Many of us wait until the new year to make resolutions or changes in our lives. Why wait? Why not have tomorrow be the start of your new life? And, tomorrow starts with the morning.
Some people go to bed too late or burdened by troubled minds. With that kind of start, it’s pretty much guaranteed you greet morning as the enemy. The morning will start a day full of challenges you don’t want to face, full of tasks that make you cringe. For people like this, the bed is their friend, and the floor a minefield their feet don’t want to touch.
For me, a morning is a present with the wrapping still on, full of possibility and promise, as perfect and unspoiled as anything you could want. Morning, especially those few minutes soon after waking, are a time to create the day. The day I create in my mind is unspoiled by anything. This day is as exciting and productive as my ability to visualize and my will to work can make it.
Early mornings are full of quiet and empty of distraction. Early mornings, even in the convection oven heat of a California Central Valley day, are cool. In the winter, from my home on the American River, I can hear geese greeting the day. In the summer, I hear the symphony of the frog chorus, silent only when I hear the screech of a red tailed hawk.
The morning is a mirror for the mind that greets it. Those who see the morning as an enemy paint the morning so with the pictures in their minds. Instead of a present with the wrapping still on, they see a booby trap, disguised as a new day. No matter what the picture of the day, the picture is our script. It’s awfully hard to go off script. Think of the morning as an opening act in the play that is your life.
Aristotle said, Well begun is half done
Prime your morning with a good night’s sleep. Prime this sleep with a day that includes good work and activity. Sometimes, when you are recovering from great effort or preparing for great effort, you need to rest. Rest is doing something important: it is resting.
We all have internal rhythms. Some people are not morning people and feel better staying up late and getting up late. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It simply is. Just like there is nothing wrong with some people liking red and others liking blue. If you are not a morning person, you can still use the time right after you wake up to script your day.
This time doesn’t have to be early. Your morning can start at noon and still be your morning.
You don’t have to wait until a new year or a new month to start anew. Start your new life tomorrow morning after a good night’s sleep.