Category: Mindset

  • 🌿 Morning Pages: A Practice in Clearing

    🌿 Morning Pages: A Practice in Clearing

    Writing as a way of listening — a gentle daily practice for clearing the noise and meeting yourself on the page.

    The Mind Is Noisy

    The mind is noisy. Morning Pages are a way to clear that noise — three pages, first thing, before the day begins.

    What Are Morning Pages?

    Morning Pages, developed by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way, are a daily writing exercise designed to unblock creativity and foster self-awareness.
    They’re a stream of consciousness on paper — three longhand pages written before the day starts.

    You write whatever comes to mind, without censoring or editing.
    Even if it’s “I don’t know what to write; this feels pointless,” — that’s what you write.
    The process is as simple, and as profound, as that.

    Why Morning Pages Matter

    Each time we return to the page, something small reveals itself. Patterns emerge. Clarity deepens.
    The practice builds trust — not in having all the answers, but in your ability to meet yourself honestly.

    Morning Pages help us stay with what’s unfinished. They create space for what we’ve been carrying to shift into something more life-giving.
    There’s no end goal — only the slow work of becoming clearer about what’s true.

    And sometimes, when we can finally say something clearly enough, we find we’re no longer holding on to it quite so tightly.

    How to Do Morning Pages

    1️⃣ Write first thing in the morning.
    Before checking messages or engaging with the world, give yourself this space to meet your own mind before it becomes crowded.

    2️⃣ Write three pages by hand.
    Julia Cameron insists on longhand for a reason:

    “Velocity is the enemy. It takes longer to write by hand, and this slowness connects us to our emotional life.”
    The slower rhythm invites the deeper voice beneath the surface chatter.

    3️⃣ Don’t worry about grammar or structure.
    Let it be messy. This is about honesty, not performance.

    4️⃣ Don’t aim for art.
    Morning Pages are not “art.” They are a clearing — a space to empty what’s been stored inside so that something new can move through.

    5️⃣ Keep them private.
    They’re for your eyes only. This privacy makes honesty possible.

    6️⃣ Be consistent.
    The magic happens over time. Some days will feel alive, others dull — both matter.
    It’s the act of returning that builds trust.

    7️⃣ Use them to explore or vent.
    Write about what’s on your mind — your worries, hopes, lists, dreams. Over time, clarity deepens.

    8️⃣ Don’t overthink it.
    If you’re stuck, write about being stuck. Keep the pen moving. That’s the only rule.

    Writing as a Way of Listening

    In Parts on Paper, we call this writing as a way of listening.
    The focus isn’t perfection — it’s hearing what’s actually there beneath the noise.

    You might write something simple, like I take you as you were, Dad.
    At first, they’re just words. But when you stay with them — day after day — something shifts.
    Meaning unfolds, and what began as clutter becomes clarity.

    This is the work — not forcing clarity, but allowing it to emerge through repetition and return.
    What begins as scattered thoughts gradually becomes something you can see more clearly.
    And in that seeing, something releases.
    Clarity becomes its own reward.

    Permission to Be Honest

    Byron Katie says, “Judge your neighbour.”
    It sounds strange, but it’s a permission slip for truth-telling.

    Let yourself write the judgments you normally suppress — the person who irritates you, the friend who let you down, the family member who drives you mad.
    Brené Brown calls this the SFD (Shitty First Draft) — and that’s exactly what Morning Pages are for.

    When we write our judgments down, we can see them clearly instead of acting them out unconsciously.
    Sometimes they’re valid; sometimes they turn around and reveal something about us.
    Either way, they move from the shadows to the page — where they can breathe.

    A Note on Community

    Though Morning Pages are private, sharing the experience of the practice can be powerful.
    In our Parts on Paper groups, each person writes alone — but reflecting together on what the practice brings up reminds us we’re not alone on the journey of self-discovery.

    Final Thought

    Let yourself watch the words pour out of your pen.
    The more you do, the more you’ll see — you’re not really doing the writing.

