The Small Habit That Changed My Life
After writing Morning Pages for a month, I started to notice a drastic change… (This is my very first English-written post)
I loved the comfort zone.
Being comfortable gives me a sense of security. Things feel familiar to me and I was very much at ease and in control of my environment. No stress and anxiety, just living day by day doing things I like which are gaming and gluing my eye into the phone screen. I also didn’t think much of my future, I thought: “Yeah, things are going to be fine anyways” It felt great. I didn’t have to think about anything more.
Turns out I was wrong.
Big time.
Going “autopilot” got me losing the track of time and it slowly becomes a jail. A horrendous one. The self-hate of not accomplishing anything brings up the insecurity in me and allows negative thoughts to appear as they like. It became uncontrollable and I slowly became the person I never want to be. At that moment, I realized that I was stuck.
The moment of realization…
My situation was that I didn’t think I would have not done so much and go any further in life if I just sit around, play games, and scroll the timeline on social media all day. So I tried every single thing that could make improve my life better: meditate, read, and work out. Though it started out very smoothly, I wasn’t successful in keeping all those activities on track, so, I kind of quit just after doing it for two weeks. Then it went on as a cycle for pretty much 2 years of my life; a series of self-realization-->going productive-->quitting.
I thought that I need to get my life back on track. Frustrated and anxious, I really think of how much time I have wasted just by doing unhealthy habits and how I was just going in circles.. So I needed to change it, once and for all. I need to do something completely different.
Actually doing it!
After building up a strong will and one thing lead to another, I came up with the idea of writing every single day, and I just happen to remember about a website site called 750 Words. So I started writing here and there. My writing was not particularly good, though. But at least, writing is better than not doing anything at all. So I just kept on writing in the motivation of being a better self than I was yesterday.
At first, I didn’t do anything else other than writing and it was very hard to write in the morning. However, slowly but surely, within the first two weeks, I started to get used to it. Writing becomes a sort of meditation, an escape of my everyday life. I write every single thing I could think of on that morning pages. All the anger, frustration, happiness, are poured down in those 750 words fluidly. Even when I don’t feel like writing at all, I would just bluntly write “I don’t know what to write” for three pages. I just kept on writing, no matter what. I knew all along that building a new habit is a very hard thing to do, but I thought, if I don’t want to go back on that point where I was stuck and not doing things all day, then I would HAVE to keep moving. Day by day goes week after week. Finally, just after a month, my commitment to The Morning Pages and the constant writing comes out a great result. I start to become more articulate, whether it is verbally or written. I also became able to contain my emotions (i have anger issues) and not forget to add up the feelings of finally accomplishing something really does bring happiness to me.
Happy with the result, it turns out that I needed to do more things. Then one night when I was laying in bed, a little voice came up to my head and said: “Oh well, you have to go back on meditating again.”. Voila! The next morning I found myself sitting in a yoga mat meditating for 30 minutes straight — the longest meditation I’ve ever done. Then everything incredibly just adds up day by day. At this point, I still write the Morning Pages every single morning, read for an hour every day, following Sam Harris’s meditation course, and thinking of working out tomorrow.
Short brief about the Morning Pages
Citing from Writing Cooperative, Morning Pages are an exercise codified by Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist’s Way. The practice goes something like this: “Every day, after you wake up and before you do anything else, write three pages, longhand. Start writing and don’t stop until you get to the end of page three. Don’t slow down, don’t self-edit, and don’t think about how bad or even good this writing might be. It’s not for anyone’s eyes but your own, and the only requirement is that you be as honest and unfiltered and unfettered and free as you can, and, most importantly, keep the pen moving. Get out of the way. Go.”
Cameron encourages doing Morning Pages by hand, with a notebook and pen. Nevertheless, various apps and websites, notably 750 Words, have reconfigured the instructions for digital spaces. (750 is the approximate word count for three handwritten pages.)
I know that The Morning Pages only contributes about 40 percent on the new routines, the rest lies on the grit and the commitment. Life is so much more fulfilling now and for the first time in my life, I actually feel happy about what I do. I may still be on the baby steps, but the most important thing is the progress, not the result.
Morning Pages helps to find a greater purpose for everyone, and all of the greatest things starts with you. It may take forever to find your muse, but writing three pages in the morning is a really great start for sure!
