MOST Out of this Exercise (TODAY)

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