"The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine"
Like most good quotes you hear them and realise they are so obvious you kick yourself for not thinking of them first. Despite my lifelong fear of the word routine this was no different. Up until hearing this quote I have always thought of routine as a thing people who wore suits to work did and something I would try to avoid in my life at all costs. However when you actually think about it maybe a routine isn't so bad. Obviously if I have a daily routine whereby I wake up whenever I want, sit on the sofa all day and eat ice cream the future is probably not quite going to pan out how I envisage it. However if my routine was to wake up on my own piece of land, go for a surf with friends, tend to my animals, harvest some fresh fruit and veg before having a nice organic, homegrown brunch with the family I think I would be pretty content. So maybe there's something to this routine business after all.
With that in mind I'm going to start changing my daily routine to see if I can make progress towards being the change I want to see. I'm going to challenge myself to take on a new routine every month that will push me in the right direction. Why a month? I can't exactly set it at a random number of days! I'm a sucker for a neat bundle of time. So it's either a week, a month or a year. A week seems a bit too easy and a year seems a bit extreme to get me started. I figure a month will give me enough time to get through the honeymoon faze, into the stage where I wish I hadn't decided to do it and then hopefully at the end will either leave me with a new routine or at the very least with a new lesson learnt.
I was thinking for a while what my first challenge would be, I wanted it to be something that would be a big step towards where I want to go. I have decided to try to watch the sunrise every morning for the month of July.
There were quite a few reasons for choosing this but the main ones are:
- Waking and working by the sun is what the majority of the world does. In modern society, especially in cities we have become so used to relying on unnatural light to get by, we go to bed at the same time throughout the year regardless of what the sun is doing. For me this has always seemed strange and is a perfect example of our disconnection from nature. This challenge will be a good reminder and way to spend a little time each day observing mother nature doing her thing. It will hopefully also reduce my electricity usage too as I won't need lights for as many hours during the day.
- I have always wanted to get up and do more in the mornings, I'm way more productive in the morning than at the end of the day. I am interested in establishing a morning routine of work, exercise and meditation so this will give me lots more time to do this.
- Sunrise is a beautiful time of the day. It seems a shame to miss it for so much of the year.
I'll post a blog at the end of the month to let you know how it goes.