What is Your Time?
Does it feel like we blinked at the beginning of the year and boom we are at the end? Days have been blending in with some days feeling like I'm just waddling through life. Some days felt like 'blursday' (I don't know if that's a real word). Wearing double masks and a face shield at work since March is sure to be blamed for some of the mental and emotional fatigue, random headaches, lightheadedness, slight sway in movement/balance. Face masks have become the new accessory and new requirement for everywhere. Adding to the mental and emotional stress has been the political and racial unrest here in the US and African countries bleeding.
Since the outbreak of Covid-19 with its second wave now in the air, it has been interestingly difficult trying to maintain a routine. Some days I wonder why I even want to maintain a routine during a pandemic when other things are falling apart. On other days I wrestle between wanting to reclaim some sort of a routine or just allow myself to go with the flow based on where the wind blows. Has anyone else been feeling this way?
This year was envisioned to be THE YEAR, here we are approaching its end and we may or may not have accomplished what we set out to accomplish but I want to believe there are still things to be grateful for. It may seem insensitive to express gratitude given the state of the world but in order to refill the mental and emotional tank to keep fighting, we need to refuel. We can’t keep burning the oil and not find a chance/opportunity to replenish. We all know what happens when a car runs out of fuel. Finding things to be grateful for and expressing gratitude has a way of refueling; it gives us something to hold on to.
What do you do to refuel? This journey of life is a marathon and not a sprint. Have you participated in a gratitude challenge before? If yes, share your experience. If not, how about participating in a daily sticky note gratitude challenge and share it using the hashtag #gratitudewithsitmpod. I started a daily sticky note gratitude challenge in 2015 which was a very challenging year for me; especially September and October of that year (story here). Every day I wrote something I was grateful for. Then December 31st, I read them to remind myself as I closed out the year and I saved them in a gratitude box. I think this idea was originally inspired by an article I read back then about Oprah Winfrey on the power of gratitude and how she practices gratitude. I tweaked it to suit me and have since done so the following years during the month of November only.
Why only do it in November and not all year round? Well November is marked/marketed as the month of Thanksgiving and there seems to be a sense of subtle invitation to self-reflect as the year is winding down. The mental and emotional rollercoaster of this year sure does warrant this gratitude challenge extending through December. For me, doing this feels like refueling to keep striving to make a change in myself and impact the world around me. It is said; be the change you want to see in the world.
When “outside somewhat reopened,” I figured life may be returning to some sort of normalcy or a different form of normal. So in an attempt to reclaim some form of routine to my weekdays, I revisited a book I recently read. I've had people ask me how I read a book more than once. Guess what?! Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Ellen Degeneres, and Brené Brown have reported reading a book more than once. And most of them if not all have reported reading The Alchemists more than once. This happens to be a book I've read three times. For me, rereading a book depends on the message and how it is conveyed. And each time I reread a book, I learn something new that I may have missed the first time or something I recall makes more sense or has a deeper meaning.
To kick start the process of reclaiming some sort of routine, I reread The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. What is it about Mornings? Christmas morning; what was it like for you growing up as a child, what has it been like as an adult up until last year and what will it be like this year?
What is your time? What is your least favorite time of the day? What part of the day do you feel most productive? Do you make a daily to-do list? If yes; do you make it the night before or the day of? Did/do you have a morning and evening routine? Only morning or only evening or neither? Too many questions… yeah I know.
Do you wake up to an alarm or do you wake up when you wake up? If you set an alarm and it goes off; do you wake up right away or do you hit snooze? If you hit snooze; how many times do you hit snooze before actually getting out of bed? Do you sometimes say; oh wait! What time is it, when your alarm goes off as if someone else set it for you, or do you wonder if you mistakenly set it earlier than you intended to? What is the sound of your alarm? What do you understand by “Time is of the essence?” Is it about time for a change for you in any area of your life? More questions… I know!
Why all these questions? Well, all these questions and more are explained in The Miracle Morning in a way that will change your perspective on the things we complain about. It is an easy and short read which I believe will help in giving the feeling of reclaiming something or regaining something in what’s left of this year.
This is not to say that we should focus on the self and forget about what’s happening in the world around us. This is to say that we need ourselves for the long hall and in order to withstand the journey, we need to keep the mental/emotional tank at least half full because we are going to need it. We cannot pour from an empty cup anyway.
What is your time? Time to reflect, re-strategize, re-organized, and or to redefine your why? The year in review… time for some introspection. What is your why and how are you going about it?