Daily Zen

Am I a morning person?

I took this class about 10 years ago. Our company was undergoing a restructuring and everyone had to go to these touchy feely workshops that at first.. I thought were a big joke. In the weeklong workshop we had to talk about our goals in our lives and what we thought we could do with our lives. We talked about what we thought we should be doing. We were allowed to be frank with our discussions (can you be frank with anything else?) and everyone started to open up by the third day. Some of the people in the workshops actually decided that they would be happy to quit their job, they weren't really happy.. they really wanted to do something else with their life. It was really good, because some of us lost our jobs during this restructuring. Personally, I made the decision that I didn't want to move from Arizona for awhile...

Anyway, what does this have to do with being a morning person? Well, one of the other things that we talked about was positive and negative self talk. How we think about ourselves, what we say to ourselves when we look in the mirror. So, one of the projects during the week was to identify all the times you said.. "I am tired... " or.. "I am not a..." (insert morning person/afternoon person/creative person/numbers person, etc.) or all the negative thinking that we do. I was amazed that everyday around 3pm.. I did say.. "I am tired.. I want to take a nap" I stopped doing it... instead I did the seemingly funny... "I am so energized right now, I can do anything" self talk... and damn it.. even though I laughed at it.. it worked.

I don't consider myself a morning or an evening person. I know that in the afternoons.. I sometimes need some tea that isn't decaffeinated... and that I get a second wind when the sun goes down.

Actually, I love getting up really early and coming to work and doing my 9 hours before 2pm. It feels like I get to live 2 days in 1.