Live with your monsters

They say early morning and before going to bed is the best time for meditation, to calm your mind and have a good day and a good nights sleep. For me, those are two most difficult times of the day. In the morning I just cannot seem to wake up for the first three hours of the day and keep making many irrational decisions. In the evening my mind is tired, so it refuses to collaborate which prevents me from brushing my teeth and removing my make up, or preparing myself to sleep in any way possible.

Years of observation, reading articles and trying experiments have taught me to deal with my morning zombie and evening toothbrush monster and here I want to share with you how I do it.

The morning zombie

Have you ever had a brain freeze waking up in the morning? It happens to me every day – I wake up earlier (sometimes even at 5 AM) to do the things I love and mysteriously find myself making tea for half an hour, getting stuck on a Facebook message and walking around the house like a zombie.

If you are a morning zombie, this article is for you.

It has been proven by scientists (trying to convince you with this) and it is also common sense that if you want something done, the best time to do it is morning. If you take care of your most important to do list first thing at the beginning of the day, you will feel light and careless the rest of the day, says Brian Tracy in his book Eat That Frog.

For some people with irrational thinking and those who have troubles dealing with their minds, we need to invent a special algorithm of morning behaviours not to be tricked into a zombie behaviour and lose sense of space and time just to be stressed out later in the day.

One day I was tired of my morning zombie, and so I sat down at the table and wrote down a “morning to do list” with a yellow marker

1. Wake up
2. Brush your teeth
3. Make your bed
4. Drink water
5. Practice yoga
6. Shine

I put the paper on my wall and followed the steps with my lazy morning zombie mind. The cool thing about the list is that waking up is accomplished as soon as you wake up, so you have already achieved point 1 without too much effort. Making your bed and drinking water does not demand too much effort either, and this is how you start achieving your mini goals in the very beginning of the day.

When I finish yoga and meditation, I normally am shining already, and the day promises to be good. At this point I know that even if a difficulty is waiting for me out there, I have resilience to be ok with it.

This is how I learnt to coexist with my morning zombie.

The toothbrush monster

Brushing my teeth in the morning is not difficult, as long as I do it first thing  (according to the morning zombie list), but in the evening I feel as if I get caught in the hands of an invisible toothbrush monster, who does not let me out of his big furry paws and really wants me to fall asleep with dirty teeth.

They say, if you want to be successful, try to change one little habit in your life and see how everything starts changing. Well, on January first 2017 I decided to be successful, so I proclaimed to the whole world that I will brush my teeth every single evening, no matter what. I even got an accountability partner, my friend who is not good at this either.

I would brush my teeth even on the bus, but with time this habit started fading away. My toothbrush monster is so in love with me, he does not want to let me go.

I have come up with a trick – say it out loud “I will brush my teeth now” and come up with an instant gratification – “I will allow myself to sleep on my stomach/read my book for 20 more minutes/light a candle/drink hot water” (whatever is pleasing for you and not harmful for your body). This seems to work at times, but if you have any other advice on how to deal with the toothbrush monster, please let me know.

To conclude, remember this – “We cannot get rid of our demons, but we can learn to live above them”. Now, get up and go brush your teeth. Good night =)