One reason that our thoughts succeed in pinning us down to the mental mat is that they sometimes outnumber the things that we want to focus on. Sometimes it even feels like our swirling thoughts, full of dreams, worries, and uncertainty, have us in emotional chains.
Sometimes we just want to break free.
Would you like to have a tool to help you help break their hold on you? Read on!
The Artist’s Way and Morning Pages
The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity [10th Anniversary Edition]
The premise of The Artists’s Way is that we lose touch with our creative selves, like how friendships atrophy when we fail to write or call (or text or IM – this is the 21st century, after all). Many of us need ways to reengage our creative skills by renewing our relationship with our creative selves, those parts of our minds which dream and create. There are plenty of different exercises in The Artist’s Way to do exactly that.
Unburden Your Mind To Get Off The Mat
Part of the practice of thoughtwrestling is to help unload and quiet your mind, a mind that’s full of rampaging, noisy thoughts. The very first exercise in The Artist’s Way, called morning pages, is a way to do just that. If you’ve never done morning pages before, the benefits of that exercise alone are worth the cost of the book.
Morning pages are very simple to write. Once a day, usually in the morning, you write three pages of stuff using pen and paper. That’s all. Just three pages. The stuff that you write about is completely up to you. It can be anything.
Wait, you might think, three pages is a lot. How long will that take? What if you don’t have enough thoughts and ideas to fill three pages? What do you do?
Morning Pages Explained
Let’s review morning pages in more detail. As stated above, the objective of this exercise is to fill three sheets of paper, with your own handwriting. There is no set time limit for doing this. Personal experience shows that writing three morning pages can take from 30 to 60 minutes in the beginning. It’s best to plan for one hour of writing and then, depending on your results, you can cut back on how much time you schedule for your daily morning pages. Did we mention that morning pages are a daily exercise?
Empty your mind onto paper to help you thoughtwrestle
There are no restrictions on what you can write about. You can use the morning pages as a personal journal. You can use the pages as a means to plan out projects. You can write stories if you like. You can fill the pages with the same word, over and over, if that works for you. Some topics you could try, if you’re stuck for ideas, include:
- What happened yesterday
- What’s going to happen today
- Future plans (of any kind)
- Things you like
- Thinks you don’t like
- Hopes
- Fears
- Things that make you angry
- Favorite memories
- Someone (or something) that you care about
These are just suggestions and they should be treated as starting points because an interesting thing happens over time. As your conscious mind disengages a bit from the process, you may find surprising things appear on the paper. Wants, dreams, fears, old hurts, rants: anything can appear if your subconscious is dying to express it. This is a good thing. Don’t stop writing, no matter what emerges from the tip of your pen, until you finish your three pages. If some thoughts try to intrude, let them intrude and write them down.
Remember: no one ever needs to read these pages, including you.
Morning pages are particularly good tools if you have conscious (or subconscious) worries, psychic wounds, fears, or other concerns that you may be ignoring or suppressing. Bringing them to the surface and getting them down on paper (a caution: this can be emotionally draining) helps reduce anxiety and stops energy from being lost to unproductive thoughts and feelings.
Writing down your thoughts as they appear can help to lift their burden from your mind. Julia Cameron calls this process decluttering. You are tidying up your mental desk so that you have capacity to do more important work.
Let your thoughts speak for themselves
Do not edit what you write. You may never read your pages after writing them. That’s perfectly fine. The point is not to create art; the point is to help clear your mind to do more important work. Like, say, thoughtwrestling.
Some professionals (e.g. therapists) believe that this type of exercise should be done as quickly as possible. You should write as fast as you possibly can, even if it means that your pages look like hen scratching. The theory behind this is that when you are writing faster than your conscious mind can think you are tapping directly into the subconscious and bringing your true feelings to the surface.
You don’t have to be a speed demon when writing your morning pages, but it’s another variation that could be useful to you.
There’s theory that you can research about the art and science of writing morning pages, but you can use this tool without deeply understanding the theory. We strongly recommend that if your thoughts are wrestling you to the ground try writing morning pages for several weeks and see what comes out of it.
Have YOU tried morning pages before? How did they work for you?
(Please note: the author is not a scientist, medical professional, or the like, so please understand that this is a mental, creative exercise and it’s not intended to replace other kinds of therapy. If you’re feeling really bad and are experiencing significant emotional or mental problems, we strongly urge you to visit a medical professional and get his or her help.)
EDIT: Kat French suggests an interesting alternative called a Daily Download that’s worth reading about.
Images by raymaclean, caitlinator
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For all the writing I do on blogs I do just as much in notebooks. I can’t imagine not writing. And as you say, just because you write something it doesn’t follow that you have to publish it, show it to anyone or even ever read it.
I start almost every day writing something. Often, it’s whatever is floating around in my head. It helps me sort, get my equilibrium and figure out just what it is I DO think. For me, it’s the best remedy for a muddled brain.
Bill, sounds like you have a habit that’s very similar to morning pages. I think it’s important to realize that any expectations that we have of starting the day “on” and immediately able to produce great work are often wrong. Both your method and morning pages help clear out the clutter, like Julia Cameron writes about.
I have been doing morning pages nearly every day for the last three years. Not only does writing them clear my mind, I learn so much about myself when I come back and read the pages months later.
Hi Jean. I’ve followed the morning pages practice before as well, although I haven’t lately. I’ve rarely gone back to read what I’ve written – I guess I’ve already got plenty to read!
I’ve never tried doing pages in the morning, but I do set aside periods of time to brainstorm and write with abandon in a beloved notebook. It has really helped me to untangle some of the ideas that bounce around in my head. I like the idea of doing it in the morning, clearing the clutter before the work day!
Thanks Christie. I think that the time of day could be flexible, but there’s a lot of logic to make it a “first thing in the morning” ritual.
Hi Mark.
I am going to give morning pages a go based on what you have said here. I think it will be good.
I know it would be the right type of start because writing things down has always been good for me.
Good luck with the morning pages and let us know how it goes, Armen!
Hey there.
I did it and it was good. I had a lot in my thoughts. 3 pages went by like nothing.
I got a sense of what my thoughts consist of, so it is good to know.
Excellent, Armen. Will you keep doing it?
[...] idea generation, you come to appreciate that it takes time until the best ideas surface. If you do morning pages, you’ll come to discover amazing thoughts and ideas appearing without any [...]
I did the MPs for three months although I didn’t follow fully what The Artist’s Way said I should do but I did the MPs nonstop. About a week later, I noticed that my local library was having a free creative writing course the following week. So I signed up quickly and couldn’t wait for the class to begin. The following week came and I attended. The class was interesting and the tutor had some good ideas. He told us to go away, take two months and write a short piece, and base it on the style of a writer we admired. So I did! I created a piece and every day, it was like I was being drugged into being attentive to this piece of writing until it was complete. What surprised me about this is clearly by doing the MPs, my writing had improved, not a lot but significantly in such a way that left me surprised. I submitted the piece and the tutor let me know a week later he clearly enjoyed what I wrote and insisted I should continue with his class, as he felt I had potential.
What the MPs have done is to ‘fast track’ the standard of my writing. Now I know the MPs have and can help, and I will make it a part of my life.