I Tried 30 Days of Morning Pages: Here’s What Happened
Discover the unexpected changes from my Month-long writing experiment.
If you are like me, who is constantly learning new things alongside his job and other side hustle, then you would know what it feels like when our mind is overwhelmed due to a lot of thinking going on in it.
Even if we don’t know at a conscious level, a lot is happening inside our minds. Sometimes you feel stressed but don’t know why that is happening.
Sometimes you feel anxious, but in the present moment, there isn’t anything that you can think of that would cause anxiety.
This happens because our subconscious mind tries to solve the issues we think we are going to face in the future.
Our minds like to solve unsolved mysteries. You suddenly remember something you should have said to your friend during a conversation, but you said something else, which was less interesting than this new thought.
This happens because once someone asks us a question or we are in an argument, our subconscious mind keeps thinking about it even if the conversation is over.
It’s like the way you see your screen as just one app opened, but there are multiple apps running in the background that are taking up the battery of your phone or laptop.
I wasn’t aware of these things until I found out about morning pages.
Morning Pages
Morning Pages is a technique shared by Julia Cameron; you can check out more details about it here.
In the morning pages technique, you need to write three pages after waking up before doing anything that requires cognitive skills. In these 3 pages, you write any thought that comes into your mind.
If you are not having thoughts, then you can write, I don’t have any thoughts, I don’t have any thoughts, multiple times until you get another thought and write that down.
It basically brings thoughts from your sub-conscious mind because, when you wake up, you are in a relaxed state and your brain is in alpha waves. It is easier to access the sub-conscious mind in those states.
I couldn’t write morning pages on a physical note book because of my environment and my fear that someone might read it in my home, as I live with a combined family. So I found out about an interesting app called Morning Pages for iPhone.
I set the goal of writing 500 words in the app.
I quit social media and uninstalled all the apps that take my attention, so it was easier for me to focus on writing morning pages in the app instead of getting distracted by social media.
If you haven’t read my 21-day social media detox article, you can read it here (I quit social media cold turkey).
Everything was set, and I woke up the next day and wrote my first morning page entry.
Day 1–7
In the first few days, I had a lot of things to write.
I wrote about the lessons that I learned from the books. Then a lot of tasks started popping into my mind. I was unaware of some tasks at the conscious level in that moment.
If it weren’t for the morning pages, I wouldn’t even have remembered that task.
For the first week, I woke up and wrote my morning pages, and most of the thoughts that came while writing were the pending tasks and what I learned from reading a book before sleeping.
Experience:
In the first few days, I didn’t feel a lot of difference in my thinking or the benefits of doing this activity. It was like a task-reminder activity.
Day 8–14
In the second week, I still had task-oriented thoughts, but they decreased.
I wasn’t getting a lot of task thoughts after waking up as compared to week 1.
Then I started getting thoughts about future goals and things I should do.
Like the book I need to purchase, the course I need to enroll in, and the project I need to launch.
Experience:
In the second week, I started feeling better after writing my morning pages. It felt like I had a weight in my mind that I put down. I started feeling clear and relaxed.
Day 15–21
In my third week of writing morning pages, I was having way fewer thoughts pop into my head than when I started.
I was feeling like my mind had been decluttered by a lot of junk. Like when you declutter your desktop and it feels fresh and new.
I was getting a few task-relevant thoughts, a few readings, and a few goal-relevant thoughts. After that, I wasn’t even able to finish my 500-word goal.
Even after trying a lot, I didn’t get any thoughts. So instead of forcing a lot, I finished the morning page entry with the enough words I had written.
Experience:
This was the week that was a game changer, and I really felt the benefits of this technique.
My mind got cleared and decluttered. I felt more relaxed and at peace. It felt like I went to some kind of therapy session. Even though I was writing fewer words, I was feeling happier after completing my morning page entry.
Day 22–30
In these days, I got so good at clearing my mind that I started using the empty space of my mind for creativity.
It is called productive overthinking. After I finished my morning page entry, I didn’t have anything in mind to think about.
It was an empty mind, instead of letting my mind finding something to think about in the background (because mind always finds something to think about, that is how the mind works), I gave my mind a task to think about in background.
Most of the time, it was for writing these articles. I wrote down the title of the article that I needed to write, then I would spend my time on my job work, and in the background of my mind, I could feel that my mind was thinking about the article.
When I went for a walk, I got the idea of an introduction that I needed to write for my article. You can check out my introductions to previous articles, and for this one too, it is not something that you come up with instantly after you start writing, or at least I wouldn’t be able to write it. This is something that my mind worked on for a while until I wrote it in my documents.
Experience:
This has been a mind-blowing journey.
Instead of the mind finding something negative to work on and making me feel anxious and stressed, I learned how to empty my mind and use its natural skill of overthinking and solving problems in the background in a productive way.
My creativity improved during this journey of writing morning pages, using my empty mind to get ideas for articles, and writing articles.
I can’t tell you how happy and relaxed I’m feeling while writing this article, because I now know how my mind works, and instead of it working against me, I’m using it to work for me.
Summary:
I don’t know what field you are from or what kind of life you have. But I’m sure you have a lot of thoughts in your mind, and sometimes, due to overthinking, you feel worried. Because if overthinking is happening based on negative thoughts, then it converts into worry and then anxiety.
I would recommend you start this habit and try it for 30 days. You’ll feel light after a few days of writing morning pages.
You’ll find out a lot of underlying thoughts that you were not aware were affecting your mood and health.
Once you gain control and empty your mind, Then give the mind something to think about; it could be an important task you want to finish, an article you want to write, thinking about verses for your poem, or any other useful activity. This will help you become a more creative and happy person.
If you liked this story, you can follow me on Medium so you can get my life lessons to become a happier, more productive, and more wealthy person. Mindful Kamal
Thank you for reading this story.
Kamal
