What was Isaac like as a little kid?

It is no accident that I am beginning the writing of this post on Tuesday, March 20th, the first day of spring, the equinox.

It is also not intentional on my part. But it is not accidental. I agree more and more with my teacher's emphatic declaration that there are no accidents.

In any case, as you may well know from previous posts, I'm embarking on a tidying/decluttering marathon, KonMari style. And I'm almost done with the most intense phase, the part that needs to get done all in one go, before I move, the discarding, or rather, choosing only those things that bring you joy or are essential. (and a thing well-used and needed is a thing of joy, even if it is not a thing of excitement.)

I'm onto (and a fair way through) the Final category: Memento's. This category is saved for last because it is the most challenging. I've gotten rid of a LOT of it. But I am running into things that, while not worth keeping, are entertaining, or interesting, or deserve some kind of brief record of them.  And so, I've decided to share them with you, here. Not all of them. Just the one's that were funny, or reminded me of something about my past that I'd forgotten, and are appropriate. I've been reminded that I had a very inappropriate sense of humor. I think I still do, it's just slumbering because I'm not letting it out to play. It's one of the things I might wrestle with if I had time to be contemplative; how by trying to be "spiritual" and "good" I've kind of whitewashed my humor. I think I have at times come across as humorless, but I think the truth is closer to the fact that I have an extremely active and dark/ludicrous/nothing-sacred sense of humor, and, finding that to be not allowed, I'm then left with no jokes to make. Which is sad. Not that I need to go back to what it was, but I should certainly be laughing and joking frequently. I think that is a sign of good mental health, and being too serious is a sign of mental sickness.

Anyways, enough preamble, I present to you the first of what may be several parts, of "Files from the Memento Box"



Excerpt quote from a birthday card: "My wish for your 18th is that you always have the strength to pursue perfection in whatever form it may take, and the wisdom to know when not to."  That was from Ku, now known as Cullen (who's publishing a web serial now?! So cool! Adult-ing achievement, unlock!)

This next segment is going through a series of papers I wrote over the years, on New Years the Day of Lasting Achievements and such.

I'm not going to share all the details, but reading them, I wanted to reflect on
A) the certain elements that have been constant in my life, as goals, for years and years.
B) the progress that I've made towards them.

The most constant goals, ever present:

-Enlightenment. That, and the wish for various things that will help with that, has been at the top of my list and remained there since at least high school.

-Becoming a good person. Stuff like developing self-discipline, the habit of always acting on what I know is right, and general self improvement.

-Using my skills to do the most good for the world that I can.

-Finding and being with my soul mate.

And not every time, but very often:
Developing mastering in skills, like art, writing, dance (these vary somewhat from paper to paper, but those are common ones)

And some of the ones that didn't hold up to the test of time:

-Getting super rich. Sounds shallow, but even then it was so I could use the money to make the world better in some way. At the time of writing I believe it was to finance a billion Vedic pundits chanting hymns for world peace and meditating, but that wasn't really my idea, I was just other peoples ideas. Maybe it was a billion dollars for  several thousand pundits actually. That makes more sense mathematically.)

-Getting ripped, "like a Greek god" (this was pretty much exclusively for the sake of the above mentioned "find soul mate" one. As was the (now embarrassing to re-read,) "get a big you-know-what" (did I really think that would make a difference in whether a girl would like me? Lord help me, I think I did. If you are young and reading this... well, it's probably not appropriate, stop reading, and second, this is a crazy myth, it's not worth worrying about, and you should take that energy and put it where it will actually do some good: learn how to listen deeply, understand others, sacrifice for the sake of others, to be kind and good humored and friendly and respectful, and generally seek to be a version of you that you can stand to be alone with, as someone recently put it.


---
Other facts that I had forgotten:

I hated homework, and Hebrew school. I was very slow doing homework. I was bothered by my spelling and my handwriting had to be super slow to be legible, even back then. I was super-consumer-y. I loved browsing catalogs (I wonder if I picked this up from my mom?) and when asked about what I was excited about or what holiday I liked, it was more often than not about the great presents I had gotten or was going to get.