    Writing, like breathing, just happens.
    You catch the current and let it flow.

    What a strange and beautiful thing — to witness life pouring itself through you. 🌿

  • How I Carry My Father

    How I Carry My Father

    The things our fathers couldn’t finish become the things we must learn to stay with.

    My father used to say, “You gotta wanna.”
    He wrote it on scraps of wood and old boxes.
    Sometimes he’d sit with us while we absorbed those words, not really knowing what he meant by them at nine years old.
    That was his gospel — the belief that everything depended on will.

    He was right, in a way. But he left out the other half of the story:
    what happens when you don’t want to — and life still asks you to stay?

    The Sander

    When I was a boy, he once brought home a manual sander, the kind with permanent sandpaper. But he never brought any wood.
    It sat unused for years, a quiet monument to all the things that could have been made.

    He was always dreaming big, reaching for the next idea.
    But he rarely built the small things that hold a big idea up.
    He chased the horizon before laying the foundation.

    What I needed wasn’t the sander. I needed him beside me — to sit down, pick up a piece of wood, and finish one small thing together, from start to end.
    That, I think, is part of what fathers are meant to teach: how to stay with hard things, not just how to imagine them.

    The Shadow

    His father — my grandfather — was a maths professor in Zimbabwe. Brilliant, respected, exacting.
    That shadow must have weighed on him.
    Instead of trying to measure up, my father learned to sidestep the test.
    Control became a form of safety.

    He had real endurance, when it was on his own terms.
    He trained for years to earn his black belt in karate. He could push through pain, repetition, fatigue.
    But when someone else set the terms — when the work wasn’t freely chosen or when visibility came with the risk of judgment, his will turned brittle.

    I remember him helping my mother in her shop late into the night, cutting fabric by the metre.
    He did what needed to be done, but with quiet resentment.

    It wasn’t effort he lacked — it was trust in being seen while trying,
    and in believing that his voice, his contribution, mattered.
    That he mattered.
    That was the tragedy, that somewhere along the way,
    he stopped believing his life counted for something.
    He believed you have to want to — but mostly when the wanting stayed private, protected from the eyes of others.
    When exposure entered, he’d retreat, withholding his best work from the very places it might have mattered most.

    The Battle of Will

    His will was both shield and trap.
    He resisted being told what to do, even when he agreed.
    It was easier to hold onto principle than to risk failing in full view.

    There were so many thresholds he couldn’t cross because of that incomplete belief —
    moments that asked for surrender, not stubbornness.
    When forced, he complied reluctantly; when free, he sometimes turned away.
    It was a constant tug between pride and fear, control and closeness.

    The Inheritance

    That’s what he passed down — not absence, but ambivalence.
    He was loving, affectionate, warm. He told us he loved us.
    But he never showed us how to endure difficulty without bitterness.

    When I was sixteen, I saw it in myself.
    I was losing badly at tennis, and instead of staying in the fight, I started pretending not to care.
    It was like watching him play through me — choosing pride over persistence.

    What I needed to hear that day was simple:
    You can love something and not be brilliant.
    You can fail and still build something.
    You can stand up, brush off the dust, and try again.

    The Turning

    That part of me still flinches from trying, afraid of what it might expose.
    But in honour of my father, I’ve spent my life walking toward the hard things —
    learning to stay, learning to fail, and learning to begin again.

    The mountains helped me.
    I found what I needed in vision quests — four days and nights alone on the land.
    I started when I was twenty-nine and finished when I was forty-three.
    My last was thirteen days on a mountain, alone.

    Those mountains taught me what he couldn’t:
    how to stay when every part of you wants to leave.
    How to sit with hunger, thirst, fear, and the voice that says you’re not enough.
    How to meet yourself at the threshold — and not turn away.

    They didn’t just teach me to stay.
    They taught me why to stay.

    The Completion

    He was right, in his way. You do have to want to.
    But will alone isn’t devotion.
    Without purpose, will hardens into resistance — a fight against life instead of for it.

