Reflect On Your Attitude in the Morning and At Night
How to deal with problems and decisions
I believe I have already blogged about the chapter from Elizabeth Gilbert’s book “Eat, Pray, Love” where she is sitting on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night in despair. It is one of my favorites because I feel it is valuable imagery. She is praying to God asking Him what she should do about her marriage that seems to be falling apart and the message that she hears from him is “Go to bed, Liz, go to bed”. It is so simple, but makes perfect sense.
At night, our perception of reality is often blurred. Whether it is due to exhaustion, the toxins we took in during the day, or the pull of energy from multiple directions away from our center, it happens.
I was reminded of this again this week when I had an opportunity to hear Rajashree Choudhury speak. Unfortunately, she has been in the papers often recently as her husband is being accused of scandals, but she is her own person, a very wise yogini, and an amazing yoga teacher both for children and adults.
Rajashree told us about an exercise where every morning you write down everything you would like to accomplish. At night, write down what triggered you to possibly get upset or frustrated during the day, but don’t look at it the next day. After a few days, look back and you will see that the mornings are full of optimism, hope, and things most likely accomplished, and that the items that frustrated you haveblown over and/or have gotten resolved.
I thought this an amazing exercise because so often we go to bed with frustration at some issue or another from our day. We often think we haven’t accomplished as much as we had hoped, or we are like Elizabeth Gilbert, where we are crying on the bathroom floor, figuratively, if not literally.
Using this exercise to reflect on what we have actually done and to keep feelings of optimism and hope throughout the day is important. It is what keeps us going and helps us push for that next goal. It encourages us to make that additional phone call, or in my case, write that additional blog.
It is with these thoughts that I recommend you try out this exercise. I have seen that writing my goals for the day only takes 30-60 seconds in the morning and it makes me feel so much better when I look back.
I have also been reflecting on my frustrations and because of this exercise, when new frustrations come up, I realize that by tackling them head on, they will be resolved sooner rather than later. The distance of time makes them look like a piece of cake, and for this reason, I can’t wait to get there.