I liked drawing pictures about guns, and explosions, and invented devices. I was always creative. I had a dark, inappropriate sense of humor. I'm grateful my teachers didn't think I was actually suicidal, but they sure could have assumed that, given some of the things I'd write, and I certainly got some check-ins from them (as I would do now if one of my students were writing such things. For example, one of my journal entries for writing class (spelling errors removed):

There once was a boy named Isaac. He had lots of homework. He had homework from school. He had homework from Hebrew school and he had stuff to do almost every day. He got so overwhelmed that he downed a whole bottle of suicide pills. THE END (of my life).

It's so easy to forget, now that I'm generally happy (and enjoying working hard) how seriously unhappy and sarcastic I was, how little tolerance I had for hard work, and how inappropriate I was in my humor and in my complaining. This was written back in 1996, for perspective, so I was about ten years old. After having gone through the suicides of two of my best friends I don't think I'd casually use a turn of phrase like "I want to die" let alone a flippant reference to killing myself. I think it's important to remember that self-centric, limited viewpoint that allowed me to behave that way, since I need to be able to step into the shoes of my students and understand where they are coming from, how they are feeling and why. But it's now alien to me.


On a lighter note, another Journal entry:
2/2/98
I don't have a favorite beach but one time I was in Martha's Vineyard and I was walking down a beach with my family and as we were walking the beach turned into a nude beach. My parents were looking at the scenery so they didn't notice until I said "mom how come the big fat hairy guys are lying on the beach naked? My parents got out of there as fast as they could.


And a few more excerpts (again, I'm editing all of these. I could take pictures but that would be hard for you to read. I should probably take at least one picture so you have an idea of what a page of my writing looked like, just for fun.)

-
(I think this was in response to a question prompt like, "who is your hero?"
I have no hero except myself and the voices inside my head. But I am happy that cheese lives in pools. I'm sorry I can't think of anything to think of so I'm going to give you a riddle: I have hands, a face, and a grandfather, who am I?
-

(I do not know what mysterious prompt produced this list)
Cheese, Wario Land II, Hi, Somebody that I've reconsidered, queen ant, Bobshmoe, Blue. This may sound a little weird but remember you asked.
-

My parents are the best in the world and when they help me I get mad, I hope they don't stop because I always need any person to support me. I get very insecure when nobody loves me.

The teacher replied with a sticky note, "I know for a fact that many people love you!" and indeed, as I looked through my old papers and cards and such, there were a number of touching comments from my classmates, to the effect that they really liked me and enjoyed my presence. It's...sobering? Drunkening? To realize that, even though I thought quite poorly of myself back then, and even though many things have changed, I really wasn't a bad person, even then. And there were many fundamental elements of myself that were admirable and lovable, and haven't changed.

It's kind of like... there's just one person, but they are seeing and being seen and acting through different colored filters. It's always me and my personality, but early on it was my personality being modified through the lens of self-hate, fear, obsession with 'things' as the source of happiness, and lack of belief in myself and my abilities. Now the lens is different, lighter.. But the Isaac remains.
-
some attempts at haiku:

I ate cheeses
I ate bees
I have a stomach ache

Bees bees the magical
fruit the more you eat the more
you--unhand me Yankee!

A bee stung me
my friends laughed at me, he he
now their dead, ha ha

(again, example of my seriously dark sense of humor. And as I said, that dark humor is still there. I still find it amusing, I just know better than to act on it and share it with others, so to speak. Except, I suppose, in this instance, where I have the plausible deniability of it being written by me when I was prepubescent. Do all kids do embarrassing, inappropriate things like this when they're young? I have to hope not, but also part of me wants that to be true so I feel less weird...)
-

On another note, I found some instances of me reflecting on my strengths and weaknesses (nice prompt for future-me to read, Mead School teachers!) and found it interesting what elements of myself I was aware of. Here are two entries on that subject:

My best qualities are: I'm intelligent, curious, tolerant, good reader, good at spending money and buying cool things, gives respect to elders, good sense of humor, affectionate, and a loyal friend.

(this is good to be reminded of. I was really a "good kid." even though I complained and made inappropriate jokes in my journals and was easily angered. I apparently was trying hard to be respectful to elders (I guess I just didn't realize what I was writing was inappropriate? or maybe my writing teacher was encouraging me to write whatever I was thinking about, and not censor?) and I didn't act on my anger or frustration, almost ever. And I was and still am, a loyal and good friend, to those closest to me.

