Tag: creativity

Morning Rituals for a More Grounded Day

Posted on by Allan Johnson in artist's way, Observations

The early bird 40% off offer for The Artist’s Way Circle: A 12-Week Creative Journey closes at midnight tonight. In this powerful small-group experience, we will work through Julia Cameron’s classic book together, sharing insights, deepening our practice, and building a creative community that makes the journey feel less solitary and more alive.

For me, mornings have become less about rushing into productivity and more about creating a small pocket of time that feels set apart, a threshold into the day. This is, after all, what Julia Cameron invites us to do in The Artist’s Way: show up to the blank page before we show up to anyone else.

A ritual isn’t a routine; it is a way of marking time as meaningful. When I light a candle before writing, or make my coffee slowly in my V60 instead of rushing, I am reminding myself that this time is not just another item to cross off a list, it is where my life begins for the day. Mircea Eliade, in The Sacred and the Profane, writes about ritual as a way of stepping into ‘sacred time’, a space where the ordinary becomes charged with significance. For me, this might mean lighting a special candle that reminds me of that changing of the seasons going on at the moment, or pausing for a moment on the balcony to notice the light on the plants before I open my laptop. These small gestures are a way of crossing the threshold deliberately, rather than being dragged into the day half-awake.

Groundedness begins in the body. No amount of list-making and project management will make a difference if I wake up already scattered and tense. The first thing I try to do now is move. I have been trying to get into running again, which I alternate with indoor rowing (my preferred cardio of choice). And after years of not making progress or any form of commitment to resistance machines at the gym, I’ve taken up strength training with two simple dumbbells, which has been an absolutely fantastic development in my fitness journey–the trainers on FIIT have revolutionised my entire outlook on dumbbells. This comes alongside my yoga practice, which has been with me for nearly 25 years. The point is less about physical fitness (although, as I get older, I am becoming increasingly aware of the need to build lasting wellness) and more about arriving in my body. As Bessel van der Kolk reminds us in The Body Keeps the Score, our sense of safety and clarity begins somatically, not intellectually. If I can bring my nervous system into a calmer, more coherent state first thing, the rest of the day feels less like a battle.

Creativity thrives in spaciousness, not in haste. This is where Morning Pages come in—Julia Cameron’s influential practice of writing three longhand pages first thing in the morning. They are not intended to be polished or even interesting; they are more like clearing mental static, a way to compost the thoughts that would otherwise clutter the mind all day. I find that pairing them with something tactile—a favourite notebook, a good pen—enhances the ritual. (In The Artist’s Way Circle, we’ll not only practice Morning Pages but also discuss what they unlock: the surprising insights that surface when we permit ourselves to be imperfectly present.)

Not every ritual has to be still. A ten-minute stroll before sitting down to write can be as clarifying as a meditation cushion. The Go Jauntly app has been such a fantastic presence for me. Thich Nhat Hanh speaks beautifully about walking meditation as a way to arrive in the present moment, and I find that even putting on a playlist and tidying the kitchen can create that same bridging effect between sleep and wakefulness. The point is to let the mind settle before reaching for the phone, before taking on the noise of the world.

During my sabbatical, I’ve been focusing on testing and adjusting my daily habits so that when I return to a busy routine of teaching and administration in the new year, I will have a clear understanding of what best supports my growth and development. Protecting the first hour of the day is, I’ve come to see, an act of self-respect. Seneca reminds us that we are often more careful with money than with time, though time is the one thing we can never get back. I’ve started following a ‘no-scroll rule’ in the first hour of the day, and replaced it with going straight to the gym.

The key is not to design the perfect morning but to make a start, consistently. There have been mornings where the ritual falls apart—when I oversleep, or skip the gym entirely—but I’m learning that a ritual that only works on perfect days isn’t really a ritual at all. The point is to keep coming back. James Clear’s Atomic Habits puts it simply: habits compound over time. A short, wobbly practice is better than a grand plan you never do.

This time of year feels like an invitation to recommit. I’ve always felt that September carries more of a ‘new year’ energy than January—it must be the academic calendar still in my bones. This month, I’m choosing to double down on the things that anchor me: lighting a candle before email, a few minutes of breathing exercises, and breakfast that feels nourishing rather than hasty. I’d love for you to consider what this season might invite for you.

Ultimately, a grounded morning is an act of creative resistance. In a culture that would have us wake up and immediately start scrolling, choosing ritual is choosing presence. So tonight, ask yourself: how do you want your mornings to feel for the next twelve weeks? And if you are ready to experiment—with ritual, with creativity, with spaciousness—I’d love for you to join us in The Artist’s Way Circle. The early-bird 40% discount closes at midnight tonight, and there are just a few spots left. Your mornings—and your creative life—might look completely different on the other side.

