What unfolds on those pages is one of the most radical shifts in perspective I’ve ever seen. You watch her go from restless and frustrated to calm, confident, and courageous—in the span of just a few years, and under the shadow of the Nazi regime that would eventually claim her life.
“I really must become simpler,” she writes. “We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be.”
What struck me most, as I read, was how much she sounded like a Stoic—specifically, Marcus Aurelius. And yet, there’s no evidence she ever studied Stoicism. One of the many parallels I found was this reminder they both wrote to themselves: Uncomplicate yourself. Be free of calculation and pretension.
Then I thought: no calculations. Have no calculations.
I’ve been repeating this to myself for the past month, and it’s been freeing. Not that I think of myself as “calculated” in the usual sense, but I can be calculated with myself. Sometimes I do things that are irrational, either out of superstition or as a way to relieve anxiety and feel in control. I’ll go back and forth in my mind, debating what something means or doesn’t mean, what will happen or won’t.
But now, when those thoughts creep in, I remind myself: no calculations. And I move on.
Isn’t it wild how much power our thoughts have over our life? If you thinkyour life is crappy…it’s only because you think your life is crappy! Our stories are reality.
The other day, Courtney went to the dentist and told me how uncomfortable she felt for the first fifteen minutes. While the dentist was poking and scraping, Courtney was saying to herself, “It will be over in twenty minutes, and then you can feel relief.”
But then she thought: or I can just feel relief now.
She repeated it—I can feel relief now—and little by little, she relaxed.
After finishing college, Ezra Koenig took a job teaching middle school in Brooklyn. Outside school hours, he poured his energy into Vampire Weekend, the band he started with friends from college, where he served as the lead singer and guitarist.
“At that phase of my life,” Koenig said, “I was pretty unhappy. I enjoyed parts of being a teacher, but I stressed constantly, thinking, ‘Oh, I didn’t choose this. This isn’t my dream or passion. The band has to take off. My dream has to materialize.’ Everything felt very high-stakes.”
He found himself constantly preoccupied with what would make him truly happy.
“I really wish I could go back and tell myself, ‘Being a teacher would be fine too.’ I wish I could relieve some of that stress and say to myself, ‘Being a teacher is important too. If the band makes one album and you come back to teaching, that can be a really rewarding life as well.’”
Vampire Weekend did go on to become a huge success, and Ezra is genuinely grateful for where he ended up. But looking back, he sees how unnecessary all that pressure was. He could have found happiness on either path—whether as a musician or as a teacher who plays music on the side.
“There’s the belief that happiness only comes from achieving your dreams. The concept of dream achievement is such a double-edged sword. Because the paradox is that most people’s dream, including mine, is really just to be happy. When you strip away all the specifics, the dream is to be happy.
I’ve now met so many people in my life. I’ve met people who are infinitely more successful than me, who are some of the most stressed-out, miserable people you can imagine. And I’ve also met people who’ve watched opportunities come and go but are deeply happy.”
He learned that the state of his mind shapes the state of his life.
“I think that’s why I now have that impulse to go back and tell myself, Vampire Weekend or teacher in Brooklyn—on both paths, it’s about your attitude.”
It’s about the story you tell yourself.
“Obviously, both could be rewarding because you see that being a musician and a teacher are both incredibly fulfilling jobs for many people.”
Whether it’s getting a handle on OCD, or feeling okay at the dentist, or finding satisfaction right now, in this moment…the thing holding you back might be the story you’re telling yourself.
In the 1850s, before she became a pioneer in education, religion, and women’s rights, Rebecca Mitchell’s life was turned upside down. Her husband died, leaving her with two small children to raise. Under Illinois law, a widow couldn’t inherit her husband’s property—it all went to the government. Everything she owned, right down to the clothes on her back, was no longer hers. If she wanted it back, she’d have to buy it.
Rebecca had dreams of becoming a minister, but women weren’t allowed to… well, do much of anything. Her second marriage ended in separation, and by 1882, with her two sons grown and a sense of opportunity pulling her west, she and her teenage daughter boarded a train for Idaho. When they arrived, the only shelter they could find was a shed—just warm enough to keep them from freezing. And yet, in that tiny shed, Rebecca started a school, eventually squeezing in 40 students.