And "good at spending money." another groan-inducing/embarrassing thing, but I totally remember that from my youth. Spending hours browsing catalogs (I remember "the sharper image" being a favorite) and deciding what I wanted to get, as a pastime. Now I cringe at the thought of how materialistic and wasteful that was, both of my time and of money. Though on the plus side, I've always been a diligent researcher, trying to make sure anything I purchase is a wise decision, a good thrifty buy. I can vaguely remember trying to calculate amount of fun I would get out of a toy to the cost, dividing it up into dollars per hour of fun, and trying to find the toys that  had the best ratios. I still tend to research extensively before making a purchase on amazon, though I'm more likely than in the past to simply decide I don't really want or need it.

I think the main turning point there was realizing that my strategy of "if I buy this thing then it will make me use it (say, for a musical instrument or sports equipment) was dead wrong, and that in actuality, if I made do as long as I could without buying anything, then I would know if I would actually use the thing (for example with exercising, now it's more a matter of, "I'm already doing this regularly, and I've got x problem, and I keep having it... OK, fine, I'll get something to remedy it...In a week. If I still feel that way.")
-

This is from a graduation essay (so, the end of 8th grade), reflecting on my strengths, weaknesses, etc.
Things I realized were my strengths:
-My ability to look at myself from an outside perspective and judge myself in an unbiased way.
-My persistence "I know I can do something if I just take more time. Unfortunately that often means I don't have time for something else."
-Good at math, "because when I solve a problem, it makes me happy. The harder the problem, the more accomplished I feel."
-Not specifically a strength, but I mention, "I believe in being happy any way you can.... This philosophy was not taught to me. I simply ponder a lot. In my pondering I come up with theories." (Apparently this still-present tendency started quite young.)
-My language arts skills and creativity are good
-My humor is amusing

My weaknesses:
-Very forgetful "while writing this I have currently left my coat, book, saxophone and forensic science folder at school."
-Poor working memory (I must have gotten this phrase from the special ed people who were testing me and trying to figure out why my spelling was so bad, etc.)
-I do poorly on timed tests (I need extra time/I work very slowly)
-I don't know how to interact with girls, except as friends.
-Not good at making decisions

A few other excepts:

"What I'm going to do with my life is something I don't think about very often because when I do, I get stressed out."

"The thing that helped my education the most was not human: it was the computer. My spelling was decreasing the quality of my essays and short stories. But with the computer, all I have to do is click a button and it does the spelling for me." (something for me to think about when my students are having challenges.)

"I think Mead has prepared me very well academically (except for geography, but the other states don't exist anyway, they're just a figment of my imagination until I actually go there. Even the reality we see is just a shadow, cast by some kind of reality where time doesn't exist, where everything just happens at once. Our perception of time is just what we perceive as our consciousness moves through pictures that are each an infinitesimally small amount different... but I digress"

OK, this is long enough for today, methinks. I'll just post a page or two of my handwriting for your amusement, and the rest of this will go in a future post.



Note: this is me writing slowly, so as to be neat for the assignment. You can tell because you can actually read it, with some effort ;-)

More Morning, Decluttering, Name-Dropping, Pics

I was a little bit startled to discover it was already the weekend again, but then I remembered I hadn't posted to this until Tuesday. Still, time is going way to quickly.

There were a few points I wanted to add to my walk-through of what a normal morning looks like for me. Mainly I was thinking if I'd given people enough information to replicate what I'd done, or if it would just lead to what happened with me so many times: I tried, failed, and then felt bad about myself.

So a few additional points I came up with that might help you out. First off, I made the decision with100% commitment, that I was not going to sleep in. So I'd better start going to bed early if I didn't want to be exhausted the next day. There is a huge difference between kinda sorta deciding to do something, but maybe you'll change your mind if you wake up and you're tired, and making a total commitment. Something like "OK, for the next X amount of time (say, a month) this is what I'm going to do, come hell or high water." Here's the quote about that:

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way."

And allow me to correctly attribute this quote, as it is one of those internet quotes that gets misattributed regularly: This is by William Hutchinson Murray (1913-1996), from "The Scottish Himalayan Expedition" right at the end of the book. Unless the internet source I got this from was also incorrect!

