Hard Things First
As you might surmise from my various posts, I’m a recovering self-help addict looking to put my feet on dry land. It’s alluring to constantly read different perspectives on how to improve one’s life, but at some point the water gets murky. Which of the 568972 different morning routines suggested by experts works for me? Does the David Goggins pedal to the metal at all times approach work? Do I take more of an Eckhart Tolle or Brene Brown approach and focus more on empathy? There are so many expert approaches to life, and an endless supply of Amazon books to procure. If only we could find the “one” that makes us whole…
Having tried many of these strategies, there’s plenty to borrow that works. However, being honest with ourselves is the first step towards making a new “life plan” come to fruition. My achilles heel is procrastination. As much as I want to believe I need to ‘make more time for myself’, dive into ‘self-care’, and embrace spirituality (which all might be true), the most pertinent weakness of mine is putting hard things off. After crafting a morning routine centered around meditiation, reflection, gentle walking, and pleasure reading, I still found myself unhappy, anxious, and stressed. The same principles that brought happiness to many only enhanced my despair.
My new goal has been to do “hard things first”. While this goes against many of the trendy self-help strategies of today, for those who are expert-tier procrastinators and anxiety-havers like me need to tackle the beasts of life head on. What I found in my journey is that my new morning routine I was crafting gave me an excuse to procrastinate and delay progress even further. Morning meditation? Great! A free 20–30 minutes I can push back my deep work and emails. A gentle walk around the neighborhood with my dog? There’s another 20 minutes I don’t have to follow my dreams! You see how these little moments can pile up before our eyes. While these activities are worthwhile in principle, placing them at the beginning of my day made my life more chaotic. I couldn’t fully enjoy the “fun” activities because I was fearing opening my email inbox and seeing the damage. My mindfulness was clouded by the anxiety of putting off an important call, script, or project an hour or more. I was teaching my body to devalue the deep work needed to progress my life and find satisfaction.
If you are a hyper-type-A, constant “do-er” then a blissful, relaxed morning routine is probably a blessing. Prioritizing a bit of calm amidst the tenacity of your personality might be the key for enduring the challenges in your way. However, for people like me that need a bit more of a kick into high gear, tackling something difficult soon after we wake signals to ourselves: we are not afraid of a bit of elbow grease. By going to the gym and pushing my limits, or reading two scripts I’ve been putting off for work, my anxiety melts away as I put more “fears” behind me (and allow myself more reflection/relaxation in the evening when I’ve put my lunch pail away).
Don’t be tricked by the influencers on Youtube and Instagram. If you dissect 90% of their morning “routines”, you will realize they don’t really do…anything? I’ve seen so many routines (particularly male) where the guy wakes up, meditates, showers (while advertising a pube shaver or “manly” body wash), prays, journals, reads self-help, drinks a smoothie, before revealing that the clock is around noon before they “work”. I’m not saying relaxation is bad; in our toxic hustle culture many of us need more of it. But the people who prescribe you a morning routine of fluff and procrastination are laughing to the bank with their pube shaver money.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. If your problem is “all work, no play”, by all means prioritize some deep wellness in the morning. Mediation, secular prayer, reading poetry, simply getting twenty minutes of sun — I promise it will help. But for the rest of us dilly-dalliers…let’s slay our fears under the morning sun. Whatever frightens us, we handle right away, and we’ll likely see that there wasn’t much to be afraid of after all.
