Always the Late Bird
The way you start your day determines how the rest of the day will go.
You might think I’m making this statement as someone who gets up early, works out, and does all sorts of productive activities. Actually, right now I’m kind of the opposite and it has me frustrated.
For the past several weeks, I’ve been waking up at about 7:45, frantically jumping in the shower to get my scrub on, force contacts into eyes that won’t yet open fully and rush to get to work by 8:30. Once I get here, I try to be as inconspicuous as possible, which isn’t very possible at all, and I spend the rest of the day playing catch up. I leave around 5:30 when the sun is down and I feel like I get home, eat dinner, and barely have enough family time because we usually have somewhere we have to go. We’re home by 9:00, get the kids off to bed, and the next morning it all happens again.
Not exactly my ideal day.
There used to be a time when I’d get up around 5:00 or 5:30, spend 30 minutes in prayer and reading the Bible, then I’d go for a “jog” (that’s what I call it when I go for a walk). I’d get home, have a smoothie, shower, and get to work by 7:30. I loved those days because I felt grounded. I’d get tons of stuff done at work and I’d be home in time to hang out with the family before our evening obligations kicked in.
So what’s really the difference between the two?
Being a right-wing evangelical Christian zealot, I believe the primary reason the latter version is better is because I start the day doing what I’m supposed to do, which is nurture my relationship with God and asking Him to help me through the day. Doing this sets my priorities in my heart and mind, not to mention it makes me feel good, which is the daily attitude boost I need. I could then have a good workout and arrive at the office ready for the day.
If it’s so good, why am I not doing it?
I ask myself this question every day as I’m dodging traffic on my way to work. This isn’t how I want to live! So why can’t I do it right? I know what I need to do to be on the right path, but knowing what to do and actually doing it are worlds apart. Oh, and I should mention that this isn’t one of those blog posts where all the answers come in a nicely packaged bullet list at the end. Nope. You see, I’m merely expressing my frustration that I have some major life-changing goals for 2009, and if I can’t get up on the pony then I’m not going to make it.
So these are the questions I’m asking myself:
- What’s changed that I no longer do my morning routine? Something always comes up. Usually I get a cold or some virus that knocks me on my ass for a few days, then the routine is shot. Sometimes it’s just pure unadulterated laziness. Actually, most of the time that’s what it is, but I also mask laziness as: The bed is too inviting at 5:00 AM. The kids kept me up all night continually sneaking into bed with us.
- When I have done it right before, why can’t I sustain it? That’s what gets me. The sheer awesome feeling I have when I do do it should make it more likely I’ll continue it, right? But the thing is, it’s not easy to do it. The human condition primes us to take the path of least resistance, and my cozy bed isn’t nearly as resistant as dragging my lazy butt out of bed and into the cold morning air. It’s like I tell my 13 year old: Anything worth doing is hard. If it’s easy it probably isn’t worth your time. I guess I should take my own advice. I know that once I get over that initial daily hump of oh-god-i-don’t-want-to-do-this-today it goes quite well, but it’s that first hump that gets me every time.
- What’s my motivation to get over that hump? I read an article about a guy who hangs a sign on his ceiling so that it’s the first thing he sees when he wakes up. The sign says, “Get up and exercise you lazy f###er!” That works for him. It wouldn’t work for me because I so blind that I wouldn’t be able to read it until I put my glasses on, but I need something on that level. I’ve considered wiring my alarm clock so that the speaker is in the wall of our bedroom and the controls are in another room somewhere else in the house so I’d have to get up and run into another room to turn it off, but that wouldn’t go over well with the wife.
Cross posted at shan <definitive>.