In any case, I decided, deep down, and with extreme commitment. But that's only half the story. There was something that felt like a force from outside. Some wisdom greater than this little mind, saying, "Now is the time to do this." And this was right after a powerful spiritual gathering. So maybe finding a special day to inaugurate it helps?

Also, I read the book called "The Miracle Morning" Which goes into all this in even finer grain detail, offering more stories and inspiration, and also going into each of what the author "Yo Pal Hal" lists as the most important elements to include in each morning. He has the Acronym SAVERS, standing for:

Silence
Affirmations
Visualizing
Excercise
Reading
Scribing (Journaling)

As you can tell from my morning in the previous post, I have a different format. I modified heavily, but it was a nice place to start. The book is not groundbreaking, but it was exactly what I needed when I needed it, and the goodness it helped catalyze in my life is enormous, enough to put it up in the list of top five most life-changing books, though oddly, it's not a great work of deep spiritual truth that I'll come back to again and again. It was just the right tool for the right job at the right time. The job being getting me into the habit of a life-changing morning routine.

I've met Hal, and he's a really genuine, passionate, humble guy. I think the purity and dedication and goodness inherant in him come through his book.

Anyhoo. That book is a resource. Don't get your hopes up that going to a weekend Miracle Morning workshop is going to give you anything more though. Unless you love Tony-Robbins style workshops, which many people do, in which case you'll probably love it. (I've never been to one and I never plan to go to one, but I've read some of his stuff, and seen some clips from his workshops. That was enough to determine it was not my thing.) That kind of marketing, hype-ish thing is for me like... Cilantro is for those people who taste soap when they eat Cilantro.

So make the routine your own, commit to doing it for a long enough period of time that it becomes a habit, and be super regular for that period of time, and then at the end decide if you want to keep doing it or not. Probably at least 3 months would be best, but even three weeks is probably enough to decide if it's worth it to you. At 3 days it's still going to be really hard and you might decide to quit if you've given yourself that out. Give it a chance to really become a habit. The "becoming a habit" part is the magic. Getting yourself to wake up early, meditate, exercise, do whatever other stuff: it's really hard to break yourself away from whatever you're doing during the day, to build up the momentum to do any of the self-improvement things we know make us happier and healthier. When its a new choice, each day, that's HARD. That takes willpower, every single time. But once it's a habit, it's like brushing your teeth. Its harder not do do it. Something feels wrong, incomplete. You don't have to remember to do it either. Once it's a habit, you just start doing it, without having to pause and think what to do.

This is true of our bad habits, but it can be true of good habits as well. Just imagine if working out wasn't something you had to carve out time for, or will yourself into, or try to remember. If it was just what your body started doing, on auto-pilot every day? Morning is great for these things, because it's the very first thing (for the love of all that is holy don't check your email or text messages until you've finished! Doom! It is doom to a good quick morning routine. If you need to use your phone for timing or such, keep it on airplane mode, and generally out of sight). In the Morning there is nothing you have to pull yourself away from. By the afternoon, we are often exhausted and/or running late.

Another benefit of the morning routine is you can plug in new mini-habits really easily, once you've got the base habit in place. It's a habit that supports other good habits!


In other news, I am trying with all my might to finish the Mari Kondo de-cluttering marathon. I've continued to get bogged down while doing this. In hindsight, I realize I've done some of the things Mari says specifically not to do, like going through pictures, picking up and reading books, asking myself "but maybe I'll need it some day..." And just in general, getting into a very over-thinking, paralyzed headspace. My new approach for today was to go right into the de-cluttering from my morning jog, while the sun was still just barely shining, and I had that wonderfully clear headspace of early morning. That seemed to do the trick. That pretty much carried through the day. I got way more done today than in two or three other days combined. Which is really good news, because time is ticking and I can't spend forever on this.