Determined to expand, she set her sights on a larger building that could serve as both a school and a church. For two years, she worked tirelessly to raise the funds. When the chapel was finally built, it housed the school and the school district she had helped establish.
But Rebecca’s ambitions didn’t stop there. She continued founding schools in neighboring communities, and by 1891—now in her fifties—she turned her attention to the government.
After fighting for and winning women’s suffrage in Idaho, she took an even bolder step: she applied to be chaplain of the Idaho legislature, something no woman had ever done. The men were baffled. They said they had never heard of such a thing.
“Humans aren’t so much afraid of failure as they are of having people watch them fail,” McMahon continues. “The shame doesn’t come from not scaling the summit, it’s from the people who judge you for not having succeeded.”
Rebecca knew that judgment well. She had been criticized for her failed marriage, for starting a school, for daring to believe a woman could be a chaplain, and for refusing to retire. When she didn’t get the chaplain position, the judgment only intensified. But she didn’t stop. A year later, in 1897, at the age of 64, she got the job. Letters of congratulations poured in from across the country.
After she died in 1908, The Idaho Republic paid tribute to her legacy, calling her “ever ready to proffer the hand of aid and the voice of sympathy to the needy and distressed.” She had lived a life of self-sacrifice, courage, and unstoppable determination in pursuing justice.
More than a century later, in 2022, Idaho unveiled a bronze statue commemorating women’s suffrage. The Spirit of Idaho Women stands tall, a graceful figure with a hand stretched out. “Behind her,” writes McMahon, “stand twelve sets of shoes, those of the generations of women who came before, each decade of suffragists treading the path to enfranchisement. In her hand, she extends a shoe to the women of the future, inviting them to continue in the work that was begun by those with the courage to let people watch them fail.”
Don’t ask, tell
In the 1980s, Leonard Mlodinow was beginning his career as a physicist at Caltech. He was given the freedom to research whatever he liked. At first, this sounded great—complete freedom. But it soon became clear he had a problem: he didn’t know what to work on. He became increasingly anxious. String theory was popular; should he study that? What about that other theory gaining traction? That would be good to research, right?
Desperate to figure it out, he sought out Nobel Prize winner and fellow physicist Richard Feynman and asked him for guidance. After some probing, Feynman finally said to Mlodinow, “Look, selecting a research problem isn’t like climbing a mountain. You don’t do it just because it is there. If you really believed in string theory, you wouldn’t come here asking me. You’d come here telling me.”
If you let others decide what’s “acceptable,” you’ll never get to the good stuff. And that, Elizabeth Gilbert warns, is the real tragedy. “Your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous, and you want to do really interesting things and make really interesting things while you’re still here.”
So go for it. Do the unheard-of thing, the thing that lights you up.
Tell people what you’re going to do—and have the courage to let them watch you fail.
Developing an experienced fighter pilot can take ten years and cost $50 million. Pilots must make life-or-death decisions with incomplete information and limited time—all while traveling faster than the speed of sound.
Veteran U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Hasard Lee says their most important training focuses on decision-making. In The Art of Clear Thinking, he says, “Though we have talented pilots, the mantra that we bet our lives on is that a good pilot uses superior judgment to avoid situations that require the use of superior skill.”
Tucked into the right-hand corner of the cockpit in each F-16 fighter jet is a relic from the past: an analog clock. While almost every other part of the jet has been upgraded since the 1970s, the wind-up clock remains. But it’s not used to tell time. It’s used to slow it down.
Seasoned instructors will tell the pilot, “Before you make a decision, wind the clock.” Although it doesn’t seem like much, it allows a pilot to pause and focus, preventing them from rushing into action.
“Winding the clock occupied the pilot’s attention for just a few seconds and physically prevented them from touching anything else,” Lee writes. “It forced their brain to spend time assessing the situation before they acted, allowing them to make far better decisions.”
Tighten the window
Louise DeSalvo says there’s an inverse correlation between the amount of time she has and the amount of writing she gets done. Too much time, and she becomes unfocused or needlessly worried over each word. “I wrote more, and published more books, when my kids were small and when I was teaching more classes than I do now,” she writes. “And the hardest writing times for me were always summers and sabbaticals.”
