The Small Habit That Changed My Life

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

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 anyway” It felt great. I didn’t have to think about anything more.

Turns out I was wrong. 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.

My situation was that I didn’t think I would have not done so much and gone any further in life if I just sit around, played 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.

After building up a strong will and one thing leading 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 with the motivation of being a better self than I was yesterday.

At first, I did nothing else other than writing and it was very hard to write in the morning. However, slowly but surely, within the first two weeks, I got used to it. Writing becomes a sort of meditation, an escape from my everyday life. I write every single thing I could think of on that morning pages. All the anger, frustration, and 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 to 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 with a great result. I start to become more articulate, whether it is verbal 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 to meditating again.”. Voila! The next morning, I found myself sitting on 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, follow Sam Harris’s meditation course, and think of working out tomorrow.

Citing from Writing Cooperative, Morning Pages is 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 to the new routines; the rest lies in 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 help to find a greater purpose for everyone, and all the greatest things start with you. It may take forever to find your muse, but writing three pages in the morning is a really great start for sure!