Black, Woman and Winning!: One Habit to take you to the Next Level

Sunday, March 16, 2014

One Habit to take you to the Next Level

I love my bed and I hang on to it as long as I can in the mornings, waking up only after the 3^rd snooze alarm has gone off. I have known (at least in my head) that early waking helps you to get the best out of your 24 hours but I have always thought 'I will sleep late and stay up later.' This arrangement seemed to suit me fine especially being a night person that I am. I however had a whole change of mind a few month ago.

The late great Actor Peter Finch and Wife Eletha (curtesy Argenta Images)

I was trying to work out the setting up of a new gadget I had bought. I don’t like gadgets especially because there is this massive user manual that you have to weed through just to learn how to work anything from a camera or even the simplest plug-in on your computer. In this case I had tried over a couple of weeks to install the gadget correctly but most of the time I tried, I read the relevant manual pages over and over without grasping the right procedure. Other times I just didn’t have the mental energy to tackle it. Well on this faithful day, I had fallen asleep earlier than usual and so woke up at 5am. A sudden wave of inspiration pushed me into deciding that I would tackle installing the gadget with the few minutes I seem to suddenly have to spare this morning.

It took me all of 10 minutes to install the gadget that I had spent hours trying to figure out!

A fresh brain coupled with renewed will power was the reason why the problem that had stumped me for weeks took such a short time. I was clearer in my thinking able to see things I simply stared through when my mind was foggy and when I was tired.

A certain school of thought believes that our short term memory is 'discharged' and freed up for more information and mental work after night's sleep. In addition some experiments seem to suggest that your will power is also at it's peak when you wake. This means that you can take on challenging tasks without a heightened level of discouraging feelings and thoughts flooding in and the whole self sabotage dynamic coming in to play. You are then also able to perform task that require discipline and might be low on instant gratification. This is why it has been suggested that if you are struggling with overeating and have a poor relationship with food it would be better to eat the bulk of your food towards the end of the day when your will power is running low. In other words while you have the will power on your side, eat smaller and wait to eat bigger when you would really want to emotionally at the end of the day.

If you have to learn a new skill, do some intense studies, take on a task you are dreading and have been putting off, research a topic you've been stalling on then wake early and devote those very effective couple of hours to doing it. It will take less time, you will understand and pick up more and you will have the satisfaction of knowing you have been very productive which will crown your very day. In fact go one step further; make a habit out of it and wake up early each day and devote the first hour to some mental work for instance improving your IT skills and abilities through studying and reading and before you know it, you will be an authority/expert in the specific area.

I will be away from base for a while so next post is 12th April 2014

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