Morning pages is a term coined by Julia Cameron in her book “The Artist’s Way.” In the book, artists drew in their morning pages to find their passion for creativity again, which led them to find inspiration. Well, have you ever heard of writer’s block? Yes, we lack inspiration sometimes, too, but morning pages are really for anyone.

When you wake up in the morning, write at least one page full of anything that comes to mind. It could be a drawing, song lyrics, a to-do list—anything! This may seem pointless, but I am here to vouch for the morning pages.

My thoughts go a mile a minute, so mind dumping every morning has, firstly, taken some stress off my back. Many of my morning pages have consisted of lists of things to get done for the day, and this really helped me begin each day with a clear and sound mind. If you can’t think of anything else to write, write a to-do list for yourself.

Sometimes, I wrote about a person who’d happen to pop into my head that morning. I would simply describe who they are as a person and why they’re my friend or why I was thinking about them first thing in the morning.

One time, I even wrote about what I wanted for breakfast which led to, “Hops Supply Co. has the best eggs benny,” and then, I’d move on to, “Going to brunch is one of my favorite things to do.” From there, I planned a Sunday brunch outing with my friends.

Writing these morning thoughts down was setting me up for a good day.

Another time, at around 2:30 a.m., I couldn’t get the ideas I was having for a feature story to stop popping into my head, one after another, so I jumped out of bed, grabbed my morning pages journal and scribbled them all down. I thought my hand was going to fall off, but after that, I was finally able to fall into a peaceful sleep.

Do you notice a trend? All of my whirling thoughts were put into words. My life became a little easier with every instance of me writing a morning page. Decluttering your mind, and promoting your own well-being can be as simple as putting a pen to a paper.

One of the rules is that you’re not supposed to tell anyone anything you’ve put in your morning pages, but I had to break that rule on behalf of my testimony: don’t knock it ’til you try it; just look at the effect that the morning pages have had on me!

Read the article that inspired me to try morning pages.