5 am and I got out of bed. This is another one of those small miracles, like lake rainbows. It’s been a minute since I’ve had a morning routine that didn’t include hitting snooze five times. I guess the long Thanksgiving break away from work did what I needed it to and gave me a real chance to recharge. There’s the matter of keeping it up, of course, but the first day is always the hardest for me when it comes to resetting my body clock.
I got up at my alarm, brushed my teeth, drank water, and meditated for ten minutes. A familiar routine through the years of my miracle morning that I’d been missing lately. Then I read on my couch for over an hour (Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall — I’m starting to think the key to my good routines is just having good books to read) while I waited for it to get just close enough to the sunrise that I could bundle up and get ready to run. I picked a cold and blustery day for it, but I put on my layers and listened to A Promised Land by Barack Obama while snow flurries beat against my face. After a week of resting my knee, I got five miles in (though my knee did start screaming at me in the final one) and it felt so good to be out and running as the sky lightened. (Well, lightened a little – it’s a pretty overcast and blustery day up here).
After I even had time to watch a quick a show after I got ready and not be rushed to starting work. That translates to nearly four hours of time I had to myself before the workday. Early mornings are one of my favorite habits but it’s the hardest to get started and the easiest to break for me. That’s why I do wild things like write about how good it feels on this blog again and again so I might remember it in the future. Like, the very near future of tomorrow.
So I’ll close with a little Hal Elrod motivation, who got me to try this out in the first place five years ago now:
“Every time you choose to do the easy thing, instead of the right thing, you are shaping your identity. You’re becoming the type of person who does what’s easy, rather than what’s right.
If you want to move towards where you want to be, you need to do what’s right. This is how self-discipline is built. You make time and lay one brick at a time – especially when you don’t feel like it.
Take waking up for example. When the alarm clock goes off, you have a choice: you can either hit the snooze button and go back to sleep (the easy thing) or you can do something different. You can get out of bed and achieve your goals, exercise, meditate, read, etc. (the right thing).”
Hal Elrod, The Miracle Morning
With Love,
Natalie