    Looking back, I see how he shaped me — not just through what he gave, but through what he withheld.
    He taught me, by contrast, the beauty of perseverance.
    Yes, he should have built more, stayed longer, risked being seen.
    But he also did the best he could with what he had.

    And maybe that’s the work of the next generation —
    to pick up what was dropped, to soften what was rigid,
    to turn the battle of will into the art of staying.

    The Blessing

    If my father had given me a sander and sat beside me,
    if we’d made one small table together,
    our story might have been different.

    But there’s a quiet poetry that only time and heartbreak can make.

    So I take you as the father for me.
    I love you as you were, Dad.
    And I needed so much more.

    Thankfully, that so much more is now my responsibility.
    The threshold is mine to cross.
    The sander is still waiting.

  • What I Learned from 21 Days of Morning Pages on Belonging

    What I Learned from 21 Days of Morning Pages on Belonging

    “The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” — Montaigne

    Belonging is not just a nice-to-have. It’s a fundamental human need. Without it, we wither. At times, it can feel easier to starve than to live without a place where we are truly received.

    And yet, so many of us carry the wound of not belonging. There is hardly anyone on this planet who hasn’t, at some point, felt the sting of exclusion—being pushed out, turned away, or conditionally welcomed. You can stay, but it’s going to cost you, goes the unspoken contract.

    Witnessing the Wound

    I once participated in a training where we each took turns standing outside a circle while the rest of the group turned inward. It was only an exercise, but the feelings were achingly real. On the outside, pacing, the body remembers: I’ll do anything to be part of this. And beneath that, the grief of all the times the circle never opened—no matter what we tried.

    This is an experience so deeply human that we will do almost anything to avoid it. Sometimes we give up our principles just to stay in the circle. Perhaps this explains some of what we see in the world today.

    These experiences don’t vanish with time. They shape how we show up, what we allow ourselves to do—or not do. And because they cut so deep, the wounds of belonging are heavily protected.

    A Dream of Belonging

    On the very first night of my 21-day writing journey, I had a dream. In it, all the wounds I carried around belonging were suddenly gone.

    I knew, without question, that I belonged. That belonging could never be taken away. Wherever I went, this knowing accompanied me. It was like the innocence of a child who has never been excluded—now present in the adult who has lived and seen the world.

    The change was remarkable. Without fear, I could bring myself to anything. Life became more like a dance—fluid, responsive, impossible to be apart from. There was no loss to fear, because the movement never stops.

    What Participants Discovered

    I wasn’t alone in these discoveries. Others in the Parts on Paper: Belonging & Roots group shared profound insights:

    “I’ve been searching for belonging most of my life and realized I was unconsciously resisting it. When I discovered why, it felt like the floodgates opened. This has been a small but deeply significant pause on my journey.”

    “I realized that more often than not, people accept me. There are many places I belong. The rejection I felt was rooted in my own shame, not reality. People accept and love me just as I am.”

    “The group was transformational. Ryan’s guidance, the group insights, and daily writing allowed rigid parts of me to shift. This led directly to improved relationships and a deeper sense of acceptance.”

    An Invitation

    Belonging begins with ourselves, but it flourishes in community. Writing together opens doors that are difficult to find alone.

    The next Parts on Paper group begins in September. If this resonates with you, you’re warmly invited to join us.

    Spaces are limited. Subscribe to our list for updates.

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  • The Trap You Don’t Have to Escape From

    The Trap You Don’t Have to Escape From

    I felt that same old familiar feeling — rock and a hard place, as the saying goes. I’ve been there many, many times before. That place where there really doesn’t seem to be any movement either way. You’re damned.

    If you’re quiet enough, the answer will come. The movement will come.
    And it’s not a movement that comes from your mind.
    Hell, you can’t even take credit for it — because there’s nothing you did for it, except one big thing:

    Give up the struggle.

