Getting Up Early Is Harrrrrd But I’m Doing It Anyway

After writing my recent post about Serenity’s birthday and my alive-day, I have been thinking more often about doing things on purpose. In fact, my beautiful best friend Sarah wrote about Living Intentionally just this morning, so I think there are at least a few of us who are thinking about the same stuff.

“Doing things on purpose” means nobody told you what to do

This is probably the hardest part of being a person who wants to do great things: there will almost NEVER be a time when somebody gives you instructions on how to do that awesome thing you want to do.

If you’re waiting to be told how to do it, you’ll be waiting forever. It’s up to you. Your choices are the ones you have to live with, and if all you can hold in your heart is that someone else’s choices are messing everything up for you, then you have some work to do to see what your potential really is; and you should ask yourself why you are giving up your own power to choose.

Nobody telling you what to do means you have to figure it out on your own

I’ll bet a lot of you are feeling nervous about that statement.

How am I supposed to figure it out on my own if I’ve never done it before?

How can I do it right if nobody gives me instructions?

What if I screw it all up and I can’t fix it?

Figuring it out on your own doesn’t mean you can’t ever have help, and it doesn’t mean you have absolutely no experience or inner knowledge that will help you figure it out.

I am a firm believer in the principle that our lives do not require of us more than we can actually do at any given time. Maybe the thing you need to do isn’t what you thought it was at first, but you can ALWAYS do what you need to do. Part of figuring out how to do it all by yourself is learning to listen to your heart (or maybe you call it intuition), because your heart knows when it’s time to do it differently. Your heart can tell when things aren’t right.

Your heart is for wisdom, and your mind is for making good decisions

Let me give you an example, and now you will have some backstory on the title of this post (yay! Finally I am getting to the point!):

I sincerely and truly despise getting up early. And I love staying up very very late.

I have been able to make my work schedule fit into this style of doing things, for the most part, but recently I noticed that something was happening that did not make me happy. My heart noticed that things didn’t feel right, which was before my mind noticed – because my mind was trying to convince my heart to just handle it already and quit whining.

I was working almost all day from the time I was awake enough, because I didn’t really WANT to save my work projects for after the kids were in bed if I didn’t have to. Then I would give up sometime in the evening, give myself a small bit of a break, and get right back to it as soon as they were in bed – because I had never been able to actually use my creative time to my advantage, and I still had work that needed doing.

The reason I started working in the evenings, way back when the baby was still a wee little thing, was because that worked so much better all around. It only happened to coincide with my innate love of late nights and avoidance of early mornings.

But now, several things are different now than they were then, and things needed to change. My heart figured that out first.

So I listened to my heart, and I made a decision

I am getting up early now (this is only the second day, and my eyes are puffy and I wish I could go back to my warm soft bed), because this is the thing I need to do. Nobody told me to do it. Nobody said, I’m going to get you up early, and now it’s time for you to go to bed so you get enough sleep.

I had to do that MYSELF. My business is important, my sanity is important, my family is important. And I’m in charge of making sure there is balance in my life. That’s my job, not someone else’s.

Here is where I explain how doing things on purpose (intentionally) and listening to your heart go together

The reason that it’s hard to comprehend HOW you are supposed to be in charge of your own life and make good decisions when, obviously, you haven’t lived it yet is that you’re afraid to trust yourself.

You’re afraid that if you listen to your heart and your intuition, you will fail. People will laugh, everything will suck, and you’ll be stuck and ashamed of yourself.

I can’t say that will never happen, because sometimes it does. But the point is that your heart does know things your mind doesn’t know. You have both because they are supposed to work together.

Trust yourself to make good decisions, because you can do it.

(If I can write this post BEFORE my first cup of coffee, anything is possible, right?)