Keep a Journal (or How to Succeed at Life)
by Tony Robbins, Multiple of Tim’s books, “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek, as well as a host of other long term projects. At the time of beginning “The Artist’s Way” I was doing the 30 day exercise and supplementation experiment that launched the SuperGeekLife site. I also started doing DuoLingo which I reviewed several weeks ago, and Headspace. You might say I created a fully transformative program for myself.Not least transformative amongst these things was “The Artist Way”. The exercises are engaging and make you explore the inner you. Word to the wise: The book is written in a very spiritual and ‘new agey’ kind of way. This style is a turn off to me admittedly as I am not an incredibly spiritual person, but the tenants and philosophies on creativity can be gleaned regardless of your feelings on the subject. What I am saying is that if you are an atheist or an agnostic you’re going to have to swallow your ego if you want to pierce the veil and gain the value. It’s overt and obnoxious sometimes but I’m telling you, it’s totally worth it!The book has already helped me with my endeavors in life to include dealings with this site. I’ve been inspired to try new things and I’ve been writing like crazy.Every single water color painting that I’ve posted in the last several months (and there have been 5 completed ones that I have shared on this site) owes itself to this book. I’ve also been to 3 art galleries and I owe that to this book as well. I’ve played more music then I have in a long time and it’s all because of the philosophy engendered which makes you put aside time and value this sort of creativity.It has uncovered the things from my childhood that I Iove and put that child’s sense of imagination back in me. I once wrote an article about this but even then I didn’t truly get it (It’s still a good article). I started posting silly handpuppet movies that I typically do for my son and creating characters like crazy. This was engendered by my love of all things Jim Henson.
The most valuable thing that I started doing though of all of the activities laid forth in the book was to start doing what are called “writers pages” or “daily pages”. Even if you never touch this book I would recommend doing this. What this is (and I’ve alluded to them before in past posts) is simply writing 3 pages a day of anything at all. I have a college ruled moleskin (full size one, not pocket size) and I write in it every day.
You can write whatever you want in it. You can write blah blah blah for 3 pages if you want. The point is to just fill it up with anything that comes to mind at all.
My experience has been insanely transformative. Let me first say that if you truly stick to this you’re going to have some interesting effects as well guaranteed. If you take the time and write 3 pages a day, no cheating you will figure some proverbial shit out.
I discovered that you may be able to even pre think the first 3 paragraphs that you’re going to write or even think of a general outline of what you want to say, but you can’t fill every page, every day that way. I eventually had to give into my stream of consciousness. It was frustrating at times and even challenging. At first I wrote the most self-deprecating stuff in the world. I was my worst critic; I was outright mean to myself. Everything I felt inadequate or guilty or weak about came flowing out like word vomit. That’s not to say that I sit there and loom on these things day in and out but these are the things that play hell with your successes and confidence whether you’re thinking about them or not.
As I did this day after day I found that all of these thoughts essentially were being flushed out. I was able to focus much better at work, at home, in my relationships etc. Once spitting them out on paper I was confronting them, thinking about them less and even working out the root cause of many things. If you’re lying to yourself in a stream of consciousness, eventually you will become annoyed with yourself. You can’t hide for long.
A month into the pages and the self-deprecating stuff rarely comes up. There is far less random jargon and the entries began naturally looking like more normalized journal entries. I was outlining ideas naturally, uncovering things that I’d like to do or analyzing with clarity things that had already occurred. I was repeating affirmations and getting really deep into personally held philosophies. I was becoming less angry and happy about the fact that I didn’t have as much to complain about on paper as I thought I did. Much of the writing became more and more positive and about what I was happy for and thankful for as well as the many projects I had going on.
I was creating a self-sustaining environment built to make me succeed. This was in conjunction with every other thing I was reading and I started noting little instances of serendipity. Synchronicity was occurring. This sounds insane I know, and I think you can only experience it if you believe it (or can you only believe it if you experience it…). Yes I truly have been having weeks on end of ‘wow things are going my way’.
As a quick warning I should say this also. Be completely honest when you’re writing them and don’t let anyone else see them or read them. They are for your eyes only otherwise you will naturally water down what you will write or be hurt when someone else reads them and shits on your birthday cake.
Let me tell you what writing the pages has done for me as well; If what I have already described above is the therapeutic part (the part that helps you work out your personal garbage and focus), then this next bit is the pragmatic part of doing the pages.
Doing the pages has put the writing of lengthy works into perspective. I write so damned much now. That’s not a judgement on whether it’s ‘good writing’ or not. It may be absolute trash in other people’s opinions. That’s not the point.
I’ve written every article on this website, several long essays and pieces of fiction of my own, and many long policy papers at work. I’m currently working on a book which I’m about 25% through (I approximate it will be a typical 200 page paperback when complete). My point is about the volume though; before I would have never tried to start a book. I was daunted by things that couldn’t be finished in more than 3 sittings. The thought of writing something 200 pages is preposterous to many people who haven’t already done it.
By forcing myself to write at least 3 pages in my journal every day I can see how volume accumulates. If I want to write something large I simply have to make a goal to finish, start writing and commit to the smallest bit every day. A page, a paragraph, whatever you choose.
I’ve been doing the writers pages for 63 days now faithfully. Some days were easy, some were more challenging to get through. Some are still heavily negative but that happens less and less. To put into perspective though like I was saying, 63 days of 3 pages is 189 pages. Imagine you said you wanted to write a book but that you feared it would take forever. Stop fretting and just start writing. If you get stuck, start over or stop and start writing again tomorrow. The point is that two months for 189 pages is a simple daily effort with a huge volume of writing to display after the fact. If you challenged yourself to write 5 or 6 pages a day you could do it in even less time. I blew my own mind.
As I work through several programs and try new experiments as I human guinea pig my way through things for this site and for personal growth I know that the book “The Artist’s Way” will stick with me. Even if I forget everything else about it, I know I will continue to do the 3 pages a day indefinitely. As the chief Super Geek, I recommend you all do the same.