    Instead of trying to find your way out of the hard place, forcing solutions, trying to figure it all out, or arguing with life about why you’re in there in the first place, you do something so counterintuitive, so revolutionary, that your mind nearly jumps out of its own head.

    You simply stop the struggle.

    Imagine being tied up in one of those knots that only tightens the more you pull. That’s not far from the truth of the hard place. It’s as if the more we try to wrestle our way out, the deeper we dig the hole.

    But still — no one likes being stuck. And rightly so.

    Maybe I shouldn’t speak for everyone. I’ve met a few who seem to prefer stuckness because the idea of freedom is just too overwhelming.
    But most of us, I imagine, would much rather be free.
    And there’s nothing worse than the feeling of no movement.

    What I’m getting at is this: stuckness — the not-knowing, the confusion, the fog, the feeling lost — these are all forms of the hard place.
    And I don’t think any of that is actually the problem.

    In fact, I think we’d be wise to expect them.
    Being lost and confused is just part of being human.

    I watched this series recently — Somebody Somewhere — and I highly recommend it for the realness of its characters and the vulnerability of its story. There’s a line that changes the course of the main character Sam’s life. Her friend says to her:

    “No one knows what they’re doing.”

    Never has a truer word been spoken.
    None of us really know.
    We’re just making it up as we go, and stumbling as we go.

    But somehow, we’ve picked up this bad habit of expecting more from ourselves, like we ought to know better.
    Well, how on earth ought we to know more than we do?

    It’s a total delusion. We can only know what we know.
    And we’re going to get it wrong — again and again — and that does not need to be a problem.

    In fact, in my experience, the less I make it a problem, the more I learn.

    So back to that damned ditch I was in — that old familiar feeling. Can’t say yes, can’t say no. No obvious way to go.

    But something strange happened.

    I noticed I wasn’t so afraid of the feeling anymore.
    And a little voice inside reminded me:
    I am completely free to make my best move.

    I think of a tennis court — the best rallies, the impossible shots that come out of impossible angles.
    Even if the player loses the point, we love watching that kind of play — the creativity, the comeback, the refusal to give in.

    Something in us lights up when we see someone come back from a hard place.
    People rising out of difficulty, big or small — it’s an endless fascination.

    So maybe the point isn’t to wish for the rock and the hard place.

    But what if we could be just a little more grateful for those moments?
    Because they’re asking something of us — something more than we think we have.

    And the only way out… is in.
    To trust that it’s in you, in me, in everyone — and to learn to follow it.

  • The Art of Beginnings

    The Art of Beginnings

    Aren’t these early moments of the year a little hard? I’ve lived through 46 of them so far, and to me, they feel like when you were a kid, running alongside a roundabout to build speed before jumping on to glide. I don’t know how much gliding there will be this year, but I know I need to get on the wheel.

    Yet, in these early moments, parts of me feel like they just don’t want to go. They resist what’s here and what needs to be done, offering an assortment of reasons for their reluctance. One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned so far is not to fight the resistance. That doesn’t mean going along with it either. It’s about being curious about these parts that may not feel ready yet.

    Take this story from my beginning: I was born early, and back then, it was fine for doctors to schedule deliveries. My mother’s doctor was also an avid golfer, and, as ridiculous as it sounds, the story I was told is that my arrival had to work around his golf schedule. For the longest time—and still, to some extent—I’ve carried this feeling of not being ready, like I’m being rushed out the door without everything I need. You know that sense, like you’ve forgotten something important? Granted, there were likely other experiences that contributed to that feeling, but nonetheless, it was there—something my rational mind could not explain.

    The only way I’ve come to understand my resistance is by listening to those parts, making space for their fears, and, most importantly, finding the “hell no, I won’t go” energy in my body. The body carries that resistance, and trusting it is what has helped me move forward.

    So here we are at the beginning of a new year. The first step, if there’s resistance, is to honour it. Once its grip loosens a little, there’s space for dreaming.