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Journaling as a Thinking Process

Posted on by Allan Johnson in creativity, Observations, writing

I’m the kind of person who really loves the -ember months, you know: September, October, November, December, spooky season, PSLs, sweater weather, cosy throws, piles of books and cups of tea. Even as an adult, I still treat myself to shopping for back-to-school supplies, my set of new pens, a beautiful notebook, a pad of notecards. And as is so often the case this time of year, I’ve been thinking a lot about writing lately—not the big writing projects, not my next book that has been hovering in draft form for too long, but the more intimate, private act of journaling. The kind of writing that doesn’t begin with an audience in mind, but with a simple intention: to notice, to clarify, to think. Writing to get cosy with.

This practice has been quietly foundational for me. Some days it is a place to record the traces of a dream before the day sweeps it away. Other days, it’s a notebook page where I sketch out the shape of an idea, a plan, a dream that feels still just beyond reach. And sometimes, if I’m honest, it’s little more than the banal recounting of my to-do list, things I need to buy, or minor annoyances still weighing on me. But even in those moments, journaling does something important. It reminds me that thought is not just an invisible current in the mind; it is something that can be externalised, shaped, and returned to.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that thinking itself is a kind of dialogue, an inner conversation between me and myself. Journaling, in that sense, is a way of giving that dialogue a more durable form. It’s a way of ensuring that fleeting insights don’t evaporate, but have the chance to develop into something more sustained.

There’s a temptation to imagine journals only as records of the past, those childhood diaries with locks and keys, filled with secrets that we might cringe to reread, or those teenage of angst and whingeing. I have many examples of both. But even in those examples, a journal is still always a tool for invention. The monks who kept commonplace books weren’t merely keeping records; they were building repertoires of thought that could be recombined in new and surprising ways.

When I journal, I notice that same shift. I might begin with the day’s details—what I’m reading, what I need to do next—but somewhere in the act of writing, connections spark. A line from Woolf collides with something I overheard on the bus. A fragment of a lecture I once gave resurfaces beside a description of the changing light on my balcony garden (sadly now largely barren as I prepare to leave this flat after several years). The page becomes less about recording and more about thinking with.

This is one of the reasons I encourage students and coaching clients alike to develop their own journaling practices. It’s not about producing beautiful prose; it’s about cultivating a space where the mind can stretch into unexpected directions.

At the moment, my own journaling practice feels especially necessary. September has always been a transitional month for me: the academic year begins again, new projects gather momentum, and the end of summer invites reflection on what has—or hasn’t—shifted over the past few months.

Recently, I’ve been writing in the mornings with coffee that I’ve started brewing with increasing precision with a V60 and scale, sometimes before the world is properly awake. I’ve found that this time of year asks me to slow down, even when everything around me is speeding up. My journal becomes a place where I can give shape to that paradox.

In these quiet pages, I notice the themes that recur: what it means to balance leadership and teaching; how to weave contemplative practices into daily life; where writing itself is pulling me next. These aren’t polished arguments—they’re more like fragments waiting to be assembled. But without journaling, they might never find their way into language at all.

Several thinkers have shaped the way I understand journaling as a thinking practice. Julia Cameron, of course, is central: her practice of ‘morning pages’ in The Artist’s Way remains one of the most accessible and transformative ways to encounter journaling. She invites us to write three pages, longhand, every morning, without editing or censoring. The point is not literary craft but mental hygiene, clearing away the clutter that keeps us from more original insights.

Another companion is John Dewey, whose philosophy of education placed such emphasis on reflection. Dewey argued that genuine learning happens when experience is turned over in the mind, tested, connected. Journaling is, in many ways, the simplest technology for making that reflection visible.

And then there is Joan Didion, who once said, ‘I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking.’ That sentence could be the motto both for journaling as a practice, and for my entire life.

One of the questions people often ask me is: What happens to all this writing? Do you go back and read it? Do you publish it?

The truth is that most of it remains private, and that’s part of the point. Of course, there are occasional fragments that spark something bigger, and find their way into a draft or an article. But there is something liberating about knowing the page doesn’t demand performance. More often, I find that themes crystallised in my journals resurface later as a sort of inspired spark in a lecture, a coaching session, or a blog post. The journal becomes a kind of compost heap for thought, where scraps and off-cuts break down into fertile soil, ‘breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire’ to quite Eliot’s eminently autumnal Waste Land.