Like the old saying—if you want something done, give it to a busy person—she prefers to write on days she has a lot to do. It tightens her window of time, sharpening her focus.
“Knowing that I must write during my allotted time or I won’t get to write at all urges me to get right to work, draft a few pages. If all I have to do is write, writing becomes too fraught for me.”
Start the clock
Ryan Holiday has a phrase he often uses with his team: “Start the clock.” If a vendor says something will take six weeks, he wants to start the clock immediately. He doesn’t want to add days or weeks by being slow to respond or indecisive. We can’t control how fast others move, but we can control how quickly we get the ball rolling.
“The project will take six months? Start the clock,” he writes. “You’re going to need a reply from someone else? Start the clock (send the email). Getting the two quotes from vendors will take a while? Start the clock (request it). It’s going to take 40 years for your retirement accounts to compound with enough interest to retire? Start the clock (by making the deposits). It’s going to take 10,000 hours to master something? Start the clock (by doing the work and the study).”
Let it be enough
While it’s important to know how to get the right things done, it’s more important to know your limits.
We’ll never feel like we’ve “finished.” We’ll never feel like we’ve done enough. And guess what? That’s a great thing—it’s how it’s supposed to be.
On a trip to Portugal, professor and author Kate Bowler visited the Batalha Monastery. Inside a giant octagonal chapel, an older man said it was perfect—the layers of beautiful, imperfect ornamentation.
“He gestured up,” Kate writes, “and where the ceiling should have been, there was only open sky. Seven kings had overseen the rise of this monument and had buried their dynasty in its walls. Yet none lived to finish it.”
“It was never finished, dear,” the old man smiled. “Isn’t it wonderful? Don’t you see? It’s us! I can’t imagine a more perfect expression of this life. I came all the way to see it. We’re never done, dear. Even when we’re done, we’re never done.”
Kate reflects:
“All of our masterpieces, ridiculous. All of our striving, unnecessary. All of our work, unfinished, unfinishable. We do too much, never enough and are done before we’ve even started. It’s better this way.”
In December 1851, Victor Hugo—the beloved author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame—was exiled from France for defying a rising authoritarian regime. He would remain in exile for nineteen years.
That month, on December 2, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte seized power and rewrote the constitution to suit his will, granting himself unlimited terms in office. Hugo, who had once supported Bonaparte, was horrified. In response, he tried to rally the French National Assembly in a desperate attempt to resist the government’s coup d’état.
But Bonaparte silenced dissent swiftly and ruthlessly, imprisoning or executing anyone who opposed him. In the days that followed, Hugo and his allies—many of them former legislators—were forced to meet in secret, hiding from a regime that was tightening its grip by the hour. It didn’t take long for them to realize their efforts were in vain. “Former legislators were dead, arrested, or missing,” writes Marva A. Barnett in her remarkable book To Love Is to Act.
On December 11, Hugo boarded a night train to Brussels. In a letter to his wife three days later, he expressed a calm pride in having stood up for what he believed was right: “For twelve days, I existed between life and death,” he wrote. “But I had never a moment of distress. I was pleased with myself. And besides, I know that I did my duty and that I did it completely. That brings happiness.”
Eight years later, Emperor Napoleon III offered him amnesty. Hugo refused. He would not return simply because the law now allowed it. Instead, he published a powerful reply: “Faithful in my commitment to my conscience, I will share liberty’s exile right to the end. When liberty returns to France, I will return.”
A decade before Bonaparte’s rise to power, Ralph Waldo Emerson had written the words that would one day echo Hugo’s defiant stance: “No law can be sacred to me but that of my own nature. The only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.”
Like Emerson, Hugo believed that each person must obey their conscience, no matter the cost. “In the end,” Barnett writes, “Hugo . . . did what [he] did because [his] conscience permitted no other action.”
The music in your head
In the final decade of his life, Beethoven composed music that would change the world. He was also completely deaf. His greatest triumph—the Ninth Symphony—was written without the ability to hear a single note.