    If this year could be more, what would I want that more to look like? Will I dare to dream, even when so much of the world feels torn apart? Even wealth doesn’t insulate like it once did. Look at the tragic fires in LA. The wealthiest among us aren’t immune to natural forces. Sure, it’s always been that way, but doesn’t the world feel more uncertain than usual?

    So, with all the uncertainty, what is worth dreaming of?

    I don’t have a clear answer to that, but I love the question. I think life is meant to be an art form, even when times are shaky. What’s the point of slogging through this thing without feeling some choice in how we respond to the conditions of our lives?

    This brings me to my second point: don’t take it too seriously. After reflecting on last year, my slogan for this year is to be more playful in the serious business of life. For me, that means taking life seriously enough but also recognising its dream-like quality. The stakes aren’t always as high as I think, and there’s plenty of reason not to treat it as life or death.

    One of my heroines is Suleika Jaouad. What I love about her is how she took an impossible situation—cancer—and turned it on its head. Enduring countless hospital stints that left her isolated for long periods, she responded in the one way she could: creatively.

    She started The Isolation Journals, bringing people together through writing and art. Her story reminds me how to dream in a grounded way. It’s not about ignoring life’s constraints or pretending we’re limitless. She lives with uncertainty, not knowing how long she has, yet she finds a creative response to what life brings.

    In Suleika’s case, she lives with the knowledge of her mortality as an absolute truth. That should not be different for any of us, and yet we are experts at pretending otherwise. For Suleika, the knowledge clearly propels her into her deepest place of creativity. She’s not writing like there will be a string of next days or years, but at the same time, she’s not giving up hope for a long and fruitful life. My favourite words from her are utterly simple: she invites us to “let our survival be a creative act.”

    On the face of it, maybe that doesn’t look like much, but when you really consider what she is saying, it challenges us right to the core. We have hundreds of millions of years behind us of being conditioned for safety. Not much in us wants to risk all that in the name of Art. And it’s certainly not to say don’t take material reality seriously. But is there a way you could loosen up a little more and make more space for what really matters to you?

    No challenge comes risk-free. Failure and loss are inevitable—no one in history has been an all-time winner. More to the point, are you in the game?

    I used to think being in the game meant being entrepreneurial or avoiding corporate life. Not anymore. I’ve realised that you can summon creative energy in any situation. Take Viktor Frankl, for instance, who found meaning even in the most horrific conditions. He showed us that, even there, we have a choice in how to respond.

    Because we are storytellers, whether we like it or not, we’re hardwired to make meaning from experience. So the question is, will we wrestle enough with experience to find a way of telling our story that supports the direction we want to take our life in?

    If point two was to dream, then three is to find the story you want to tell that supports the dream. Not the story on the outside, but to grapple with the stories on the inside. If I’m telling myself a story of not being worth anything and that I have nothing of value to give, no matter how hard I dream, my thoughts and beliefs will keep holding me back from stepping more fully into life.

    That’s part of what allows this creative energy to take hold. When we are telling a story that resists reality, there is no movement. We don’t feel that creative possibility. It’s only when we accept the conditions as they are. And if I imagine that I am living in a universe that wants us to dream, then I naturally open to that “more” I otherwise might not see.

    And finally, point four: energise the dream by remembering that we each will have a dying moment. Memento mori, as the Stoics say.

    Sam Harris offers a great proposal for the year: live it as if it’s your last. It’s a familiar idea, but what if we really brought it closer? None of us knows how long we have. Even as I write this, a part of me thinks death is far away.

    Isn’t that crazy, that we can feel like it’s something abstract, when the reality is that it is very tangible and physical? One moment you’re in a body, and the next moment, you’re not. In my bones, I just don’t see how that’s possible. That you or I could just end in entirety. Surely not. Life can’t die, but it can change, and the end of your body-mind is as significant as it gets.

    We should surely use this knowledge for good—not to take for granted what’s in front of us. To remember that something in us wants to live beyond the confines of our patterns. I call that Dreaming.

    And I wish you a good dream for 2025!