How a Simple Morning Habit Can Help You Figure Stuff Out
Living Happy
So, I’ve been writing poems every morning.
I know! I know! “Poems,” say the anti-poem people. “Ick!”
And I totally get that, I do. Just like not all people are into graphic novels or manatee erotica (making that one up), people aren’t all into poems.
The only reason I’m telling you about this is that it relates to morning pages.
What are morning pages?
“Three pages of whatever crosses your mind — that’s all there is to it,” according to Julia Cameron. “If you can’t think of anything to write, then write, ‘I can’t think of anything to write.…’ Do this until you have filled three pages. Do anything until you have filled three pages.”
This is called stream of consciousness writing, which is basically just writing without stopping a lot and thinking about it. It’s sort of like writing without a filter. It’s writing without that internal critic/editor standing over your shoulder and telling you that you and/or your writing sucks and putting up walls between you and the page.
I do this for poems, apparently.
Here are a couple of screencaps of my morning pages so that you don’t feel like you have to be precious about your own. I’m just going to use the last three entires (there’s a skip because I took the weekend off).
So, you can see, I did not filter to share this. :) But that’s sort of the point, right?
We chose to get into a habit of thinking and/or writing and then that habit continues in a way that will hopefully mold us into the sort of human that we want to be. I want to be an unfiltered, brave writer. The morning pages help me with that.
Other people use them to plan their day, dive into what matters to them, figure out their purpose. But it’s a productive kind of habit and those kind of habits are cool.
Michael Pruett says in a class for HarvardX,
“So if I'm speaking of myself, I would often say, I just need to look within, find myself, find my true self, find who I really am. And often, we'll think about this in terms of a life arc.
“So oftentimes, we'll say to children, particularly maybe high school age, moving into college, look within.
“Find yourself.
“Once you've found yourself, then learn to love yourself and embrace yourself for who you are.”
Habits, he says, are the surface of things, and we often think they can give clues to what/who your true self is. If you buy too many books that you don’t have time to read, your true self might be that you love to read.
If you’re always looking at running blogs, you might want to be a runner. If you’re always arguing on Facebook about politics, you might want to be in a political position or a writer so that your truths can get out there. Pretty cool, right? Give it a try maybe? Not the politician thing, but those morning pages or even just taking a moment and looking at your habits and seeing what they say about you.