Early in his career, Beethoven’s compositions echoed the style of his teacher, Joseph Haydn. But after he lost his hearing, his work became radically original, ushering in the Romantic era of music. “It seems counterintuitive, to say the least, that Beethoven became more original and brilliant as a composer in inverse proportion to his ability to hear his own—and others’—music,” Arthur C. Brooks writes. “But maybe it isn’t so surprising. As his hearing deteriorated, he was less influenced by the prevailing compositional fashions and more by the music forming inside his own head.”
The freedom to attend to yourself
Two years into solitary confinement, Shaka Senghor feared he was unraveling.
So he built himself a kind of sanctuary.
Each morning, he turned his cell into a classroom, ordering books on every subject imaginable. He designed quizzes to test himself. “The structure helped,” he writes, “but real changes came when I started keeping a journal. Anytime I got angry at one of the other inmates, I would immediately grab a lined notepad and begin writing down what I wanted to do to him and why.”
One day, after an inmate lied to him, Shaka poured his fury onto the page. Days later, he read it back—and what he saw startled him. “The other inmate had been inconsiderate, no doubt,” he wrote, “but was it really meant as a personal attack? And even if it was, did he really deserve to be harmed or even killed, as payback? . . . It’s hard to express how much this process of examination began to change me.”
That moment marked a shift: he saw that the anger he directed outward was the same anger that had put him behind bars. “I thought I had been fighting for my dignity and respect,” he later reflected, “but I hadn’t realized how undignified and disrespectful my anger had caused me to be.”
There’s a line in The Life of Antony by Athanasius that describes what sparked the saint’s transformation: “He began to pay attention to himself.”
For Shaka, writing became a lifeline—not just to survive, but to heal. The more attention he paid to himself, the more he uncovered: childhood trauma, the ache of abandonment, the violence he had endured—and inflicted. “Each time I filled a page of my journal,” he writes, “I felt as if a great weight had been lifted.”
He stopped feeling bitter. He stopped carrying around his anger, waiting to explode. He grew stronger. He felt more compassion for other inmates. “Each day in the hole was a test of my will to survive, as the insanity continued to unfold around me,” he writes, “but the act of writing about the things I saw helped to take away their power.”
Shaka could have given in to rage. Hugo could have gone along to get along. Beethoven could have stopped composing. Instead, each became a testament to our uniquely human power: our ability to transform our outer world by changing our inner one. And no one and nothing can take that from you.
People are often surprised when I tell them I write three pages in my journal each morning.
“How do you have that much to say?” they ask.
I tell them it’s not really about having something to say. I just write down what I’m thinking—what I’m excited about, what I have to do that day, how good a brownie sounds. If I have nothing to write, I write I have nothing to write until something else comes out.
It’s what Julia Cameron coined as Morning Pages—three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing done first thing in the morning.I first read about Morning Pages in Julia Cameron’sThe Artist’s Way, which I bought in 2012.
I was skeptical. My first entry reads, “Really do not want to do this. Doubt this will help anything really. I didn’t think I needed help really, but I haven’t been sticking to the writing schedule I set for myself.”
For the next five years, I wrote Morning Pages on and off before finally sticking with them for good.
This month, I pulled out the Sterilite storage bins full of old Morning Pages and read through some. And I noticed something curious. Something about the dates.
On September 28, 2012, the same day I started writing Morning Pages, I broke up with my then-boyfriend—something I had been putting off for months.
On August 20, 2013, after not writing Pages for a few months, I picked them up again. Two days later, I slid into my future wife’s DMs. A few months after that, I finally moved out of my parents’ house.
Between 2014 and 2016, I didn’t write a single Page. Those years were marked by one crappy call center job after another.
Then, in early 2017, I started writing Pages again. Not long after, I enrolled in community college. I graduated in 2019. I kept writing. In 2020, I landed the job I have today, one I love.
Until this month, I hadn’t realized it: almost every pivotal shift in my life has coincided with the periods I was writing Morning Pages.
It’s no wonder Julia Cameron calls Morning Pages her lifeline. “I would no more do without them than I would try not breathing,” she says. The list of people who swear by them includes Olivia Rodrigo, Tim Ferriss, Billy Oppenheimer, and Elizabeth Gilbert, who said without Morning Pages, “there would be noEat, Pray, Love.”