As far as I can tell I have 5 more categories to go. Kitchen (which should be very small for me, since I don't have my own kitchen. Just a few travelings spices and such.) Bathroom (which is a big one), miscellaneous (another big one), my alter stuff (incense and candles and such), and then the last big one, memento's. Today I did... Tracker/primitive skills stuff (a really big one), teaching supplies, gaming supplies, drawings/paintings (maybe should have saved for memento's, but it went fairly quickly. This was kind of an extra pocket of specific "papers" that were hiding in a folio behind by dresser), backpacking stuff, recreational supplies, linen and bedding, towels, cleaning supplies, laundry supplies, and probably one or two others that I'm forgetting right now. I have not showered.

Oh, also I've cleaned up my computer, one of the accidental and bad-idea side-tracks, but very nice to have done. I haven't gone through everything, like all the pictures or all the songs, but I did a quick pass getting rid of all the obvious stuff. This was because I had to re-format my whole computer, because it was getting quite buggy, and I didn't want to just re-load it up with all the digital junk I've accumulated. Mostly it was just dumping things into a more sensible, universal filing system so I can actually use what I have, and in so doing I was able to re-partition my removable hard-drives in a way that should cause less freezes and glitches. I'm not doing anything more on those though, as I could spend days on it and it's digital so I can do that after I've moved, it won't result in me having to lug more physical stuff.

Once I've finished the decluttering phase, then finally, FINALLY I get the candy treat at the end of the rainbow: I get to finish organizing everything into sensible collections, all categories of stuff together in one place, all neatly arranged to use space efficiently and beautifully. And all that I should have left, are the things I really love, or that are truly useful to me.

Finally, the unsightly piles of stuff will be ordered, condensed, simplified. And because everything is in its right place, and everything has a place, it will be easy to put things away and keep my living space relatively clean, and, if I need to re-do a category for some reason, I won't have to spend the hours and hours I've had to spend this time, just moving from room to room like an restless spirit, picking things out of drawers and boxes just so I've got them all in one spot. That will already be done! Though really, I shouldn't have to do that very much, since I should be staying at a pretty stable level of stuff. Once everything of each category is together, there will be no more "oh, I'm out of CD cases! I'll go buy some" and then finding a whole stash of CD cases a day later, squirreled away in some arcane corner of my closet.

Also, and here's the big thing: moving becomes much simpler. Since everything should have it's place, and mostly that is in drawers or boxes, it becomes a simpler matter to just place the small boxes in bigger boxes. And an equally simple matter to remove the boxes and place them somewhere when I arrive. That's all just beautiful theory though, since it has never, ever been the case. Moving has always been a sisyphean affair, with me gradually picking up speed and reducing order as moving deadlines approach until I am throwing everything within hands reach into the nearest box and then having to check through half the boxes every time I need something once I arrive, since I never have time to unpack everything, since that would require dumping every box out onto the floor and then sifting them into sensible catagories and back into more ordered collections of boxes.

In that disordered moving process useless stuff gets taken along for the ride, because I have no time to think about weather this random large piece of plastic should come with me or stay at my old apartment so I just chuck it in the box with everything else that I then have to carry around and load into trucks and dig through to find the few useful things I have amidst the garbage dump of obsoleteness. I'm like some giant sticky ball that just keeps on picking up junk as it roles along, getting bigger and bigger.

https://youtu.be/s2SwFyEiZzI?t=2m33s


Well, I'm not finishing tomorrow, since I have a class to teach. But there really isn't that much left to go. And once I'm in organizing mode, I can do it whenever, because that is not a high difficulty task. Choosing what to keep and what to get rid off, especially when leaning into keeping only the essential, is a really challenging task. It's very much like a highly focused meditation. When I'm in the right state of mind, it feels effortless, but it's like walking a tightrope: as long as I'm on that tightrope, it's effortless. If I loose balence though (and eventually I always loose balance) it is a struggle to get back up onto the rope and regain balance. And in the meantime, minutes and hours have passed.

Anyways, I shall end here: I'd promised pictures and pictures you shall have:

Behold what some of my mornings have looked like:

That's the our house in the background. Started going deeper into the woods for my morning sit-spot

My Morning Routine

I thought I'd share my morning routine with you. It's perhaps the single smartest, most joy-producing, productivity-enhancing, personal-growth fueling thing that I do, and it's one area where I am truly walking my talk, and it's always best to teach what you actually know from long practice. Even if you intellectually know it and can talk eloquently, there is a certain vital energy missing, I find, in people who are talking the talk but not walking the walk. I think it has a very large effect on whether people actually transform after listening to them, or just have a temporary new-years resolution type thing, and then go back to what they were doing. That's just a theory so far, no strong evidence to support it, but I'll likely start getting some more evidence one way or another as I keep teaching.

