I just woke up…

So, I woke up about five minutes ago. I’m laying in bed with my cup of leftover cold coffee from the night before, my computer is proped up on my lap and I’m happy. Becuase I want to be happy! It’s not a forced happiness, I’m not pressuring myself into being happy. I just am. Now, what causes us to feel certain emotions right as we wake up? Do we feel anger, happiness or sadness from the night before? Are we struck with fear due to the nightmares we just had? Do we wake up excited or nervous for the events of the upcoming day? The point is that we are always feel something in our conscious minutes. Never once has a man or woman woken up with neutral emotion or void of emotion entirely. It’s no surprise that no one wants to feel sadness or anger upon waking up and yet we’ve all encountered these emotions from time to time at the break of dawn. Sometimes for no reason at all! We just wake up angry or sad and that can ruin an entire day. To investige the “why” of this further, I have to begin with a rather absurd question.

Have you ever woken up to a man screaming in your face that you suck, that you’re terrible, that everyone hates you and that you’ll accomplish nothing? It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? After you’ve answered “no” to that question, I then want you to ask yourself if you have ever woken up and told yourself that you suck, that everyone hates you and that you’ll never accomplish anything? While you’re regretfully nodding your head to this, I implore you to ask yourself why you purposefully inflict this abuse upon yourself. I say purposefully because you do have a choice in the matter. People can attack you, scold you and terrible things can happen to you but the over all reaction and emotion to these encounters are all on you. Your choice. And the same can be applied to your emotional state in the mornings. It may sound a bit daft but you get to chose the emotions that you feel in the morning. You may not have control of your life but you do have control of your emotions. Like those old “Chose Your Adventure” books, you get to decide whether to go to page 23 and meet the giant troll that smashes your head or turn to page 65 which leads you to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. While this metaphor may be a bit convoluted, the point that I am trying to get across is that you have a choice. A choice to act and react. You have the choice to have a good morning.

You wake up in the morning and instatly feel sadness or regret or anger because you chose to feel that way. No one is making you feel that way. It’s all on you. You have control of your body. So if you can so simply chose to be sad then you can so simply chose to be happy. My use of the word “simply” may cause some to scoff but it’s hard to oversimply something that truly is this simple.

So tomorrow morning, I want you to wake up and try to chose being happy. Just say “Ya know, today is going to be a good day”! Because if you don’t even believe it, then it sure isn’t going to happen. I’m not going to get into some huge existentialistic debate but I truly believe that you have the ultimate control in your life. Maybe not concerning what happens to you but rather, how you react to it. So react to your morning, react to your memories and react to your future with happiness, with positivity and with hope. Just try it. You may find that your morning seems a bit brighter. But hey, maybe it’s just my ignorance the fuels my bliss. There’s a possibility that this only works for me! If so, check out this article from Readers Digest that picks out some great tactics for waking up on the right side of the bed.

— http://www.rd.com/health/wellness/24-ways-to-brighten-your-morning/