Hello Mornings – Guest Post
September 15, 2010 by Marci
Today’s guest post is from Michelle at So, I Married A Mennonite… She has started a group “Hello Mornings” that will motivate you to make the most of your mornings. Getting your day started right is an awesome way to overcome busy!
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My late-night habits run deep. At least two generations deep. My sleeping in habits evolved after I had children. Insomnia isn’t uncommon during the nursing months, so factoring all that in, my habits for staying up and waking naturally were pretty well entrenched.
I had no desire to change my routine. In fact, I was pretty happy with it. But it was definitely something I felt I had to keep on the down-low. A few months ago, I started wondering if there was something more to it. Why did Scriptures praise early risers? I started getting discouraged about being rushed and often late in the morning. What was this lifestyle teaching my kids and how was it impacting our family life?
Around the time I finally felt ready – really ready in my soul to change this lifelong pattern, I came across an eBook called Maximize Your Mornings. I got excited! This book had steps that were practical and easy. All I had to do was follow them and fill out the workbook pages, and I would be on my way to power packed mornings! Instead of trying to go it alone, I decided to get a group of Night Owls together for support.
We worked through the challenge for the whole month of August, encouraging each other through comments, twitter, and facebook. It was fun seeing who else had tumbled out of bed and filled up their mugs alongside me during those early mornings. But after the excitement wore off a little, I started to see where my self-discipline was lacking. It was hard not to excuse a late night “getting things accomplished,” and justifying a late morning to make up for it. I realize I have a ways to go. But even during that first, imperfect attempt I noticed how much better my days flowed when I got up before my children and got some simple things checked off the list. It smoothed out our entire day!
I noticed that our home was similar to a doctor’s office. If things got backed up even by 15 minutes in the morning, our day bottlenecked and by lunch we were almost an hour behind. Getting up early was the trick I’d been looking for to get our daily routines on track. We were less stressed, less tired, and got more done in a day!
Are you a Night Owl? Are you ready for a change? I invite you to join us when we start the challenge again on October 1st on InspiredtoAction.com. We’ll meet up there every Friday to work on Maximizing Our Mornings!
Comments (1)
I’m a natural born night owl for sure! I, too, have a hard time saying goodbye to the day especially when it means stopping the un-interrupted time that I’ve been craving all day. But, it’s tricky because even though I think I’m ‘re-charging’ in those late night hours, I’m actually sucking away energy from the following day.
I, also, have seen first hand, the benefits to early rising for many of the same reasons you listed –
Cheers to spuring one another on! Inspired to ACTion has been a great tool to that end and it’s great to see you as an additional cheerleader to us reformed night owls!!