Today I feel very unmotivated and sluggish.

Yep, my alarm clock sounds and all I want to do is stay under my cosy warm doona. Prolong beginning the week, facing the bitter dark cold and beginning all the unfinished tasks I was too tired to complete on Friday! With my eyes still shut, I think about how I’m feeling, “I slept bad”, “I have a headache”, “I don’t feel alert enough to start today, I’ll go back to bed”.

Then my mind fills will escape scenarios to avoid leaving my safe spot, “I could throw a sickie”, “I could do my morning walk tonight instead?” But then I realize the consequences of staying put, “I’ll miss that meeting”, “My pain will rise if I don’t get up soon” “It’ll rain later and I would’ve missed the opportunity to walk” So my rational mind finally kicks in and with the time I’ve wasted unsuccessfully devising a plan to skip my day I throw back my white doona and decide to ”Skip my shower or ironing that shirt” to make up for time.

Basically, you may have stayed under that doona for ten more minutes, but you now are likely feeling slightly guilty for even considering all the excuses that you did. What’s more, you’re mind is now flooded with all the reasons you can’t begin the day, focused on all your aches and pains and your feelings of sluggishness and unmotivation.

So not only were you dreading the week, you now have given your mind extra time to conjure up thoughts and are now likely feeling guilty for having such feelings and only creating more obstacles to climb than you began with!

Perhaps you’re not a morning person & hitting ‘snooze’ on your alarm helps you begin the day. But, for those of us who either benefit from beginning the day early or at this stage in our life, feel that we don’t really have a choice – we start work early or perhaps have our kids to also get up, perhaps take control over your day from the start.

“Yeah right!” you may be saying, “you don’t have kids”
True, I don’t. But whether we’re woken rudely by an alarm, a child shrieking or bouncing on our bed or pain, we all have times where we feel unmotivated and benefit from stopping and seeing that we can begin a routine in our lives. It might sound silly, but when my alarm goes off in the morning, I have now trained my mind to get straight up and rather than hitting the snooze button, spend the time flooding my mind with helpful thoughts, beginning my day with ‘time-out’ to meditate.

So although I’m not able (YET!) to physically jump out of bed, I choose to begin my day in a good way. Take control over how you start;)

We don’t have a lot of control over how our day will turn out, but we can become more mindful of how we choose to begin it!