New Morning Routine
Flip back through a couple of my blog posts. (SERIOUSLY, I don’t want anyone calling me a liar.) One of my reoccurring complaints was that I simply COULD NOT make it out of bed on time. No matter what I did, no matter how early I slept, I could not get myself to get up. ..
MIRACULOUSLY: and I am not saying that lightly because I have struggled with this all my life… I HAVE MADE IT A HABIT TO WAKE UP AT 6:00am EVERY MORNING.
I don’t know how this came about, but I felt for a very long time that this would be the key to my happiness. “IF ONLY I GOT UP EARLIER….” I would think, but I could never bring myself to get up early. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. It was that I COULD NOT DO IT. For the past 3 years, I’ve gotten used to setting my alarm for 6am, turning it off as soon as it started to ring, sleeping through my husband’s goodbye kiss, and running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off when I realized it was 7:30. Getting up late, arriving at work late and a HUNGRY MESS became my morning routine, and I just decided to put an end to it.
So lately, and when I say lately I mean the past three weeks, I have been waking up at 6am. There was ONE day where I slipped and I woke up at 7 but I think I ended up staying home that day because I had a stomach virus. GROSS. But it’s easier than I thought it would be, I don’t know if it has always been that way and I just had to take initiative, OR if something MIRACULOUS really took place. I would like to think my prayers were answered, and that is what I’m sticking to because you really have NO IDEA how long I have struggled with this. It just seems too good to be true to say “I just got up at 6am one day on my own, out of the blue, just because I needed a change…” I really feel like I had some help, because I have wanted this change to come about for half of my lifetime.
Has it contributed to my HAPPINESS? YES. In many ways.
To show you how smart I am, I have made a chart showing how different my life is now that I have this new morning routine.
WAKING UP LATE
WAKING UP AT 6:00AM
· Woke up in a rush, to one hour old coffee LO made before leaving. (Bless his heart)
<span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font
-family: Symbol”>· No time to give much thought into the amounts of sugar or creamer thrown into the coffee. Sometimes not even time to stir. Coffee was either too sweet, too bitter, or just right. It didn’t matter though, I only probably had about 1/3 of the cup since I was rushed.
· No time for doing hair. Went up into a ponytail. If I had something important going on, I would just straighten the front. Or curl in a hurry.
· No time to take to put on my makeup correctly. Sometimes rushed and put too much eye shadow, too much blush or forgot mascara. This plus my hair up made me feel like PEE WEE HERMAN.
· Too focused on being rushed to listen to the news. Too rushed to finish listening to my jam on the way to work.
· Woke up too late to say goodbye to LO. Usually he would kiss me goodbye and grab the one foot I like to keep out of the covers. Ugh!
· Too late to decide which accessories to wear with my outfit. Hair and makeup already look like crap, why bother? Sometimes I even forgot my wedding ring. Ay-a-yay!
· No time to even think about working out. FUHGETTABOUTIT!! I usually aim for burning 200 calories a day on the treadmill. So that means come home and burn 100 during lunch and 100 after dinner or burn 200 after dinner. A lot of times I skipped the workout because I had no time at lunch, and too tired to do it after dinner.
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; Arrive at work late, sloppy, hungry, and half asleep since I only had 1/3 cup of my coffee… Then I have a bad day because when you’re in a hurry, everything is wrong wrong wrong.
· Wake up in time to brew my own coffee. I get to sip on it while it’s nice and fresh and LO has a few ‘extri’ minutes to shake his booty or do whatever he likes before heading to work.
· Have time to measure out the perfect cup of coffee. (I am a little bit of a control freak.) 4tsp. Sugar, 1tsp Hazelnut Creamer. Fill up my favorite coffee mug ¾ of the way with fresh brewed coffee, stir, and sip on it as I get ready.
· Have time to straighten my hair and get it straight like I want it. Or have time to curl my hair the way I like it. I show up at work looking like I just came from the salon. (Not really…)
· Take my time putting my makeup on. Eyeshadows are put on with brushes, and blended and blended and blended until they look “NATURAL”. Loves it!
· Turn on the JOHN TESH RADIO SHOW and listen to some good useful information, some awesome tunes from the 80s and 90s, and the weather in good ol’ East Texas.
· There’s time for a Good morning, good bye, and a good bye kiss. I even pack his lunch for him! Awwww.
· Putting my accessories to GOOD use. There are earrings and bracelets I LOOOOVE but never had time to pick out because I have so much jewelery. (I am not bragging, as none of them are R
EAL gold or silver. Mostly colorful costume jewelery.)
· Squeeze in a 20 minute workout. If I speedwalk at 2.7mph I burn 100 calories in 20minutes. That’s half of my workout and then I burn the other half at lunch, which means I have time to do laundry, or blog and make cool charts like these in the evening!
· Arrive at work 10 minutes early. Now I have a minute to think about whether or not to open the office door…
HOW COULD THIS NOT MAKE ME HAPPIER? I am the luckiest woman alive.
Firstly and fore mostly, I get the opportunity to live another day. Why not wake up early and embrace the morning?
The only down side to this is that I have become a grandma in the process and have started becoming cranky after 8:30pm. I am usually in bed by 9:00pm, so it’s a little frustrating when the NEW episodes of all my favorite shows come on at 9 or when the MISTER wants to let me in on his secret…
I wanted to blog about this within the first 3 days of waking up on time. But I didn’t want to ruin it, so I waited until I was certain this would be a daily deal. And I think it stuck, but we will see how long this lasts;)