I started writing Pages to unlock creative blocks. I didn’t expect them to quietly shape my life.
You could call it a coincidence—I would’ve made those choices anyway. I’m not so sure. The pattern’s too strong to ignore.
But even if the timing was a coincidence, the benefits I get from writing them are not.
If you’re wondering what Morning Pages actually help with, here’s my answer—after 12+ years of writing them, I can confidently say they’ll help you…
Clear the mental fog
Morning Pages aren’t quite the same as journaling. With journaling, you usually have a topic or theme or something you’re trying to figure out. With Morning Pages, you write whatever’s in your head—no structure, no filter. You dump the junk drawer in your mind so you can get on with your day.
Tim Ferriss, author ofThe 4-Hour Work Week, said, “Morning pages don’t need to solve your problems. They simply need to get them out of your head, where they’ll otherwise bounce around all day like a bullet ricocheting inside your skull”.
By the time you’re done, your head is clear. No more mental pit stops throughout the day to decide what to do next. You already know.
Take action
Morning Pages surface unresolved problems until you deal with them. They don’t let up. They circle back, repeating the same thoughts, wearing you down until you finally take action.
For instance, this month, I wanted to pinpoint the epiphany I had in my 2017 Pages about going back to school. I scanned page after page looking for the tell-tale signs of a dramatic turning point—exclamation marks, all caps, maybe some lightning bolt doodles.
Instead, I found: “I guess I’ll get my stupid degree.”
Wait, what?? I guess I’ll get my stupid degree???
I don’t remember being so annoyed and reluctant. But apparently I was. But that’s the thing: sometimes doing the right thing feels like surrender.
Anyway, that’s what Pages do—they compel you to take action if for no other reason than they won’t shut up about it until you do.
Change perspective
I read a recent article by an author who said writing Morning Pages made her miserable. She would spend day after day writing about how sad she was, which only made her feel worse.
Of course, everyone’s experience is different. But for me, it’s been the exact opposite. If I’m sad or anxious, writing it down helps shift my perspective, which is often healing in itself.
When blink-182’s bassist Mark Hoppus was diagnosed with stage 4a lymphoma in 2021, his therapist suggested he keep a journal throughout chemo to help with his anxiety and depression. “Write down whatever you’re feeling, stream of thought. Write like no one’s ever gonna read it.”
His first entry, on May 11th, was raw and brutal. Confused. Angry. Hopeless. “Good fucking times,” he wrote after describing the first few rounds of chemo. He wonders if he would be better off dead.
A few weeks later, he writes, “You’re a real fighter? Holy shit. You’re just too afraid to do the right thing and die.”
But then, in the very next line, he admonishes himself. “No. Don’t do that. Think positive. . . . Is this therapeutic? Is this helping? Writing down all my thoughts? My hair is falling out and I’m throwing it into the fire.”
By June, though still struggling, his tone had shifted. He started listing things he was grateful for. “You’re the luckiest person on the planet,” he wrote. And later: “I have so many kind and caring friends. Good people. I’m blessed.”
Pay attention to your life
Even on days when I have nothing to say, when the only words rolling off the nib of my pen are the lowest-hanging fruits of thought and the shallowest observations, I’m still benefiting. I’m still noticing things about myself. I’m still clearing my mind for a calmer start to the day, still spending time with my thoughts.
In short, I’m paying attention to my life. I’m engaged and active. I happen to life, not the other way around.
I’ve noticed that when I’m paying attention to my life, that’s when I’m happiest.
Pay attention to your feelings
Negative emotions don’t have to disappear for you to feel better. Sometimes all it takes to loosen the grip of a feeling is to simply name it. Trace its outline. Examine its contours.
“What we call depression,” Alain de Botton said, “is in fact sadness and anger that have for too long not been paid the attention they deserve.”
Go your own way
One reason Pages are written first thing is that your ego hasn’t fully woken up yet. In those early hours, you’re less guarded. More honest.
As Julia Cameron said, when we’re honest with ourselves, we’re more honest with others. We learn to draw firmer boundaries. We speak more clearly. We trust our instincts.
