Tomorrow is my birthday!!! Yay! What’s the one thing I want to gift myself??! Morning Discipline! My mornings used to ROCK! I would get up (sometimes at 5 am), drink a cold glass of water (because they said so), listen to Joyce Meyer or read while I get my heart pumping for the recommended 30 minutes a day, have breakfast with the perfect portion of PCB (protein-carbs-fat), shower, get dressed (clothes laid out the night before), grab my perfectly thought out lunch (also packed the night before) and then head out the door! My mornings were black and white. They flowed without me even having to think about it and I LOVED IT. Then I started working from home and my mornings became gray – very gray! I would roll out of the bed around 7:30 am, unconsciously snack on any and everything throughout the day, watch random talk shows during my “lunch hour”; oh, and showering getting dressed became a rarity: my wardrobe consisted entirely of pajamas – in plaid, blue and gray.
Rituals [or routines] allow us to navigate our imperfect worlds, and create structure in a reality that is often structureless. So while the repetitive chants of the monk may seem superfluous in a modern age, these rituals have an indirect use in creating a structure for living our lives. I’m trying to treat my morning routines the same way. Eating healthy isn’t about nutrition. Exercising isn’t about being in shape. Not hitting the snooze button isn’t about getting an extra fifteen minutes about my day. Instead these are morning rituals that I strive to perform because performing them creates a structure. That structure carries throughout the day and makes the habits of getting my work done and not procrastinating a little easier.
Bri Alys, LLC 