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