In any case, I'm always fascinated by that: what is it that makes us sometimes transform deeply and permanently, and other times makes just go off in a direction for a bit, and then bounce back, like a bungee jumper.

In any case, my routine (with some pictures that are actually my own, rather than ruthlessly stealing from google image search.)

First: the night before. This part I'm not as good at. Currently I'm trying to turn off and put away my computer around 7pm. Obviously that has not happened tonight, but not for lack of trying. I am desperately trying to finish the few things that seem actually important. In fact, as soon as I finish this post I have one more must-do computer thing, and then I'm turning it off! Though that still might not get me to bed by 9, which is my general goal. (my stretch goal being 8:30, at which point I think I can start waking up at 4 am and have an extra 45 minutes to work on top priority things)

Sleep.

My alarm goes off at 4:45 am every morning, regardless of when I go to sleep, unless it's really late, like midnight, which does happen occasionally. Then I allow myself to sleep enough that I can get 7-8 hours of sleep. Sometimes.

My alarm is a custom ring tone that I made from a recording of birdsong. I do this for several reasons: one, I always place my alarm far enough away from my bed that I have to actually stumble out of bed to turn it off. This is ESSENTIAL to me actually getting up. Without that one smart pre-planned bit of environmental assisted willpower, I'd never have made it past the first day or two of my early wake-up.

So, because it takes me a few moments to wake up enough to stumble out of bed and fumble the alarm to the off position, I chose birdsong, so that other people in the house won't hear an annoying alarm going off, they may just think it's some birds outside. It being loud and in my room, it's generally incongruous enough that it does in fact wake me up. Though I have occasionally woken up very confused while I was out camping, hearing the loud sound of birdsong and wondering for a moment if it was time for me to get up, before I recognized the fact that it was different birdsong and went back to sleep.

Second, I have bird song because it's something beautiful and pleasant to wake up to. A nice way to start my day. I had previously tried some Tibetan singing bowls as a wake-up ring-tone, but they were too mellow and didn't end up waking me up on nights when I hadn't gotten a full 7-8 hours of sleep (which is a lot of nights. As I said, still not so great about the night before thing.)

OK, so I've stumbled to my phone and turned it off. Next, and also highly important:

I turn on the lights.

This is super helpful in leaning me away from that precipitous edge that exists for the first few minutes of waking up early, where it is super, duper easy to just fall back into bed and go to sleep. Some other steps I do that help push me onwards rather than bedwards: I put on my clothes. Activity plus not being cold help a lot in convincing me this is a good idea. Brushing my teeth: it's simple enough that I can do it with only two brain-cells firing, and it gets me moving and feeling a bit fresher. Glass of water. I sometimes forget this one, but it does help get me feeling more human when I do it.

OK, now I'm pretty awake (or else I splash some cold water on my face too.

Now I sit down in front of the little sacred area I've created for myself, and pray, and meditate. Here is the part where the early wake-up time starts paying for itself in gold. There is not better time in the day for me to meditate. Everything is quiet, still. My mind is clear and fresh and not filled with the clutter of the day. I have much better meditations, much more frequently, when I do it at this time of day. Also prayer. Just generally connecting to spirit and practicing/working out those non-physical muscles. A good time is had by all.

Next, a rather new addition to my routine (I'm always experimenting and tweaking, removing things that aren't as useful and trying out new things that sound promising) is a glass of warm diluted milk (about half milk half water. easier to digest) followed by a morning walk while I sing devotional songs. This is a keeper. Especially anywhere with respectable nature around, as this is perhaps the most beautiful time of day. The early morning hours. Sun is rising, perhaps stars are still twinkling, and the energy, the feeling, the smell of the air, the quietness. It is absolutely magnificent. No better setting to praise the creator of it all and feel humble and grateful and vast.

