Morning Pages – Write Daily For Clarity, Creativity, Productivity
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I want to share something that has made such a positive impact on my life this past year. Morning pages have given me a clearer sense of direction and have led me to take key actions in life. Actually, the concept of Lavendaire came out of a morning pages session. There are just so many benefits to writing everyday: a clearer mind, improved creativity, improved productivity, time for self reflection, etc.—that I would recommend it to everybody.
The concept comes from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron—I personally have not read the book, and I don’t remember where I first learned about morning pages, but it was probably a blog.
What Are Morning Pages?
Morning pages are three pages of writing done every morning, typically encouraged to be in long hand. You’re supposed to write anything and everything that comes out of your head; don’t think too much about what you’re writing, just let it flow as your mind goes.
The point is that you MUST complete writing your three pages. You’ll find that if you continue to spill, then you have a lot to say; you just didn’t realize all this stuff that was going on in your mind.
We have so many layers of thoughts. Morning pages reveals those layers, starting from the surface and peeling each of them back to get deeper and deeper to your core. Normally, I start writing about my immediate thoughts: a recap of the day before, things I have to do that day, things I’m worried about, whatever takes up my immediate attention. After I get it all out, I realize that there’s more going on underneath. Then I usually become more reflective and almost always end up writing about my dreams and goals and how I will utilize my day to move forward toward those goals. A lot of the time, I’m also writing about things that I’m grateful for; it really puts things in perspective and I start my day with a sense of what is important in my life.
Doing this everyday has shaped my life for the better, because everyday I am grateful for what I have and I know that I am taking steps to bring my dreams closer to reality. I’ve become so much more focused, with a clearer sense of direction, and most importantly, I’m happier.
My favorite system is to write in composition notebooks. I usually spend 15-30 minutes on morning pages, depending on how flowy I am or whether I get distracted. I’ve tried typing out morning pages on this website called 750words.com. 750 words = three pages, and the website shows your word count so you know when you’re done for the day. I tried it for a month but went back to handwriting because I feel that I’m more honest in handwriting.
I’m pretty proud of my little collection of morning pages notebooks so far; I’ve completed two notebooks and now I’m on my third. I decided to spice it up this time and get this super adorable notebook from Target; totally worth the extra few cents.
I really hope this has inspired you to give morning pages a try. Try it out for a week and let me know in the comments how you do! Also don’t forget to give this video a thumbs up if you liked it and subscribe for new videos every week!
How much do you really know about yourself?
Discover more about yourself and what you want out of life with this free downloadable list of 30 self reflection journaling prompts.