It Will Rain
It will rain.
Congratulations. You woke up on a rainy day and leaving bed is the worst idea in history. Snuggled deep beneath the blankets, the alarm sings the song of its people. The echo of last night’s promise to get up early and workout is eerie and foreign. Like right now? Leave here? This place? Naw. You hand reaches out and hits snooze or just turns off the alarm. Getting up early is not easy. I’ve been doing it for years to go and teach group fitness classes since 2015. Trust me when I say… Waking up early still sucks. It gets a little bit easier each year, but I still struggle to get out of bed.
It’s May now, and the weather is not fully cooperating with expectations. It rains. It’s been raining a lot. Nowadays, my eyes have defaulted to a 4am “eyes open” event. I still don’t leave bed for about a half hour. I grab my phone and read something or turn on the tv right away and watch YouTube. I set the bar low to not fully return to sleeping, but to just chill out. There is a peaceful silence in the air sometimes. Just gentle bird chirping and a train rumble. (As long as that train conductor is blasting that god forsaken horn. I sometimes wish that person misfortune.) We are all aware the impact of the weather on us. Some of us can obsess over a rainy day and use it as an excuse to not move certain things in our lives forward. Here is the thing though.
You don’t control the weather, you might not be able to control how you feel, but you always have the choice when you act. When you choose to stay in bed, you choose to not start. One of the best ways to have a good day is to have a good morning. Therefore, it is out best interest to wake up early and enjoy that time peacefully.
Let me know if you were you at some point. You wake up panicked as you if you don’t get out of bed now, you’ll be late for something. You so rush through, forget things, rush to your destination, then spend the first hour shaking off the fog of sleep. Then you do your thing all day, go home, eat, watch tv, and go back to sleep. That’s it. I’ve lived that way for years. It’s not rewarding. It just feels like ice skating uphill. You never get to start important things in life. It’s followed by complaining there isn’t enough time to get it done. We all get the same 24-hour day. How do some people make it look easy? Become aware and set up a few good habits.
Here is what my better mornings look like
Monday:
4:00 am Wake-up and play with phone or think about what I want from the day. Do I have something a work to focus on? What’s my workout look like today? Of just appreciate the silence.
4:30 am Normal morning stuff. Then systematically move all the “stuff I need” towards the door. [clothes are set out, lunch is prepared, caffeine is on standby as much prep last night to cruise the morning}
4:45 am-4:50 am I’m out the door to go teach. Since I’ve required myself to be up early. I’m up early. I enjoy the peaceful drive into work and then prepping for the session.
5:30 am-6:30 am Do the work.
7:15-7:30 am Get to second job and do my own workout there (the facility has a good setup)
8 am “ish” Head upstairs to work. Then keep going.
So, let’s say you read this far and just feel you can’t do it. Then start trivial things the night before.
· Have lunch ready.
· Have clothes set.
· Have a plan and watch yourself execute it while prepping for bed
· Put your “stuff” by the door
Overtime the trivial things you do get a little easier. You’ll just default to an easier process to start. Try to standardize a few things. So, when it rains, you’ll still go through the same thing. Your default will be to just keep going.
