I have a confession to make, I’m afraid that after my post about becoming an early bird, my morning routine has slipped a bit and I haven’t been getting up so early. That’s not to say that I slipped back into becoming a night owl, I still get up pretty early in the morning but those 5 am starts have not been around for quite a few weeks.
It’s actually been very frustrating as I’ve been trying so hard for weeks to get back into it. Setting the alarm for 5 am, setting a backup for 5:30am and then 6am. The 5am alarm goes off, hit snooze roll over, fast asleep, 5:30 am snooze roll over, hear the wife mumble something about me ignoring alarms. 6 am snooze, roll over, realise she is about to throw something at me, spend 20 minutes forcing myself out of bed and finally get up and shower.
I’ve been wrestling with this for weeks until having talked it through we finally figured it out. You see the problem was I didn’t have anything to get up for, there was no motivation for me to jump out of bed and dive into something.
You see originally I was heading to the gym before work, the workout was energising me for the day and I was really enjoying it. I was feeling like I was getting fit, I was feeling good about having worked so hard so early in the day, that my whole day was getting set up properly. This was a real motivation to get out of bed and get started on my day.
Then I had this big project that I’d set myself a pretty tight time scale to get done, and so I was throwing myself into that every morning. OK it meant my gym routine slipped and I should not have let that happen but I did at least still have a focus for my mornings. I wanted to get up and do at least an hour’s work before I went into my day job. I was determined to get this project finished on time and that quiet hour was so valuable that once again I was able to find the motivation to get up and do it.
Then of course, the project was complete, I had gotten out of my gym routine and I made the mistake of not finding anything else to focus on first thing. The inevitable happened and I started to sleep later here and there, letting the alarms slip and sleeping later and later. I had lost all my reasons for starting my day with something to sink my teeth into and as a result my routine slipped easily and I couldn’t get back into it.
I am happy so say that I am now back into my routine as of the last week and I would say there are two things that I have been able to focus on that have allowed me to get there. The first of these is that just one day I decided “I will start running”, I’ve been saying for a long time I’d start running, friends have told me how enjoyable it is, but for whatever reasons I just haven’t done it. However recently we moved to a new house and there is now a nice quiet country line close by with an ideal little run.
So one morning I just got up , got dressed and ran it. It was a wonderful experience, I was kicking myself for not trying it sooner. It’s at the time of day where it is dark when I start off and by the time I am on the return route the sun is rising. There is something so nice about being out alone in the country and watching the sun rise, it really makes you feel good about the world, and combine that with running and you also feel good about yourself too. I know look forward to getting up for these runs.
The other motivation for getting up is the fact that we recently got a puppy, she’s a very cute chocolate Labrador, mad as a hatter but very cute. She needs toilet training of course as all puppies do, don’t even ask about what we’ve gone through with that. Now though when I return from my run, I take her out for a little walk, it helps me to cool down from the run and it gets her into the routine that bodily functions need to take place outside, not on the carpets.
I really feel happy that I was finally able to get back into my routine, it was dragging me down that I couldn’t seem to get myself back in that place. The answer was obvious and I can’t believe how long it took me to see it. If you want to do something, really want it, then give yourself a reason for doing it, pretty obvious right?