If you’re curious about beginning—or rekindling—a journaling practice, here are a few approaches that I’ve found useful:

  1. Set a container. Whether it’s Cameron’s three pages or simply ten minutes with a timer, give yourself a boundary. Paradoxically, limits make the practice feel more spacious.
  2. Write by hand if possible. The slowness of handwriting often brings a different quality of attention. That said, typing can work too—especially if it helps you keep pace with fast-moving thoughts.
  3. Don’t censor. The journal isn’t for anyone else’s eyes. Let yourself be clumsy, repetitive, contradictory. That’s where the interesting material often hides.
  4. Return to your entries selectively. You don’t need to reread everything. But every so often, leaf back through your notebook. Notice what recurs. Pay attention to what surprises you.
  5. Link journaling to other practices. For me, journaling often dovetails with meditation or with my reading life. It’s less a stand-alone ritual and more a node in a larger web of reflection.

If journaling is, at its heart, a practice of listening—both to the self and to the world—then it naturally lends itself to creative community. That’s why I’m so looking forward to starting a new Artist’s Way Circle on 23 September.

For twelve weeks, we’ll walk together through Cameron’s classic text, supporting one another as we experiment with morning pages, artist dates, and the many other tools she offers for creative recovery. Journaling will be our daily companion, but the circle itself will be a space for sharing insights, frustrations, and breakthroughs along the way.

If you’ve been feeling the tug to reconnect with your creative self—or if you simply want to explore how journaling might change the way you think—I’d love for you to join us. You can find the details here.

Ultimately, journaling reminds me that thought is not finished before it appears on the page. Writing is not simply a vehicle for communication, but a method of discovery in its own right. In a world that often prizes speed, certainty, and polished outputs, there’s something quietly radical about sitting down with a notebook and allowing thought to unfold in its own time.

For me, it remains one of the simplest and most profound ways to live more reflectively, more attentively—and perhaps even more creatively.

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Literary Walks: How Reading Cities Shapes the Way We Live in Them

Posted on by Allan Johnson in Observations

I notice how literature lingers in the pavements in London. I’ve found this more and more the longer I’ve lived here. After all, ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’, as Samuel Johnson wrote. Even on the most ordinary days, when I’m simply walking to the shops or having a coffee, a remembered passage from Woolf or Dickens reshapes the atmosphere, giving a quiet strangeness to what otherwise might seem familiar. Literary walks don’t need to be formal, nor do they require a tour group—although there is a place for those. Instead, they are an everyday practice of letting what we’ve read colour what we see, and in turn allowing the city to read us back.

Cities are always already read, even before we open a book about them. Our streets teem with signs and symbols: shopfront typography, graffiti tags, the peculiar poetics of street names, layering like muddy sediment the history of an ancient city, each one carrying some buried narrative. Roland Barthes, in Mythologies, reminds us that everyday signs are never innocent, but instead they come loaded with cultural meaning. Michel de Certeau goes further, describing walking itself as a kind of writing: each step a form of mark-making, each turn a marginal note. Perhaps this is why walking has become one of my most reliable contemplative practices; I can never quite shake the sense that London is, in spite of its sublime history, an unfinished text, and that my role as a walker is not only to read but to annotate.

Reading literature set in a city makes us feel less like visitors and more like participants. When I first read Mrs Dalloway, I hadn’t spent much time in London, but the rhythm of Woolf’s sentences gave me an immediate familiarity with the city. Later, when I actually walked those spaces and traced Clarissa’s journey on foot with my students the novel gave me entry points into belonging to a city that didn’t seem materially my own. Literature offers a way of settling without appropriation: it lets us walk streets we may never ‘own’ or even afford to live on, but with a kind of kinship. For me, reading the urban canon—Joyce’s Ulysses for Dublin, Smith’s NW for Willesden—has softened the edges of new places, helping me to live in them with curiosity rather than defensiveness.

Walking with a book’s shadow creates a double vision: the city as it is, and the city as it is imagined. Every time I find myself near Holborn, I see Dickens’s London superimposed on the glassy facades of insurance firms; the ghosts of debtors’ prisons and fog-bound alleys live on in the shadow of a Costa or Pret. And I can’t help but notice how nearly every pub in the vicinity has a plaque reporting that Dickens used to drink there and recounting a famous 17th-century stabbing that took place there. To walk with these texts is to carry a palimpsest in mind, where past and present are layered, sometimes clashing, sometimes harmonising. In my own recent walks, especially since returning to more teaching this year after six years in leadership, I’ve been acutely aware of this doubling. The university campus is also both a physical environment and a palimpsest of earlier student generations—I grow older, but my students, disconcertingly, stay the same age every year. Literature trains us to notice these overlays, and walking keeps the lesson alive.

