My daughters scare me. They motivate me. The inspire me. They make me want to do things I never thought was possible. I’ll explain just how in a bit.
I am in a perpetual state of self-improvement. I want to become a leaner, meaner, highly effective machine.
I have to be more effective and efficient for crying out loud since I’m not getting younger and my memory is going to hell! I may be exaggerating there.
However, in my attempt to improve aspects of my day-to-day life I need to do things that I have never done before. For instance, I need to wake up earlier because this will allow more time to work out, write (which I am doing now), take memory improvement training, and the list goes on and on.
All of them are difficult on their own but the most pressing matter is finding time. I can’t stay up later to do these things because I already stay up late a lot for my dancing. I am not by any means giving up my dancing. Nope.
So, I must wake up early.
I have tried to wake up early before. I do it… for maybe a couple of days and then it all falls apart. I start to make excuses. My motivation isn’t strong enough to break through the warm comfy feeling of my bed and my blanky.
Luckily, I was recently referred to a book that has already changed my life, or at least the last week since I read it.
My good old friend and former business partner, Brad, told me to check out Miracle Morning by Hal Enrod.
It’s working.
Over the course of the last week since reading it I have woken up at the most ungodly hour in the day: 6am.
And although this is an incredible feat on its own. Since I am all about teaching my daughters the same things I am learning. I put them on the same morning regimen to wake up early.
You see, as a family we love to sleep. A lot.
The first day was tough. So tough I almost gave myself a great excuse to not do it.
But my daughters scare me. The thought of them thinking that I cannot follow through on my decisions scares me to death. I do not want them to think of their father as a man that makes commitments and then breaks these commitments by making even better excuses.
This thought was my driving motivation that first day and every day since then. What made it even motivating was knowing their alarm was going off in the next room as well!
I put them on the same morning routine! HA!
You know what happened? Well let me tell you.
They got up. Promptly. Fe did take another extra 10 minutes to rise.
However, it has never been as easy to wake them up as it has been the last week.
My youngest is the absolute hardest to wake up. This has been true since she was an infant. She tends to have a hard time falling asleep, but can sleep ’til almost noon if allowed.
She completely shocked me the first morning when I walked in their room and saw her fully awake and brushing her teeth (this was another morning habit I have been trying to embed all summer).
I’m not kidding although I may likely being dramatic. I literally jumped when I saw her at her bathroom sink. She was up!
I was up!
Fe not so much. So, we turned the alarm back on and she did wake up 10 minutes later. 15 minutes later Fe and I were on first morning jog.
So, what’s my biggest realization? Several. But if I had to choose one it would be that they just need a system. A process to help them up.
I found that if they do not have the “positive intention and awareness” set the previous night than they will still struggle. This intention seems to set an expectation in our minds that allows us to wake up easily in the morning. In fact, I find that this intention even will wake us up early in anticipation. Weird right?
There have been other benefits from waking up early. I will share the others in future posts since they need their own set of words.
One of them is that we will be writing daily as part of our morning ritual. This post is a result of this free time. I blame my grammatical and spelling errors on the morning curtsies. 😉
My days are so productive with the additional hours in my day.
My daughters have scared me straight!
