This morning I woke up around eleven o’clock and was a bit shocked. It was the first morning in a few weeks where I didn’t set an alarm to wake myself because I didn’t have anything scheduled in particular. Amy had gotten up earlier and went off to a workout session, came back and started preparing breakfast. Based on the way I felt rolling out of bed I must have been pretty well behind on sleep. During the week, I often get around six hours of sleep per night and sometimes less. I’ve found that about seven and a half hours seems to be the amount of sleep that works best for me, yet somehow struggle to get that much during most weeks.
After readying myself for the day I cleaned off the glass table in our backyard while Amy brought out our breakfast and coffees. As we sat there eating, we began to discuss our various projects and things that we wanted to accomplish this weekend. We watched a few monarch butterflies floating around the flowers and at times just sat in silence enjoying each other’s company and the beautiful late-morning air. As the Minnesota summer begins to fade into fall, we know that we’ll have less and less of these warm mornings to enjoy outside.
Reflecting back on my intentional morning routine post, I’ve found it difficult to consistently achieve mornings like this. Despite the unreasonably late start to the day, it was a wonderful way to start things off. It takes serious effort to avoid grabbing the phone first thing in the morning and checking to see if we have any messages or missed notifications. The mornings that I do succeed, the positive results are clear and glaringly obvious. I’m more productive throughout the day, more relaxed and focused on the goals that I need to accomplish. I believe this is much like the chopping/sharpening anecdote: We are often too busy chopping to remember that sharpening our axes will make everything easier.
Every time we have breakfast outside, taking the time to enjoy our space and each other, I can’t help but think: What if every day really could be like this? What would it take to consistently create that intentional space in our morning to casually plan, discuss and embrace our surroundings? The reality is, every day can be like this and it is up to us to create that reality. It may mean waking up earlier in the morning to spend this intentional time together, despite having slightly different schedules. Perhaps scheduling this time on our calendars to make sure that it happens more consistently would help as well.
Most importantly, the first step is knowing that we want to have this experience more frequently. It’s something that brings us great joy that costs no money and is a true simple pleasure. Knowing that, we can incorporate future decisions we make to reflect that particular goal and work towards having the time to do it, and we will.
In the next post, I’ll explain more about our decision filter and what particular goals we’re pursuing along to achieve the lifestyle we want. Do you have a special way that you like to spend some mornings? What kinds of intentional activities are you working towards?