- Good morning, good life,
welcome back to AmyTV where we come together
to help you go after the life you want.
I am a huge believer in having a mindfulness practice
that helps you on a daily basis to maintain creativity,
focus, and productivity.
Now it took me a long time to hit my stride with this
after trying a lot of different things,
but what I found is
that my most productive mindfulness moment
is when I sit down on a daily basis
to do a writing practice called Morning Pages.
The reason why I love Morning Pages so much
is that they are incredibly imperfect.
It's not a writing assignment where you sit down
and come up with your best ideas ever
to put down on paper.
Your job is to just write.
You don't think about writing.
You write what you're thinking.
I have found in talking to a lot of people
about Morning Pages that there is
a bit of a misunderstanding of what the purpose of them is,
and the perception of what Morning Pages are,
and a lot of people think that they should be
just as beautiful as their name would lead you to believe,
but from my experience, I believe that the actual act
of Morning Pages is the ugly part,
and the result of maintaining the habit of Morning Pages
is where the beauty appears.
So let's break it down: what exactly are Morning Pages?
This is a daily writing practice
popularized by the author
of "The Artist's Way", Julia Cameron.
She calls Morning Pages
"the bedrock tool of creative recovery."
Put simply, Morning Pages are three pages of longhand,
stream of consciousness writing
done first thing in the morning.
Longhand means that your pages are written
in your ordinary handwriting,
and stream of consciousness is simply your thoughts
and reactions in a continuous flow.
Morning pages are not meant to be typed,
they're not meant to be strategized,
and they really do serve you the best
when they're done as early in the day as possible,
but that's it.
As long as you fill those three pages,
there are no other rules to doing this right.
So why is this such a big deal?
You're probably thinking,
"What could be so amazing in my head
"first thing in the morning
"that I must get them out and onto paper?"
But that's just the thing.
There's probably nothing mind-blowingly amazing
going on in your mind when you first get up in the morning,
at least not yet.
You're just reacting to waking up and starting a day.
Maybe you didn't sleep that well.
Maybe you didn't sleep at all.
Maybe you have a little bit of anxiety
about problems in your life right now.
Maybe you're just concerned about the unknown.
All of these thoughts being generated by your mind
are contributing to a lack of focus and productivity
around the things you're passionate about,
and around the things that you're creatively driven by.
So we gotta get that first little bit of stuff
outta the way.
Here's how I do it.
After I make my habitual glass of lemon water,
I head to the space where I convene my morning routine,
my dressing room.
I keep my Morning Pages journal
and other daily notebooks at a desk with pens,
a salt rock lamp, and an oil diffuser.
I put on soft, lyric-free music to set the mood.
I sit down and open a new page in my journal
designated for Morning Pages, and begin a new entry
immediately after where I left off the day before.
I start with the date, and then the time,
and then I write.
I write for three pages, sometimes complete sentences.
Most of the time, totally illegibly.
Whatever pops up in my mind, I start to write it,
and as I think it, I continue to put those words
down on paper.
I don't judge what I'm thinking.
I don't worry about what it's gonna look like.
I just write whatever pops into my mind.
My goal is to get those three pages filled up
as soon as possible.
The more I analyze my words, the longer it's gonna take,
but the sooner I fill those three pages,
the sooner that crap is out of my mind
and into the real world,
in a journal that I can close up and put away
so that I can move on to the more creative work of my day.
No matter what challenges I might be facing in that moment
or anxiety that could be popping up,
I always feel 100 times better after doing Morning Pages.
It gives me so much more space
to think about the next video I wanna create,
lesson I wanna teach, or blog post I'm gonna write.
To put it to you another way,
I think about Morning Pages
the way Abraham Lincoln thought
about his unsent angry letters.
Lemme explain: whenever he felt the urge to yell at someone
or put out negative energy,
Lincoln would write something called a hot letter,
where he would write all of his anger down
as if he were going to deliver it
to the person who needed a good talking-to.
But once his frustrations were out of his mind
and on paper, he was able to walk away from them,
let his emotions cool down, and move on,
and those hot letters were never sent and never signed.
Have you ever sent a fiery text or tweet
because somebody needed a little talking-to?
Or have you ever told someone off before?
If so, click the Like button.
I know this is relatable.
Here's another question: how many times have you been
so frustrated with your mindset, your own mind,
that you wish you could tell it off,
and tell it to stop doing things that are driving you crazy?
What if you could write it a hot letter,
and ask for some of that space and clarity back?
That's the opportunity that I see with Morning Pages.
Your concerns and frustrations
deserve the acknowledgement that they need,
but they also then need a space to live,
and that space in your mind is busy doin' better things,
so we simply need to evict it from our brain
on a regular basis and give it somewhere else to live.
By having this practice every day
and maintaining this mindfulness habit,
you're acknowledging those feelings,
but you're also moving on from them
and using the positive energy that you have found beyond it
so that you can do your more creative
and productive, and focused work.
So try picking a space, and a journal,
and a moment in your morning when you can sit down
and let 'er rip so that you can move on
and do the more beautiful things
that you wanna do in this life.
Question of the day: what mindset challenges
have you been experiencing lately
that have been keeping you
from doing your best creative work?
Leave that in the comments below.
That's all for today,
thank you so much for tuning in.
I appreciate it as always.
Make sure you subscribe for good vibes,
kiss the ones you love,
and go after the life you want, cheers.
I got this first scar pretty easily.
So squeaky, so squeaky.
Focus, creativity, and productivity.
I'm getting a phone call.
Hello?
(mellow digital music)
How exciting, thanks, Michael.