Monday, July 1, 2013

Dragging My Ass Out Of Bed

I'm terrible at sleeping. I frequently have trouble getting to sleep. I frequently wake up in the middle of the night. Maybe a few times a year I'll wake up feeling rested.

Since I've been having a tough time lately I've been really lax about getting up at 6:50, when my alarm goes of. That alarm has transformed into "wake up to evaluate how tired you are and set the next alarm". I really want to be an early riser but I always feel like crap in the morning so it's tough. I appreciate anything that forces me to get up no matter how I feel, like early morning appointments.

This week I've set a goal for myself; get out of bed every day when my alarm goes off regardless of how I feel. I'm trying to train myself to have a mantra: this will pass. Feeling like crap when I get up will pass. When the alarm goes off, I'm going to focus on getting moving so that I just get the feeling like crap over with rather than focusing on feeling like crap and sleeping in, which just delays the discomfort but doesn't really lessen it.

I succeeded this morning so there's one day to check off. As I was in the shower (where I tend to get insights) I realized that by sleeping in every day I had been starting each day off with failure. I knew I should be getting up but just didn't feel up to it. Later, having slept in, I'd feel guilty about having a late start on the day. That's a pretty poor precedent for the day and tough to recover from. Every day that I can get up early is a day I start with success. This is good practice.