When I was a student, I was not a morning person. The idea of getting up before 8am sounded like the worst thing in the world.
Now, I get up earlier than I need to. I get up at 6am and spend 40 minutes enjoying some quiet time before I get on with the madness of my day. I hate feeling rushed in the morning, and I feel like if I can start my mornings with some sense of calm then maybe my day ahead will feel less stressful.
One of the first things I do when I wake up is some meditation. Since I started teaching I cannot stop thinking about everything that needs doing, or ways I could have improved my lessons, and it gets a bit much sometimes. Spending a few minutes in the morning trying to clear my head tends to make me feel a bit better and give things more perspective.
After meditating, I went through a phase of doing an online course to do with teaching, but it felt like too much work early in the morning. Recently, I have just started reading. I used to read constantly, but now I usually only read for a few minutes before bed, so it is good to squeeze in some before the day begins properly.
After that, I get dressed, brush my teeth and get ready for the day. Then I drink a cup of tea and have my breakfast whilst watching the news. Although this sometimes renders the nice, serene start to the day pointless.
I do not always handle stress in the best way, but I know that if my morning routine involved me rushing out of bed and out the door in hardly any time, then I know I would handle it a whole lot worse.
This does make me consider whether I should be getting up even earlier. There are all sorts of stories of successful people getting up at ridiculous hours as that makes them more productive. After a quick google search of getting up at 5am, the top article was from someone who tried it and managed to squeeze a lot more into their day. I just had to scroll down a bit more to see many other links telling me to do it. It also made me think that this blog post is not that original.
I think I am going to try it. I did it briefly during my teacher training because I wanted to get my first assignment written before the Christmas holidays. The motivation of having 2 weeks of guilt-free lazing was strong enough to get me out of bed back then, but maybe considering how much more it could improve my day will get me out of bed a bit earlier too.
Maybe I’ll start with 05.30.
