How I made morning pages work for me, and how you can too!
Is writing 3 pages of ‘no brain writing’ each morning, as soon as I wake up, going to change my life? A lot of people have told me so. So I tried it…
I first heard about morning pages through a colleague who said it was the most important part of his day. Each morning, he wakes up and straight away he starts writing. Not about anything in particular. He just writes, letting his half awake brain conjure up 3 pages of writing. Every morning!
Made popular through the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, morning pages are a way to free ones mind of all the creativity-blocking junk we have going through our heads each day. Effectively acting as a brain dump each morning of all our worries, plans and dreams, allowing us to be present in the day ahead.
We often feel like we need to hold on to these thoughts and feelings as they come to us throughout the day. Positive ones because they make us feel good, as well as negative ones, perhaps things we want to change in our life that require some thought and attention. These things need venting but rarely get the opportunity to be expressed. Morning pages are an opportunity to dump all these passing thoughts and feelings on to a page, thus freeing the mind and giving us space to find our creativity and reduce anxiety. Artists and business leaders alike have claimed that morning pages have changed their careers, relationships and lives for the better.
While there is “no wrong way to write morning pages”, it is important to just continue writing. Write about whatever comes to your head, jump between topics, write the wacky and weird, whatever is on your mind should end up on that page!
We live in a digital world now and there’s no fighting it! When I started writing my morning pages I took pen to paper, literally, and hand-wrote out 3 pages of no brain writing. I realised that it’s not often anymore that I actually write by hand, and why would I? So I started writing my morning pages in a notes app on my laptop. This was much better, but there were still problems…
Having to create a new page each day, date it, store it in a hidden place and ensure it’s not mixed up with my daily notes gave the whole ritual an annoying undertone. So my colleague said to me, “why don’t we just make an app that is made specifically for morning pages?”. And that’s exactly what we did!
Together we made No Brain Writing. An app that makes starting this new habit as effortless as possible. Simply open the app and start writing. A new page is already waiting in front of you, dated and ready to go. No formatting, or arranging pages. Just write.
Having all my private morning pages in one place, dated, word-counted, password-protected and analysed for writing speed, mood and themes made it easy to form the habit and quick to see the results.
No Brain Writing has helped me let go of a lot of big worries and concerns in my life that clouded my everyday, as well as all the tiny little things in my mind that I didn’t even know were there. There are things that I realised I needed to talk about, not to someone else, but to myself.
You know that feeling when you’re stuck on a problem and by simply saying or writing that problem out, the answer pops in to your head without anyone having to say anything? That’s what No Brain Writing feels like to me.
Writing what I’m thinking about to myself is the best way to see inside my own mind, rearrange some things and give space to my creativity.
Check it out by clicking on the link below!