Good morning, sunshine!
That is rarely my attitude upon waking up. Many mornings, it takes a few snooze-button cycles for me to pry myself out of bed, stumble to the bathroom and take a mostly-asleep shower. After a hot shower, I’m usually pretty awake, but it can be painful before then! My weekday mornings consist of wake up, shower and get ready, maybe throw breakfast and/or lunch together, check email, check traffic/busses, lose track of time, rush out the door to catch the bus.
But I need that to change, because it starts my day off full of stress and panic. Stress and panic are NOT kind ways to treat myself!
I have to thank Caitlin for the potential solution, because she directed me to Dumb Little Man’s article “39 Ways to Live, and Not Merely Exist.” The fourth item on the list is:
“Create a morning ritual. Wake early and greet the day. Watch the sun rise. Out loud, tell yourself that you will not waste this day, which is a gift. You will be compassionate to your fellow human beings, and live every moment to its fullest. Stretch or meditate or exercise as part of your ritual. Enjoy some coffee.”
So for the next few weeks, I’m going to try something new. I’m going to work on building a new morning routine – one that is a little slower and calmer, and has time for everything, including breakfast at home. I’m going to build a morning routine that is designed for weekdays, but will be adaptable to relaxed weekend mornings, too. I’m not quite sure what that’s going to look like yet, aside from involving me going to bed earlier so I can get up earlier.
This is going to be a fun experiment!
Filed under: baby steps, inspiration, lifestyle, One Little Word, Try | 4 Comments
Practice Living 
I think we are leading parallel lives at the moment. I, too, am trying to modify my morning routine. (You were also in my dream last night, weirdly… there was a wolf sleeping on your bed. Go figure.) One thing thing that has helped so far is just forcing myself to get up earlier. Will is getting up early to walk to work, so I am just making myself get up with him. It took about a week to adjust, but I don’t mind it so much now.
The other weird thing that gets us up in the morning is that our alarm clock is actually the television in the bedroom set to the 24 hour news channel. Somehow waking up to someone telling you current events makes your brain tune in and slowly but surely wake up. We have slept through it a few times, but usually not both of us at the same time. I imagine the same would work for a 24 radio news, but I think the whole prying your eyes open to look at breaking footage helps as well.
What I’m having trouble with is forcing my routine to include breakfast. I’ve never liked the meal. I don’t like most cereals and making a full-on fry up in the mornings is just Too Much Work. My stomach also doesn’t wake up until at least 8:30, so unless I force myself to eat or have some leftovers I end up bringing a granola bar or fruit bar to work with me to snack on mid-morning. Berry-yogurt smoothies are one option, but somehow it doesn’t feel like quite enough. I would love for you to post about your breakfast recipies if you have a chance… I could totally use the inspiration! š
That’s odd about the dream! I had CRAZZZZY dreams last night, so I’m not surprised I was giving other people crazy ones too!
The tricky thing about getting up in the morning is that my usual guaranteed things (usually loud and annoying) are out, because I don’t want to wake Adam up when he’s in the middle of his “night”. It would be much easier if we were on the same schedule, but we’ve got to work with how it is!
There’s no reason you can’t eat a light breakfast when you do get hungry – I think it’s just about getting your body some fuel as soon as you can stomach it, before you’re totally running on empty. I’ll try to do a breakfast post soon! š
I have been on the same path. What started it for me was seeing one of my husband’s relatives be really rude to the people around him as he rushed off to work–because he hadn’t given himself enough time or hadn’t stayed on task or whatever. My first thought after, “How rude!” was, “Oh, God, do I come across like that when I’m harried in the mornings? I think I might!”
One thing that has helped me is setting out my next day’s work outfit on my dresser the night before instead of trying to pull together an outfit in the morning. (If I’m planning to work out in the morning, I set that out, too–including my iPod and shoes.)
Another thing that’s helped is having my husband set up a system where a light in the room gradually gets brighter in the 30 minutes preceding my alarm going off. Usually now, I wake up as the light gets to the brightest point, 2-3 minutes before the alarm. It feels more natural. But if you don’t have a computer science person in your life, one of my friends also used to have a clock that gradually chimed louder over time to subtly wake him up. It was called a Buddhist clock, though I’m not sure why.
I’m definitely still a major work in progress on this issue, too, though.