Literary walking is not only about cities, it is also about the walker. What we bring to the page and to the street matters as much as what the author provides. Some days my walks are brisk and pragmatic; on others, they slow into reverie. I notice how my mood shapes the city I ‘read’, whether the buildings feel inviting or alienating, whether the metaphors I attach are hopeful or heavy. Theorists of psychogeography often emphasise dérive—the unplanned journey or drift—as a mode of breaking free from capitalist rationalisation of space. Yet for me, walking with literature offers a slightly different promise: not only resistance, but companionship. A door knocker shaped like a lion’s head, a tree whose branches look suddenly archetypal, a narrow side alley that seems like it should have its own subplot. Reading tunes our attention and primes us to see texture where before there was only function. 

There is also a social dimension to literary walking. Books are companions, but so too are the people we share them with. When I’ve brought novels into reading groups or teaching seminars, I’ve been struck by how each reader brings a different walk through the same text. These conversations remind me that the city is never read alone—it is always interpreted collectively, shaped by a multiplicity of histories. I think of my own upcoming groups—the Living a Course a Course in Miracles study group or the weekly Creative Flow Sessions that are beginning this autumn—as spaces where such collective interpretations of experience can flourish, even if not always tethered to literal walking.

In many ways, literary walking is about staying with a place rather than consuming it. When I moved to Hong Kong, I was initially so overcome by the immensity of it that I bought a fancy camera to help me train my vision on the particulars; when I visit Stockholm, my favourite city in the world after London, I find a space that is, inversely, more human-scale. London is a capital somewhere in between, neither entirely comforting to the human spirit or form, nor entirely forbidding. One never tires of London because it takes work, practice, and grit to live in London. 

Cities are often perceived as destinations to be ‘done’, sights to be checked off in rapid succession. But literary walking resists that tempo. It asks us to linger, to reread, to take a slower pace. To walk with a book in mind is to inhabit a place rather than extract from it. In this sense, walking becomes a small ecological ethic, a way of living lightly while seeing deeply. The practice is never finished, just as no book is ever fully read. Each walk is another opportunity for literature to accompany us, shaping how we see and how we are perceived.

An Invitation to Walk With Me (Figuratively at least)

What books have changed the way you walk your city? I’d love to hear your reflections—share them in the comments or reply if you’re reading this via newsletter. If you’d like to explore more practices that blend literature, creativity, and contemplative living, you’re warmly invited to join our Weekly Creative Flow Sessions  this autumn or the new 18-month reading cycle of A Course in Miracles.

As autumn approaches, I hope your own walks—whether with books, with friends, or simply with yourself—offer you fresh ways of seeing the cities you call home.

Autumn Creativity Awaits: Upcoming Events

Posted on by Allan Johnson in creativity

As the leaves turn and the pace of life shifts, autumn is the perfect season to nurture your creative self. Whether you’re a writer, artist, academic, or thinker, this fall I’m offering a range of events designed to support your practice, spark fresh ideas, and help you stay focused and inspired.

🎨 Weekly Creative Flow Sessions – Free
Dedicated time to write, draw, or work on your projects alongside other creatives. No pressure, just presence, energy, and support. Quiet, structured sessions to help you start, focus, and finish your creative work in good company.
RSVP here

📖 12-Week Artist’s Way Circle
Dive deep with Julia Cameron’s classic book, The Artist’s Way, bringing the work to life in community with practical exercises and reflections to reclaim your creative voice. Weekly 90-minute circles for reflection, sharing, and growth.
Join here

🧘 Mindfulness for Creatives – Evening Workshop
Learn mindfulness techniques specifically for creatives and academics. Cultivate focus, flow, and inspiration in your daily practice in this 2.5-hour workshop filled with science-backed insights and practical exercises and tools.
Reserve your spot here

Autumn is a season of new beginnings and renewed energy. Whether you’re seeking free flow time, structured accountability, or a transformative creative journey, there’s a place for you in these sessions. I’d love to see you there—let’s make this autumn a season of inspiration, focus, and creative growth.

What If You Could Train Your Mind for Peace?

Posted on by Allan Johnson in Observations

We live in a time when personal development is everywhere. Books, podcasts, apps, retreats—offering promises of clarity, balance, transformation. Yet for all the tools we now have at our fingertips, many of us still feel stuck in cycles of stress, comparison, anxiety, and low-level unease. We meditate, journal, affirm—but underneath, a quieter question lingers:

Why do I keep thinking in ways that don’t serve me?

