Welcome to Journal on it

The podcast where we slow down, tune in and turn the page on the story we tell ourselves. I’m Shannon. And each week we explore the powerful practice of journaling and self-reflection to help you reconnect with your thoughts, your purpose, and your inner voice. Whether you’re new to journaling or you’ve got stacks of filled notebooks, this space is for anyone ready to grow, heal, and get honest one page at a time. Let’s dig deep, write freely and reflect boldly.

Episode 11 Morning pages.

Side note, today’s episode’s going to be a little bit shorter. I am having some technical difficulties with my mic, so we’re gonna keep it a wee bit shorter than our typical episode, but I’m gonna try and kinda high speed and get everything that you would normally get into this. So bear with me. Hopefully we’ll be back in normal action next week.

What is Morning pages?

Morning pages is a style of journaling where you set aside a specific amount of time in the morning. Most people prefer to do this shortly after waking up. Some do this as soon as they wake up, and they use this as a way to organize their day and create a. Good routine for their morning.

Pros

Some of the pros to morning pages are, it’s a great way to start the day. Um, you’re focused in on being more mindful and it can help set a more positive mindset for your day. It also helps ground you in the moment. A lot of people use this to help them focus on their daily goals or their to-do list. It can reduce stress much in the same way a personal journal can. And creating the routine and sticking with the routine can really help improve your discipline.

Cons

Now, for the cons, as with all journaling, same kind of pitfalls happen where you’re focused more on the journal than living. It can also cause you to set unrealistic goals or not healthy habits, which can also lead to some pretty negative feelings.

If you are somebody who has very limited time in the morning, it can feel like you’re adding a task to an already overbooked time of day. And it can also cause you to overthink. It can also become more of a to-do list than an actual journaling practice. Instead of the to-do list of being part of it. It becomes all of it.

This isn’t for me and thats okay!

Now, from my personal experience, I am not a morning person to begin with. So for me, I found this really difficult and the times that I did do it, I didn’t enjoy it at all and it kind of didn’t set a positive tone for the rest of my day. Like I said, I’m not a morning person though. I liked to lounge around a little bit in the morning and that kind of cut into that time.

So for me, I prefer to journal in the evening. Okay. But I can see where this is a really good part of a person’s day and I can see why they would enjoy setting a more structured routine for me. It just isn’t it. But I will say it does have positive effects for those that do enjoy it, and those who do enjoy getting up a little bit earlier in the morning, um, while I have a morning routine.

Journaling just won’t be part of it. And that’s a lot ’cause I love journaling and I do get so much out of it. For me, it just doesn’t go in the morning. But I know lots of people that sitting down after they’ve kind of eaten and they’re sitting with their morning coffee and journaling then is really empowering and really helpful.

Do what works for you!

So it’s not to say you can’t, and it’s not to say it’s all bad. But for me, it just didn’t quite fit. And that’s okay. Not every style of journaling is gonna work for every single person, and sometimes you figure something might work and it doesn’t. And for me, morning pages was one of those things. As always, I’ll have a bunch of links in the description and in the blog post for this, there are gonna also be a few testimonial pieces from people who did really enjoy morning pages and journaling in the morning.

So that way you can see both sides of it, because I know mine isn’t the most positive, but a lot of people do have a great time with this. So links to all of that will be down below. And if you are looking forward to the next one, let me know what you’re thinking we should do. And if you wanna see anything like what we’ve done the past week or any of the journal with mes, just let me know that as well. We can certainly make that happen.

Outro

Thanks for joining me on journal on it where we slow down, tune in and turn the page together. If something resonated with you today, take a moment to journal it out and let the words lead you. You can find show notes, journal prompts, and more at the link in the episode description. Remember, growth happens one honest page at a time. Until next time, keep writing, keep reflecting and keep showing up for yourself. I’m Shannon and I’ll meet you back here soon.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5SBq4kd5susvtxabhW3ZN2?si=f2ec054e4073437d