How to Make Time for the Work You’re Passionate about No Matter How Busy Your Life Becomes
I usually beat the alarm, watching 3:53 AM roll into 4 AM, getting my day started. The very first thing I do everyday is to make my bed. It’s a simple task with a lot of symbolism, and a powerful statement to yourself and the Universe about your intentions. But this is not that story.
I then go to the bathroom to get ready. This involves the same things that you might expect, except, unlike many other people I bet, I do one thing a bit different. I splash three large handfuls of ice cold water on my face. It’s like a train wreck of alertness crashing into the tender foggy parts of your still dazed mind. It’s a test and a good way to put your body into fight or flight. It’s something my day wouldn’t feel right without.
Wake-up Call
After all the usual stuff, my mornings roll out something like this:
- Vision Board, focusing on what I want and thinking about the big picture
- Meditation, focusing on breathing, being present, acknowledging thoughts
- Reading and a breakfast shake
- Journal writing
- Green Tea and writing for the world beyond my desk (poetry, stories for Medium, design work for my Instagram poetry and more)
Morning Lessons
Here’s what I’ve learned, life will definitely get busier than it already is. And unless you have a plan in place for how to step up and meet this reality, it will steal your every hope, dream, ambition, and personal plan you have. Cold hard reality right there. I’m just offering plain spoken truth, life is busy, it’s loud, it’s messy, it’s demanding and it will take every moment you don’t take back and plan for.
So, what do you do to stay ahead, to build the life you truly want? Get up before your day starts. You get up earlier.
I know, I heard you groan from over here. I didn’t start out as a morning person either. I always thought of myself as a night owl. And maybe you are one of those rare birds that can get more things done over night than in the morning. Props. But this is my truth, and what I’ve come to learn.
My Truth
If I want to really get things done, it has to happen before the day can sneak in and steal my time away. It’s just that simple.
My projects might change, and my mornings don’t always include the same work (after my routines and what I call morning rituals are done). Some days I work on poetry, essays, or design work, and other days I’m editing pieces, spending extra time reading other people’s work and commenting across social media. I work with the ebbs and flows of my own personal needs, acknowledging what my own intimate reality is and what I need to get done.
Meditating daily has taught me how to acknowledge these demands I put on myself, but how to do so with grace and a loose grip. Journal writing has helped me store both what needs to be done, what progress has been accomplished and how I really feel about whatever is going on. Reading helps me find new inspiration, and to see things differently.
Additionally, I work in several trigger elements that act as part of a larger ritual that gives my deeper self a cue that I’m about to switch between tasks, between realities.
Hot Green tea is the drink of getting to work, whereas the morning shake (a.k.a. first breakfast) is a cool comfort as I read and contemplate my life and its various goings on. I’ve worked with other trigger elements too, a silver bracelet with a turquoise stone as an expression of poetry, writing and my artistic self, for example. These things mostly stay the same, but don’t have to. They just help me shape the story I’m telling myself in order to shape the bigger reality I’m trying to create.
Why You Should Get Up Early Too
Your life is more than the 9 to 5. I bet there’s at least one project, one dream, one passion that’s just begging for you to give it a little more attention. Am I right? There’s a life you day dream about in between those boring moments at work and that life deserves more than a day dream, it deserves your effort, your time, and your willingness to pursue it.
You don’t have to get up as early as I do to apply these lessons either. Whatever you want to accomplish deserves the investment of time, effort, skill, and whatever other resources you can offer. If you don’t believe so, then not to sound mean, I just have a plain hard time believing you really want it.
I understand being busy, and having to put food on the table and keeping the lights on. I’m currently balancing two jobs to make it (and making it is becoming a more loosely defined term by the day). But the cold hard reality is this, if you want it, go get it. And one extremely important building block for getting what you want is to get up earlier, give an extra hour or two you would have been wasting sleeping to the work of building the life you want, the project you’re passionate for, or the work that really captivates and drives your deepest soul to heartfelt action.
-
This article was originally posted at https://medium.com/swlh/4amwakeupcall-40d18d5ec980
For more articles like this please subscribe to the Weekly Newsletter.