When you woke up this morning, within a few seconds you made a decision important to your day. You either felt anticipation of the day ahead, or immediately thought of the amount of things weighing you down.
Most of us don't leap out of bed as children do, ready to run toward the day ahead, raring to go, so to speak. Usually, we wake up a bit more slowly, see it's time to get up, stretch...sometimes groan and sit up.
Within seconds we start thinking about what day it is, what we have to do that day, whether we are late already and how much time we have to spend waking up before the days events demand we get moving at full speed.
When it's Saturday, unless you have small children and probably won't get to sleep in much, you may take more time than you would when facing a work week commute and a busy day ahead.
Nevertheless, within a few minutes of waking, you have unconsciously made a decision about how your day will be.
In another essay, I posed the question - WILL TODAY BE A GOOD DAY OR A BAD DAY? YOU DECIDE. I think about this because I believe that when I wake up thinking my head is sore, or my knee is sore, or I want more sleep etc.
On a day I think will be tough, I have often felt I would like to just pull the covers over my head and not get up at all that day.
My family and I seem to have made an art of trying for as many extra 15 minutes of sleep as we can get. The Snooze Alarm on the clock is, I am convinced a gift from God that let's us have the extra minutes and even seconds of sleep, I need to face the day. I am more than a bit serious about this.
Nevertheless, I know that when I am happy with myself and my life, I am more likely to wake up ready for the day and feel ready to get up and go much more enthusiastically than when I am unhappy or feel loaded down with concerns and responsibilities.
I also think about the theory of the GLASS HALF FULL or GLASS HALF EMPTY, in other words, OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM in how we approach things. Most of us know by now which is closer to our view of life most of the time.
If Pessimistic, we are more likely to feel loaded down more often than someone who is generally Optimistic.
As time has gone on though, most of us know that we do not greet the day with the enthusiasm with which Children do. In fact, the minute we think about this, most of us known that this is true. It is also something I thought it might be nice to try and bring back into my life.
I have thought about this a bit and decided that I have learned to not greet the day with great enthusiasm and maybe I can unlearn it.
Since no one can change my behaviour and attitude but myself, I realized that if I want to unlearn a negative thing, I could do it. It might take a while, but it probably took a while for me to not be thrilled at having another day to celebrate being alive and anticipating good things.
Like everything else, change does not happen in five minutes. The decision to change might be a quick one, but changing old habits will probably take a bit of effort to succeed. As with many other tasks, I decided to start small. At first this involved not groaning and frowning at myself in the mirror and slumping down with my first cup of coffee of the day.
To start small, I would curb the impulse to groan as the days demands came into my consciousness. I would push myself to look in the mirror and smile (and sometimes even laugh at the crazy way my hair was sticking up). I would try, to not list all the aches and pains I thought I had from how I slept and instead, try and say something nice to the first person I met.
Therefore, my greeting to someone would no longer be something negative such as "same old, same old" which can be used for referring to the day ahead being likely to be a repetition of the last one.
Today is actually a new day, as is each day...so if you think about it, you will not be having a repeat of a previous one.
Because I think we can do something about the day we will experience, by giving it and the people we meet, a chance to be part of a good experience, I now try and give each new day a chance to be a good one. I am happier most of the time; maybe if you give it a try, you will be too.
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