Next, an even new thing, and also definitely a keeper, is a Jog. This is absolutely fantastic. Any remaining logy-ness is gone by the first few minutes, the nature is still beautiful, and once I'm done, I've already gotten in at least one good bout of exercises for the day. I cannot have a truly horrible day now. I have at least done two or three really awesome things. Even if the rest of the day is a wash, I've got that.

And the rest of the day is way less likely to be a wash, because I always feel lighter, bouncy-er, more sparky, after a little bit of good physical activity. So I'm set up for good things now.

I take a few minutes at my sit spot to revel in nature, practice a Tom Brown Jr. Skill or two, and re-connect with my purpose, my vision, what I want to do with my life. In a word, the things that motivate and inspire me. And then I have a chat with God for a little bit. Call it my Higher Self if that sounds less alien to you. I mainly take some time to be quiet and listen, for if that quiet voice within has something to tell me, for the coming day.

Then I'm back inside. I do some sun salutes as I watch the sun rise, (I've recently added in listening to the surya namaskar mantra/song while I do it, which is also definitely a keeper, and at some point I want to be singing it myself.) And then it's time for a shower.

I've completely dispensed with shampoo. Shampoo has sodium laurel sulfate, which is super caustic and destroys your hair, to the point where you need conditioner just for it to not be super weird. It also has all sorts of other weird chemicals in it. I just use a bar of truly natural soap, something like dr. bronners. Rub it up in my cranial zone, lather, rinse. This only works if your water isn't hard, otherwise the soap doesn't fully wash out unless you add something that's a little acidic. At some point I may switch to just having a bottle of water with a few drops of lemon juice in it, but for now I'm just using a bit of conditioner. Which maybe defeats the purpose a bit, but it doesn't' have SLS in it, at least, and I'm saving a bunch of money on not buying shampoo. And using less plastic bottles. And less chemicals in general. Also, I've got less things to in the shower. Soap for hair, soap for body.

Most weird, cheap, soaps are not even real soaps, by the way, so if you try to do this with them, you'll get a similar result to shampoo. Often even the soaps have sodium laurel sulfate in them. Weird stuff.

The last bit of my shower, which I've grown quite fond of, is the cold immersion. Right at the end, before I have time to think myself out of it, I switch on the cold water. My rule is at least a few seconds front back and top, but sometimes I go for a bit longer. I use a Tom Brown Jr. method of body control that he supposedly . used (or something similar) for entering freezing water and sweating. I don't know if I could do that, but I am getting more tolerant of the cold, and better at maintaining my focus and calm even under the duress of the cold temperature.

This has several purposes. A minor one is I heard that doing something like this is good for you. Apparently cold showers are good for getting rid of depression (though I see a catch 22 there, as someone who is depressed is gonna have a real hard time motivating themselves to actually do it) and boosting cold resistance in general, and improving the immune system. Moreso than all of those, I'm doing it to practice the cold-training and body control, and also because I've read about willpower, and how one practises and gets more willpower. You get more willpower by practicing on small things, regularly. Something as simple as continually reminding yourself to stand up straight ( and actually standing up straight, then.) or squeezing a hand grip exercises thing until you can't anymore, not only improve your willpower about doing that specific action, as you continue to plow through the mild discomfort and do it anyways, day after day, but that willpower seems to start leaching into the rest of peoples lives. They start exercising more, eating better, etc. So I am practicing willpower.

That is kind of the end. Breakfast is next, and then sometimes I will do a bit of journaling, but that takes a long time and I'm not sure how useful it is. I do it when I have time but when I've got a lot to do during the day, or if I"m getting a late start, I may skip it.

If I don't skip it, I have a few different journals: One is just what I call my Laax Log. "Laax" stands for "Life As An Experiment" And it's basically just my reflections on anything I tried the last day, things that went well, things that went poorly and I need to figure out a solution to in the future, things I'm planning on doing in the future. I'm experimenting with my life constantly, and I can quickly glance back over the last few days and be reminded of the highlights of those experiments.

