Guest Interview - Kori Linn - Importance of a Daily Writing Practice

For many people, taking the time to sit down and write on a daily basis is something we just don’t have time for.

 

Yet, a daily writing ritual is a powerful tool if you are looking to change your thoughts and your life.

 

The best part is, you can see a massive life transformation with just one sentence in a day.

 

In a conversation with coach Kori Linn, we learn how to leverage the simple practice of daily writing and different ways you can adapt it to work for your life.

 

Major Topics in the Conversation

The daily writing ritual Kori Linn started in 2011 that changed her life How to adapt a daily practice to your life The importance of getting your thoughts on paper-so you can work with them The power of taking small steps to make big transformation

 

Special Moments in the Episode

[1:37] Why Kori started a daily writing practice back in 2011

[2:20] How Kor’s daily writing practice evolved and adapted

[3:48] The reasoning behind a daily ritual

[4:20] Getting those ideas in your head on paper

[7:38] How do you get started with a daily ritual, like writing practice?

[11:00] Why small steps lead to big life shifts

[12:51] Kori’s upcoming projects

 

About Our Guest

Kori Linn is a burnout coach with experience working as a freelancer, in the corporate world, and other experiences. She uses those experiences and her creativity to build programs and coaching sessions for women at risk or already experiencing burnout. She is the founder of Kori Linn, LLC.

 

Learn more:

 

KoriLinn.com

Kori on Twitter

Kori on LinkedIn

Kori on Facebook

 

Other Resources

 

The Artist’s Way by Julie Cameron

What are Morning Pages? (Julia Cameron’s website)

Gratitude Practice, Explained (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)

Daily Writing Practice (Kori Linn’s Freebie Created for THIS Podcast!)

 

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**Rich in Differences Podcast is not intended to diagnose, prescribe, treat, or cure any disease, physical or mental.

Any advice given on the Rich in Differences Podcast should not be construed as a prescription, a promise of benefits, claims of cures, or a guarantee of results to be achieved.

The information, instruction or advice given by Rich in Differences Podcast is not intended to be a substitute for competent professional medical or psychological diagnosis and care. You should not discontinue or modify any medication presently being taken pursuant to medical advice without obtaining approval from your healthcare professional.

As a listener/reader, you must take complete responsibility for your own physical health and emotional well-being.

 

Transcript Below

 

[00:00:04.200] - Brooke

Welcome to reach in differences with your hosts for rediscovering what works for you in life. Health and business we are not like those and one size does not fit all. So you grab a good drink and come listen to different perspectives as we see what sticks for you.

 

[00:00:20.910] - Brooke

Hi Kori. Thank you for joining us today.

 

[00:00:23.370] - Kori

Hi Brooke. Thank you so much for having me.

 

[00:00:25.890] - Brooke

So Kori, I have to ask what is your drink of choice today?

 

[00:00:29.790] - Kori

Well it's still morning on the West Coast where I live. So right now my drink of choice is coffee. But if you want to talk about my favorite drink right now I'm very much into. Rosé.

 

[00:00:44.310] - Brooke

Ohhh. That's nice. I like rosé.

 

[00:00:45.740] - Kori

It's a nice summer drink. I like it all year round. But it's summer now.

 

[00:00:50.310] - Brooke

Awesome. Right now I am having Pinot Grigio because we recently just hung a flat screen TV up on the wall and that was quite an ordeal. So I'm drinking afterwards.

 

[00:01:02.370] - Kori

Very nice.

 

[00:01:21.960] - Brooke

Awesome. Thank you. So Kori can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

 

[00:01:26.670] - Kori

Yeah I would love to. So I'm a life coach and I live in Seattle and I work with women who are experiencing or at risk of burnout. But my background is actually in creative writing and so I've had a creative writing practice that I do in the morning since 2011 and I've incorporated that into my work as a coach and my clients as well.

 

[00:01:49.740] - Brooke

Wow. 2011 that is a really specific time. Can you tell us like What made you start doing a daily writing routine back in 2011?

 

[00:01:57.690] - Kori

Definitely yeah. I remember it was 2011 because it was the summer after my first year of graduate school. I was studying at the University of Washington getting my math during finals in creative writing and having a really hard time. And so I read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron which is a great book.

 

[00:02:17.610] - Kori

It has lots of useful stuff for mindset and for creativity. And one of her recommendations is a practice called morning pages. So in the beginning I did morning pages in her style. And then as the years went by I really turned that practice into something of my own design.

 

[00:02:36.270] - Brooke

And exactly how was it turned into your own design?