A Course in Miracles doesn’t answer that question in the way most programs or teachings do. It doesn’t try to fix your life. It doesn’t teach you how to manifest your dream job, or how to wake up feeling inspired every morning. It doesn’t even really give advice.

Instead, it offers something far more radical: a training in how to undo fear at the level of thought. Not by fighting it. Not by spiritually bypassing it. But by recognising how much of what we call “reality” is coloured by unconscious habits of mind—and learning, very gently, to choose a different lens.

The Course tells us: “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.”

That sounds mystical, and it is. But it’s also incredibly practical. It points to a profound principle: most of what we spend our time defending, controlling, resisting, or avoiding… isn’t actually real. It’s based on thoughts we’ve inherited, stories we’ve absorbed, and fear patterns we mistake for wisdom.

And yet—there is another way of seeing. And we can learn it. That’s what A Course in Miracles invites us to do.

Not a Religion, But a Mindset Shift

For many people, the word “Course” suggests a study program, while “Miracles” sounds like something out of a spiritual fantasy novel. It’s no wonder people hesitate to pick it up. But behind the slightly intimidating title is something remarkably down-to-earth: a process.

The Course is made up of three parts:

  1. A Text that lays out the underlying framework for how we perceive the world, and how we might begin to shift our perception.
  2. A Workbook, offering a lesson for every day of the year, each designed to undo a particular block to awareness.
  3. A brief Manual for Teachers, which clarifies how to embody and share the Course’s core principles.

What’s unique about the Course is that it doesn’t ask us to adopt new beliefs. It doesn’t claim to be the only way. In fact, it repeatedly says it’s just one path among many. But it is precise. And if you feel drawn to it, it works deeply.

The Course teaches that the world we see is shaped by the thoughts we think. But unlike most positive psychology, it doesn’t suggest we simply replace negative thoughts with nicer ones. Instead, it asks us to recognise the root of our misperception—fear, judgment, separation—and to bring those habits into awareness, where they can be gently released.

This is not about willpower. It’s not about becoming a better version of yourself. It’s about becoming aware of the part of your mind that thinks it has to struggle for worth, and learning how to soften its grip.

A Path Practised by Many (Even If You Don’t Know It)

You may have encountered the Course without realising it.

Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love—a breakout spiritual classic in the 1990s—was drawn directly from her experience as a Course student. Oprah, who championed the book, has spoken about how the Course shaped her understanding of forgiveness and emotional responsibility. Gabrielle Bernstein built much of her early work around making Course ideas more accessible to a younger generation.

And yet for all this quiet influence, the Course remains relatively underground—a word-of-mouth path. That’s partly because it’s not easy to summarise. It’s not designed for social media snippets. It asks for attention, and offers clarity in return.

Why Study the Course in a Group?

Like many spiritual texts, A Course in Miracles is best read slowly, with space to reflect, question, and apply. It isn’t something you power through. In fact, many people return to it again and again over years—each time discovering something they didn’t see before.

That’s why I’ve created an 18-month study group, meeting weekly on Sunday evenings from 7.30 to 9.00pm UK time.

We take the Text section by section—reading together, reflecting aloud or in silence, noticing how these teachings meet our real lives. There’s no pressure to contribute, no expectations of previous study. Just an invitation to explore what happens when we train the mind for peace rather than protection.

Once you register, you’ll receive the full reading schedule. You can join each week or come when you can. The rhythm is slow, sustainable, and designed to create space for integration rather than overwhelm.

Some people come with a long-standing interest in the Course. Others are completely new. Some are therapists, teachers, or coaches looking to deepen their personal practice. Others are simply seeking an anchor—something intelligent and transformative that doesn’t ask them to leave their critical thinking behind.

Miracles, Redefined

In the Course, a miracle isn’t a supernatural event. It’s a shift in perception—from fear to love, from control to trust, from attack to understanding. These are the quiet revolutions that can change a life from the inside out.

And they happen, not because we force them, but because we create the conditions for them to arise.

In a world that often feels fast, fragmented, and fraught with uncertainty, the Course offers something rare: a path of steady, unhurried insight—one that helps us see ourselves and others more clearly, and respond from a place of genuine freedom.

You’re Invited

If something in you feels curious, even if you’re unsure what to make of the Course, you’re warmly invited to join us. There’s nothing to prove. No need to sign up to a belief system. Just a willingness to explore what happens when we start training our minds not to panic, but to listen.

🌀 Ready to begin? Join the study group here