Then there is my calendar. When I do that, I check off all the steps of my routien using a handy, funny acronym I came up with: AMPS, Bam! XL PC. I check off all the things that I've done, and sometimes give myself a little smily face or just a cheer for myself, doing all this good stuff. Trying to use positive reinforcement on myself :D . It is very satisfying to be able to check all those things off. Then I look at my schedule, write out the most important goals I have for the day and check if there are any appointments or what-not, and then get started on work. OH, I almost forgot. In the front page of my Calendar book is a little drawing that I sometimes re-draw, other times just look at, that has all my most important learnings and reminders for myself. The phrases and attitudes and ways of being and acting that make the most positive difference in my life, when I'm living with them in mind. That's my Priming journal, I call it. It doesn't take very long, but it does remind me of the best possible things I could be reminded of. It reminds me of what I value, it reminds me of what works for me.

And that's my morning routine! If I don't get distracted part-way through (often happens around breakfast time) I can easily start the day by 8-8:30 am. And I am coming into whatever I'm doing, turbocharged for focus, happiness, determination, creativity.

Now you know my secret! But I think it will remain a secret, eh? which of you dares to take up the Miracle Morning challenge? Hm?! Come forth if you can! Show me! (said in a gladiatorial, deep, booming voice)

Seriously, I wish you all could experience how awesome it is to do something like this, but I don't think I know one person who's picked it up after I explained it. Which seems crazy to me. After the first morning, when I had just read "The Miracle Morning" and done it, I was feeling so good, it became an easy choice. It was so, so worth it, of course I'd get up a bit early for it. It had nothing to do with teeth gritted painful determination. It was all about how enjoyable it was.

As I was getting bedtime routine a bit better, there were several days that I had to take short naps to wake up for the afternoon though. I suppose that's one of the biggest barriers. But what ended up working for me was just deciding firmly that I was going to get up at the same time every day. After a few days of getting up early and going to bed late, you couldn't pay me to go to bed late, I was so tired and ready for sleep by 9 pm.

Careful if you take an afternoon nap: set a loud timer on your phone for 30-45 minutes and put it way out of reach like you have to do in the morning, so you have to stand up and walk over to turn it off, or you may end up sleeping through the whole afternoon and then not being able to go to sleep until midnight and then your routine will be getting worse rather than better.

OK, that's it. That's the keys to the kingdom. Obviously your results may vary, but seriously, if you like yourself, you aught to design a super awesome morning routine that gets you excited, and get up super early, and try it out, and see if I'm not right about this. I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. As I said, this is far and away the #1 thing I'm doing consistently in my life, in terms of making my life awesome.

Now to work on the evenings... (he says, looking at the 9:26 pm clock.)

Good night!
;-)
Isaac

P.S. I said picture and I'll have pictures but not tonight! I will post them... I guess in another post? I'd rather put them in this post though. So if you want pictures, you'll have to come back in a day or so and check this post out again after I've added pictures. But I wanted to get something out, since it's already past my usual Sunday output date.

Parting with Journals, Taking Journals Apart

It is already past my bed time, and I have at least two more things to write, so this will probably actually be a short post. Spend aaaaallll day decluttering in the "paper's" category. The KonMari method has you sort things by category, to make it go quicker. I definitely recommend her way of doing things. It's about 10 times less stressful and more productive and less liable to get sidetracked.)

The first leg of it was quite easy, though still time consuming. But the second part was the killer. I have a lot of journals. Some are personal, some are notes from various classes that I've taken. Most of the personal journals were really more about me writing to think, and are not worth a second look. But every now and then, there is a powerful dream, or big life event, that I definitely want to be able to refer back to. And it's nice having at least a smattering of journal entries, so I can go back and have my memory refreshed, if I'm thinking about a certain time in my life.

On the other hand... I can't remember the last time I've actually done that. The bottom line is, I thought letting go of my books was difficult, but letting go of my journals is ten times worse. Books can be replaced, if it turns out I do need them. Journals are irreplaceable. So I saved them for last, and I'm still not through all of them. It's giving me new perspectives on what I want to be journaling, now. Rather than having to go back through my journals and rip out the few entries that I want to keep, I wonder if I can separate them out into two different journals. A thinking journal, and a remembering journal.

It feels so good to be getting rid of all the excess though, I worked basically straight through the day, morning till night, with total focus. The challenge is actually just ripping myself away long enough to take care of my other priorities, which currently feel like flies that are just distracting me from my work. Oh how I love having long, uninterrupted stretches to focus on completing one thing at a time.

Welp, time for sleep, so I can get up and start again tomorrow bright and early...