 

[00:02:39.570] - Kori

That's a great question. Over the years and especially the more I learned about life coaching and coaching concepts even before I was a coach the more I would kind of create very specific prompts for myself. And Julia Cameron style you literally just get up and write anything. It can be anything at all for three pages first thing in the morning but I wanted to focus on specific things like the way you can use a gratitude practice to rewire your brain to pay more attention to positivity. So I started doing prompts about what's going well, what do I like, and what do I love, where was the light showing up in my life and at some point I would also create containers for what we would typically consider the negative feelings because I wanted a space to feel those in a very specific way so I would create that space in my morning pages as well.

 

[00:03:33.930] - Brooke

Thank you. So what changed?

 

[00:03:36.030] - Kori

That's a great question. Yeah. So when I began my writing practice first of all I was a little bit horrified at all of the thoughts that were in my head. I remember the first set of morning papers I did that for the first three pages were just three pages of me listing all the things I thought that I was failing at like in life. So a little a little melodramatic maybe but that really was what it felt like for me then. But the first thing that I learned from morning pages was how to write without censoring myself and because I was in a creative writing program that served me really well. I remember going to a class after that where we did a free write for like five minutes and I just had a ton of stuff on the page because I'd gotten very into that practice of just keep going. Just keep going.

 

[00:04:26.130] - Brooke

All right. And so as you continued to do it what else changed. Like as you continue to move forward how did it evolve? Did you evolve any? Did you change your thoughts change?

 

[00:04:39.570] - Kori

Yeah. Well it's interesting because in the artist's way Julia Cameron does talk about like changing your thoughts and developing new thoughts. She doesn't talk about it in the same way as life coaches but there are a lot of ways in which doing the work in her book was like my pre thought work. And for listeners who aren't familiar with thought work is just the practice of noticing meaning and sometimes changing the thoughts that we're thinking and creating new thoughts on purpose so that we can create different results in our lives.

 

[00:05:11.550] - Kori

Julia Cameron kind of was my prerequisite that I didn't realize was a prerequisite. So I did see all these changes and in the eight years that I've been doing this practice I've gone from being in grad school. And then I was a bartender and then I was a freelance writer and then I was in corporate America and now I'm a coach. So this is a tool that's gone with me through so many different phases of life and that has really helped me understand myself and what my mind was creating. And then when I got into some of those changes that were more difficult for instance going and working in corporate America when my old story was that I didn't have the right background for that it really required learning to tell my story in a new way. And all the practice I had this morning pages helped me get a handle on that.

 

[00:05:59.810] - Brooke

OK so what would you say is the biggest benefit from doing daily writing practice?

 

[00:06:05.870] - Kori

The biggest benefit to me of having a writing practice at all is that you create a relationship with yourself and a space to have that relationship. And when you get things on the page you can really understand them in a different way than when you're just thinking them in your head when you're thinking you can be very immersed in your thoughts when you put them on the page you can see them much more clearly and then you can work with them. But then the other thing that really happened for me is that having this practice over so many years has allowed me to see all the different things I can do with writing. Now my writing is very directed and there's a freebie that I am sharing with shows like the very specific question I ask myself now.

 

[00:06:50.540] - Kori

 But it's very much about helping my brain rewire to see all the data of the things I am doing that are working towards creating the changes I want to see in my life. And that's a way to help you notice what's working and feel better about that. And it feels good to do that but it's not just about feeling good. It's about the fact that when you feel good and notice what's working you do more of what's working. So it's really a tool that actually creates real world changes in my life.

 

[00:07:22.610] - Brooke

That's awesome. That makes me when I start writing daily now in the morning. I don't do that but that does make me want to to start doing that because it would be interesting too to see that to see your thoughts and your right about the idea of being immersed. I like the way you put that being immersed in your thoughts versus being able to see them on a piece of paper is like almost the difference between standing in the middle of the road and standing on the sidewalk.

 

[00:07:48.680] - Kori

Yeah.

 

[00:07:49.400] - Brooke

So yeah I like that.

 

[00:07:50.600] - Brooke

 I know it's good. To me it sounds silly to ask the question how would you teach someone to start doing a daily writing practice because it sounds like it's in the name, like a daily writing practice. Is there some tips or advice you would give because you know there's a lot of us to start the writing and then we stop or we just feel like just writing just just don't got the time for writing. So yeah. How would you go about teaching someone how to start a daily writing practice.

