The Beginnings ... Your Daily Morning Pages 

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us. (RALPH WALDO EMERSON)

The beginning of any journey is the first step. This is your first step of many to healing, wholeness and a discovery of self.

If I were to tell you that you will meet with your therapist every day for a week and that it would cost the price of a therapist’s fee every day, you would stop right here in a cloud of expletives and go looking for something affordable. I agree, I would, but that’s not what I am suggesting here. What I am saying is that I want to introduce you to a therapist that you have 7 days a week, 24 hrs. a day (if you wanted to) ..And that therapist is you! Yep, it’s you.

We will meet once a week, face to face via Zoom or whatever we arrange, and in traditional talk therapy will process through your presenting issue. But the key is engaging with yourself through Journalling. You might not see that initially, but I promise you will discover incredible insight, huge growth and a discovery of identity that you never knew was there, if you commit to the
process of daily journalling.


What do I need to do to start?

To begin with: A pen, Lined paper and a regular allotted time. That’s all. I might mention here that some would prefer to use a laptop or PC, that’s fine, but to get started, a pen. paper (school A4 notebook is fine) and your attention. (cheap, eh?)

What do I do? (Time? .. dedicate 20 -30 minutes a day)
Morning pages involve writing three pages of continuous, stream-of-consciousness journal entries first thing in the morning, aiming for rapid, unedited flow of thoughts and feelings. 

Let’s call them your Morning Pages, and you start writing, Anything, the first thoughts that come to your head and you just write as close to continuous as you can about anything. It doesn’t even have to make sense! there is no grammar, or spelling checks and no rules on language or legibility either, in fact in your personal journal, the rule is: there are no rules!

It’s your journal, yours alone. It can be neat or sloppy, big or little, carefully organized or jumbled up if that’s what happens. Flow, spontaneity and intuition are the key words. You don’t have to plan what you are going to do. You discover what you have done once you have set it down.

How many pages?
Three A4 pages (anything smaller is restrictive as you will discover when you get going). This is called Free writing and that’s exactly what it is, its free writing whatever
flows from your pen ..no rules, no grammar, and spelling is not important.

Where do I start?
*** Well? A date would help. That because at some point, not now but later, you will reread your journals to discover, patterns, insights, things about yourself you never realized. But that’s for later, right now its anything goes and aiming for the three morning pages is all you have to do.
*** You might want to start with the weather? I do .. it’s what I call ‘priming the pump’ it is getting going to get flowing.
*** Begin with the day, begin with a self portrait
*** You could start with venting what’s on your mind, and expletives are fine, after all its your journal and there are no rules.
*** The important thing is to start. Don’t think, don’t twink, just write what comes to mind and go on from there.
*** What is happening, now, what happened yesterday, home life, work life, any life. Just write. (and don’t read it, …I will talk about that later)


Here is what will happen.
Probably nothing for the first three or so days, but then slowly you will find something magical happen. You have a faint glimmer of hope, its not about what you read, but through just writing you just begin to feel different. ‘Different folks, different strokes’, but something starts happening and with it an excitement of hope.


Let’s Summarise:

Write fast, Write freely:
Write everything, include everything, write from your feelings, write from your body, accept whatever comes.

Spontaneity
Write whatever comes to your pen . Let the writing flow without making judgments about yourself. There are no “should” or “should nots” in the diary process. You needn’t write about something because you think you should, nor need you keep from writing things you think you
shouldn’t. Write quickly so that you don’t know what will come next. Allow the unexpected to happen. Surprise yourself.

Honesty
Write from your authentic self .. its your journal, its private. Honesty in a diary has less to do with the “truth” than the way you reveal your “real self” as distinguished from social roles you play and masks you wear to make an impression. It involves an openness about what you really feel, what
you really want, what you really believe, what you really decide. What is of deepest importance to you is most important to your diary. It does not need to interest anyone else.

Writing Correctly
Many people have serious inhibitions about writing because of the way they were taught in school. There one’s writing was always judged “good” or “bad,” as if it were subject to an unchanging natural law, and grammatical errors were confused with moral judgments. But in a
diary/journal YOU CANNOT DO IT WRONG.

O’ pen your Thoughts

Morning Pages Prompts: (Examples)

•  What am I looking forward to today?

•  Is there anything on my mind about today that feels stressful?

•  What’s currently occupying my thoughts?

•  Is there a memory that frequently resurfaces during my day?

•  What do I wish I could be doing this week?

•  How do I feel about the day ahead?

•  What’s my physical state like this morning?

•  What’s currently on my to-do list?

•  Is there something I keep forgetting?

•  What’s my favourite object in this room?

•  How am I finding the Morning Pages practice so far?