June 12, 2020
Pour Out Your Morning Pages
A well-known tactic to unlock your creativity is to develop a habit of spending five minutes each morning pouring out a few pages of longhand “stream of consciousness” writing. You don’t pause. You don’t think. You just scribble whatever enters into your head.
This journaling approach has been around a long time but it became more popular when Julia Cameron touted it in her wonderful book, “The Artist’s Way,” which essentially is a guide to cultivating creativity. In this blog, Julia notes “morning pages serve to prioritize, clarify, and ground the day’s activities. Frequently fragmented, petty, even whining, morning pages were once called “brain drain” because they so clearly siphoned off negativity.”
When you’re done with your journaling, it’s typically full of gibberish and gets tossed. It ain’t pretty. On occasion, you might have uncovered a few nuggets that may help you in your daily life. But that’s not the goal – the goal is to unclutter your mind so that it’s more focused for the rest of your day. Here’s a 7-minute video from Amy Landino that explains the morning pages process well. By the way, I typically write out one page – not three as recommended by Julia & others – and seem to get plenty of benefit…