I love morning pages! Up until July I had never heard of morning pages, so let me explain. Morning pages are three handwritten pages of “stream of consciousness” thoughts. You write them first thing in the morning and you write them quickly without editing, and you don’t keep them. No one else will ever read them. That was the appeal for me – no audience. Usually, when I write I am conscious of my audience and I pre-edit everything that comes out of my mind.
My first morning of morning pages resulted in two pages of complaining, the next day, three pages of complaining, however by the next week I was tired of complaining and couldn’t wait to jump out of bed and start writing all my thoughts and ideas. It’s been months now and I still look forward to getting out of bed and writing daily. I love the perspective I get each day from this type of journaling.
o When I am angry – there is someone (my pages) to direct my anger at.
o When I am sad, frustrated or upset – I have someone (my pages) who listens without judgement.
o When I have great ideas – I get to try them out on my morning pages first.
o I use my morning pages to talk with God and He uses them to talk back to me.
I bought myself some beautiful pens to use while writing and it delights me to see page after page of beautiful script written out with little stars by the parts that I want to act on. I have been journaling for years and I can’t believe that nobody ever told me about morning pages! That’s why I want to share their magic with you. I’ve been telling everyone I know how much I love morning pages, two of my friends have started writing them and they love them too. Unfortunately most people tell me it just takes too much time and they are too busy.
It does take time and you can start where you are comfortable. Usually it takes me about 45 minutes to write three pages – more time if I get distracted. I started getting up 30 minutes earlier – 5:30 AM to write them. I have found that my morning journaling actually saves me time.
o Time that I would have spent brooding about the pandemic or the election or how unfair some parts of life are.
o Time that I would have spent planning my marketing strategies and figuring out how to implement them
o Time that I would have spent in prayer talking with God and listening to Him.
o Time working on my relationships with my husband, kids, and grand-kids.
o Morning pages help me decide what I want to focus on and what my top priorities for the day are.
I believe that I get about an hour and sometimes two back for every 30 minutes invested in writing. That is a GREAT return on investment! Like they say, we can get more of everything – except time.
Have I convinced you that you need to morning pages yet? I really think if you tried them you would be surprised.
In January, I am going to host a book group called “It’s never too late to create a beautiful life“, based on Julia Cameron’s book “It’s Never too Late to Begin Again”. Morning pages are just one of the tools we will learn about.
I would love to have you join my book group! Details are coming soon, but you don’t need to wait until then to get started with morning pages. Just grab a simple lined notebook and start experimenting with your own morning pages right now.
