Since ages, we heard the golden advice of ‘Early to bed, early to rise, makes a human, healthy & wise.‘
Was all the health promised to early risers?
Was it not about maintaining a routine that works best for us?
Was the morning so beautiful that we can’t afford to miss it?
Searching for answers that could satisfy my quest, I started waking up early. Since school days, I cannot remember if I woke up early anytime. College never made me do that, while my job keeps me busy late at night. I always thought beautiful routines is that one way, I could help change my attitude towards life.
For routines are not simple to be made, and followed if you lack that sheer dedication towards them. For almost two years, I ran on a bizarre lifestyle, with no fixed time to eat, sleep & work. I would hang out late at night with friends at CCD, caffeine & junk being my favorite. I would struggle to get some sleep, stay glued to my phone until the morning dawn. Reach late to the office, and messed up at work due to improper sleep. I started becoming crankier day by day. At times, I hated myself for being one, but couldn’t help.
And all this started to get blurred day by day, since the day I promised myself to keep up with the morning schedule. Nothing helped me out but kicking my irregular & random routine off my life. No, it didn’t happen overnight or in a week. It took me months to push myself out of bed every morning at the same time. At first, it was quite hard & I was reluctant to pull it off. Since nothing was there to help me out, I had no other option but to breach the comfort zones.
On days, I would get up & stand for a while away from my bed. Staying close to where you sleep increases the probability of settling for it again. Other days, I would brush my teeth and stare myself in the mirror. A few days, I would pick up my phone to call mom & talk to her for a while. Soon, it became a little easier for me to get up without the help of snoozing alarms.
Now that I no longer had to push myself to wake up early, I started to pick up on a routine. It’s just like a drill you perform with double the energy & enthusiasm to succeed. I began to go for a morning walk. It helped me in ways I never imagined. I use to be excited every night before I slept, to decide the next destination for tomorrow. Parks, lakeside trails, meditation halls, temples caught my attention. Visiting malls, cinema halls, a friend’s party no longer intrigued me.
While walking, I would often dive deep into my thoughts, my beliefs, my ways of living a life. It’s probably the gentle breeze that would make the thoughts to linger by like the moving clouds. The sorrows of yesterday didn’t matter to me; the worries of tomorrow didn’t shatter me. I started observing them from far as if they were no longer a part of me. The beauty of the morning is its simplicity. The magical power of making us let go of all that we don’t have control over. Deattachment is certainly troublesome, but observing it shrink to mere reflections of time, is the exotic beauty of what a morning is.
I left a hundred trivial dilemmas to find that one chaos that I had to fix; my life’s purpose. Self-introspection during the early hours made this possible. I would pick the problem from yesterday, that I thought is hurting me, only to find it wasn’t. I judged myself a thousand times to the previous me only to know I was getting better. I left the reigns of self-doubt & miseries were lost in the space. All this time, while I was busy picking my meager tales, I never knew I was weaving a life.
And that is what a morning has done to me. Sailing through the darkest nights to feeling proud of myself, it helped me grow. And it can help you too. I won’t make promises that you could do in a week or 21 days, but gradually with tiny toddler steps, you will. What could be more enchanting to see yourself improve while you live?
Do you follow a morning routine?
Has it helped you in any way?