We follow our own path in life because we’ve already practiced following it on the page.
Keep the important stuff in the forefront
Epictetus said our predicament is that time and again, we lose sight of what’s important.
The truth never changes. Wisdom is always the same. Our brains are just exceptionally good at forgetting.
Writing each morning helps keep the important things front and center.
Rewrite your software
If we don’t monitor our thoughts, we become vulnerable to their influence and control. We can end up living in the worst way: unconsciously.
Lusting for money, worshiping material things, seeking power, thinking you’re the center of the universe…what’s insidious about these things “is not that they’re evil or sinful,” writes David Foster Wallace, “it is that they are unconscious.”
Morning Pages make us more conscious of our lives. It’s a spiritual process, and as Sadhguru put it, “A spiritual process means we have made up our minds to rewrite our software, consciously.”
Hear the wisdom within
Your subconscious is wise. The problem is that it’s terribly quiet and shy. It often won’t respond to direct questioning.
That’s where Pages come in.
Morning Pages create a regular, quiet, purpose-free space for your subconscious thoughts to roam freely. Only then, in familiar solitude with you, do they feel comfortable speaking up. And when they do, watch out—they’re assertive.
Create space between self and mind
The Buddha became enlightened when he stopped identifying with his personality and became a witness to his intellect.
The essence of yoga and meditation is to arrive at the space between yourself and your mind. In this space, you’re free from limitations. Your sense of clarity and perspective is heightened, along with your freedom.
We can access this state each morning in our Pages.
See what’s in your head
Write down “the contents of the noise in your head,” Verlyn Klinkenborg says. “You can’t revise or discard what you don’t consciously recognize.”
By dumping our thoughts and feelings onto the page, we’re able to sift through, untangle, and examine them. And discard the ones that no longer serve us.
Connect to your superpower
Epictetus said we differ from animals and plants in two ways: we can reason and reflect—two things animals and plants don’t need because they were made to obey, not command.
Our ability to look inward is our superpower.
“It is impossible to write Morning Pages for any extended period of time without coming into contact with an unexpected inner power,” Andrew M. Barry says, quoting Julia Cameron. “Anyone who faithfully writes Morning Pages will be led to a connection with a source of wisdom within.”
Animals can look only outward and dream. Humans can look inward and, as Carl Jung said, awaken.
Invest in yourself
Years ago, I read an article by an author who said Morning Pages were a waste of time. She had pages and pages of writing, she complained, but nothing publishable. I remember feeling the same way about my Morning Pages. I could be producing actual content in the real world. I could be getting things done. Yet, here I am, hunched over my journal writing gibberish.
But I was missing the point.
I don’t write Pages to “be productive”. I write them to calm and prepare myself for the day (ironically making me more productive throughout).
I think of what Leo Tolstoy said: “If you can see all of the consequences of your actions, then your actions are of no consequence. All great things are happening in slow and inconspicuous ways.”
I remind myself that even if it doesn’t feel like it, the small moments I spend writing—working on myself—are adding up in unfathomable ways.
Whenever I feel an urge to stop short of my three pages and do something more “urgent” or “important”, I say to myself, I will get to that thing in just a bit. Right now, this is what’s most important.
It might be the most important thing you do all day.
By the way, here are some tips to get you Paging like a pro:
-Wake up about 30 minutes earlier to give yourself time to write.
-Julia Cameron recommends using 8 x 11–inch notebooks. (I’m currently using a 5.75 x 8.25 journal, so I write 5-6 pages—roughly the same amount of space as three larger pages.) (Also: These are great pens.)
-Stop at three pages. Why? You don’t want to slip into overthinking. The whole point of Morning Pages is to get you to take action.
-Write them quickly—but not so quickly that you can’t read your own handwriting.
-It’s not six pages. Not front and back of three. It’s three sides: one full page, the back of that page, and one more.
-You can eat breakfast first. At least, I do. Then I drink my coffee as I write.
-You can skip weekends. Again, at least Ido.
-You don’t have to reread them. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t.
-They’re private. If you live with…curious people, find a way to lock up your journal or bring it with you during the day. You won’t get the most out of them if you’re not being honest.
