This is my simple approach to early mornings, when I really don’t feel like getting on it, as always, I am using what I do to hopefully help and direct a few people to enable some positive direction in your lives.
I am just like anybody else; I have mornings when I am not feeling the routine (one I have built since I was 22 years old) That routine is up at 5am or 4.45am (naturally, no alarm) Historically it was so I could get my training done without impacting negatively on family, so I could get a head start and just feel in control. This has changed over the last 23 years, to reflect my personal goals, work and life situation.
Now it’s to get my media done, yoga, dog run and core work and as ever getting out before the world wakes up.
I always try and reflect this in my media by not always saying hey wow I am up, life is great.
Anyway, the important part. 80% of the time I am on it and looking to get up and push life, but 20% of the time I feel the struggle. How do I override this?
It’s a simple mind game really, I love my morning cup of tea, the night before I fill the kettle, mug on side, with tea bag in. All I have to do is go turn the kettle on, that’s all I tell myself I must do this morning. Very little pressure here, I love my tea and so I focus on just that.
You have to really tell yourself, I’m only getting a cup of tea, nothing more, close thoughts beyond this. If you practise this method enough in the comfort of your home, you can take it with you to places where getting up can be really difficult.
(Finse expedition training 2022)
Now by the time the tea is made, I am sat more awake and into a routine that I know and follow every day and so I do my media, I then do my yoga and so it goes on.
Dr Steve Peters would call this giving your Chimp a banana, yep it works, (If you have not read The Chimp Paradox, I highly recommend it) I have no expectation to do any of the other elements of my morning, these are removed I am basically giving myself a little reward for getting up. The routine follows because it’s in grained and the tea is my trigger.
I know it sounds simple maybe even a little soft, so we hear Goggin’s phrase “stay hard” but his cup of tea is something much deeper and you too can use something deeper, What I am talking about is a little trick to play on your mind, if you are in a darker place then yes we would have to call upon a little more than a cup of tea, but don’t underestimate the power of that cup of tea.
So as the title says, Find Your Cup of Tea
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