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A brand-new notebook is equal parts intimidating and exciting. The palpable power of the waiting pages to transform your life. A place for your brain to come out and play. Each page is a possibility.
There are lots of theories on how to notebook. Simple journaling can be cathartic: longform thoughts and musings on life. Like your ideas might be important one day. Something Winston Churchill probably did. Something Anne Frank definitely did, luckily for us.
Daily manifesting is powerful. A long-term practise of handwriting your vision for the future has real impact. Not because of fairies and unicorns (though let’s not completely dismiss that possibility) but because your brain starts to calibrate to a new reality. The reality you are scripting for yourself.
Bullet-journaling is a wonderfully creative way to focus your mind. It’s also potentially a great way to waste time as it gets complex, fast. Gratitude lists are a powerful way to create positivity in your life. The morning pages system is simple and great for when your brain is stuck.
My attempts at all these systems inevitably regresses back to my to-do lists, weekly planning and notes on books. My notebooks are utilitarian. They are serious. I instruct #thestepson to draw in them to make me feel like I am cool. Borrowing his cool. I tell him to pick random pages and not show me - so it’s a surprise when I come across his sketches. I think it amuses him that I might turn a page in a board meeting and be greeted by a giraffe smoking a cigarette.
The only bad use of a notebook is no notebook. Every time you reach for yours something magical could happen. What new reality could be born?
When we leave ideas in our head we diminish their potential. We give power to our thoughts when we put ink to paper. We give our ideas momentum through the action of writing. We take the first step in a series of actions that can take us forward. What we want to accomplish, who we want to become and how we want to walk the earth.
The written word on a page is a declaration. So declare it. Open up a new page and state your intention. However you are moved to. Write a list or a quote. Draw a picture or fill a page. It doesn’t matter how. It just matters that you do it.