One morning last week I overslept because I’d messed up setting the alarm clock. Normally the alarm goes off at 5:30, I get in my morning routine in, workout, meditate, have breakfast, shower and go to work. That morning I woke up and it was 6:30.
I jumped out of bed and immediately thought about what I wasn’t going to get done that morning. I could skip pretty much my entire morning routine, get in a quick workout but not meditate, then have breakfast and a shower and run out the door. This was a reasonable option, but I just keep thinking about how this was going to put the rest of my day off kilter.
So, as much as I enjoy my workouts, I sat back down on the bed and meditated, which calmed me after a frazzled start. Then I stretched, went through my morning gratitudes, showered, had breakfast and left for work. The rest of the day went smoothly.
I could’ve have chosen to workout and skipped everything else (except for a shower and breakfast) and found ten minutes to meditate later in the morning and that may have helped me get focused on making the rest of the day go well. I also could have blown off everything except for my shower and breakfast (those are not negotiable for me) and excepted that it was just going to be a bad day because I’d made a mistake the night before.
Everyone has days that start like this. Something happens, some time many things happen that make it seem like the whole day is shot before you’ve even gotten out the front door, but it doesn’t have to be like that. You can start over. Well, not completely start over, but you can do a bit of a refresh and make the day go better.
For me, meditating did the trick that morning, as well as accepting that I wasn’t going to workout. I didn’t spend the day being snippy with myself because of the alarm clock. I didn’t kid myself into thinking that I’d work out in the evening, because I knew I wouldn’t and I had to be okay with that. Being hard on myself or letting the stress of how the day started get to me for the entire day was going to be counter-productive.
If your day starts with you oversleeping or other such mishaps, stop, breathe, think about your options and then proceed with what’s going to give you the best chance to get things back on track.