 

[00:08:18.020] - Kori

Yeah I think that's actually super important because on the surface level it's like yes if you want to write then you sit down and write but what we know as coaches is that it's not that simple. There's all kinds of things that people want to do that they aren't doing all the time. I'm sure even us included that's part of working with the human brain and being a person in the world. So my number one piece of advice would be to create consistency first. So for instance if all you can commit to is writing one sentence a day. I love that I'm like "This is a great one sentence is plenty." People have a tendency to dismiss small steps but everything big and amazing and beautiful is made of tiny steps, tiny movements. So some coaches call this minimum baseline I like to call it too small to fail because I think that's funny and when things are funny it helps me to do them. But the idea is I want it to be so easy for you that it's easier to do it than it is to avoid it. You know what I mean.

 

[00:09:29.180] - Brooke

 Yes

 

[00:09:29.710] - Kori

Yes. So if all you do is write one sentence then I want you to like give yourself a gold star, maybe literally, go get some stickers that you like that kind of thing. But when you do something small and then like really notice like I'm doing it I'm doing it. That's how you create a new habit and a new pattern. And once you've successfully done that for a week, two weeks, maybe even three weeks then maybe you go up to two sentences and again people always are like that's not anything but it actually is because one sentence a day is three hundred and sixty five sentences. Obviously in a year. And when we get like these grooves of habit begun it's much easier to ramp them up.

 

[00:10:16.550] - Brooke

That's awesome. And this reminds me of when I teach my pole classes I have to teach the women the same thing but in a more physical way. Just because you come to class and you can't already climb the pole doesn't mean that you'll just you're never going to be able to get there. And a lot of on start with not even being able to do the first exercise into it fully and they think I've done nothing. And I say "no you've done plenty." You've done a lot. Because that one little motion that you did was enough to start building the muscle you need to make it through that first step." And sure enough after a few repetitions, a few classes, now all of a sudden they're going to the next step. No matter how small it is it is still progression. So in all progress builds on itself. So I just had to throw that in there because I love seeing how my physical classes translate into the coaching side of it too.

 

[00:11:15.650] - Kori

Yes I totally agree with that. I think I think it's a cultural story we have. That in order to make progress you have to do something big. And if people learn nothing else from me I want them to learn that they can make a monumental change in their life by starting with a very extremely tiny movement or choice today and learning to celebrate those tiny shifts and those tiny new habits is one hundred percent how you get to the big transformation.

 

[00:11:53.630] - Brooke

Yes I totally agree that.

 

[00:11:55.790] - Kori

Julia Cameron in her book the way she teaches the morning pages is like I said you just write three pages. And I was able to start like that. But I do not recommend it because it took so much willpower for me to do those three pages. That's why I think that the starting small approach is so powerful because just because you can do it the other way doesn't mean it's fun or enjoyable or that you get better outcomes. I think I think you don't get better outcomes. I do think you get the best outcomes by starting small.

 

[00:12:25.910] - Brooke

So Kori where can people find you these days?

 

[00:12:28.760] - Kori

People can find me online at www.korilynn.com. I am also on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. And it's the same spelling everywhere.  I love to connect with people.I love to talk obviously about lots of stuff but mostly coaching and writing

 

[00:13:00.380] - Brooke

Awesome and so below we will have all of her information in the show notes so you can simply go online and click on her links. How can people work with you these days?

 

[00:13:11.090] - Kori

Right now I'm working with people one on one. My main program is called Learning Burnout and it's all about de-programming burnout culture and reprogramming on purpose so that you can live the life you want to live.  I think what is really important to know about that is for most people, for me or my clients, we still want to work really hard. We still want to crush it at work but it's about learning to show up and work really hard in a sustainable way and not a way that leaves you feeling overwhelmed exhausted and depleted. And I do that work all online so I take clients from everywhere in the world. I just had a client in the Netherlands, that was super fun. She was my first international client and then I'm also developing a new program called Fall Back in Love and it's for people who aren't necessarily burnt out but they don't feel as in love with their career and their work as they want to and they know that they could. So it's about recreating that feeling of love but in a job context which I think so many people want and yet we don't know how to get that we don't know how to figure that out. So that's an upcoming offering I'm working on.

 

[00:14:34.940] - Brooke

Great. And what we'll do is when an offering is available I'll go ahead and add that to the show note so people can find you that way as well.

 

[00:14:45.260] - Kori

That sounds amazing. Thank you so much.

 

[00:14:47.810] - Brooke

Thank you. And I appreciate your time.

 

[00:14:50.070] - Kori

Anytime. I love chatting with you and your audience and it's just super fun to have these conversations. So thank you so much for having me on the show.

 

[00:14:59.660] - Brooke

All right. Pop Tarts is off this week. Remember, send in your thoughts, your feedback, your ideas, your questions, and your drink choice whether it be alcoholic or nonalcoholic. And be sure to send in the recipes so you can be featured on the show. And don't forget to subscribe so you can be around for when I feature you on the show and it get some good content. Here's to another week. Cheers.