What Gets You Up in the Morning?

I remember my first day of the first grade. I remember getting up early and being excited to go to school I remember how much I enjoyed learning to read and how much of a challenge learning to write was for me. I loved school. I enjoyed it most of my elementary years in school. I missed very few days of school because I loved it so much.

As I got older, though, I gradually grew to dislike school and it became harder for me to get up in the morning to go to school Now mind you, it wasn’t because I couldn’t get up in the morning. I remember when there were snow days and the announcer told us that the school doors would not open that day, I was up early to make the most of every day.

Sometimes we just get bored.

It has been true every day. When something was new and exciting, I will get up early and throw myself into my day. However, as time goes on, the excitement wains. Why is that? One reason this happens is that when we get familiar with something it becomes mundane and common and the excitement goes out of what had once been exciting.
What can you do about this? How do you keep the fire burning? Sometimes we can keep the fire burning by making a game of a certain aspect of a project. For instance, let’s say that you have a project where you must do numerous menial tasks that are boring. Instead of dreading the project or procrastinating starting the project, count how many of these tasks you can do during a specific length of time. Next, put this number on a graph and then the next day see if you can do more of those tasks in the same length of time. Keep doing this every day until you finish the project.

Other times we burnout.

Sometimes we get so driven by a project or what we had been passionate about that we take ourselves to the point of exhaustion. This happens because we don’t know how to pace ourselves. This sort of thing can happen when we are trying to make major changes and make them too quickly.

This burnout can also happen when what we are doing is not aligned with our true passions. Take a step back and look at what you are doing and decide what isn’t as it should be. If you are doing what you really want to do, perhaps you are just taking on too much. Determine exactly what needs to be done, and then decide what absolutely needs to be done by you.

I watched a documentary about the Beatles and when they decided that being “The Beatles” was no longer fun, they broke up and went their own separate directions. They all remained friends, but their careers took different paths. For a long time, they had been passionate about being “The Beatles” for years, but that had changed, and they had the courage to allow themselves to move on.

You might not need a complete break from the project, but you might just need time to get away. I know that by a certain time during the evening, I almost always reach a point where I am unable to write another word. I know that it is time for me to quit for the evening and leave the writing until the next day. I would then get up in the morning, refreshed and ready to start the day again.

Take the time to celebrate life

So how do we keep our motivation going? How do we maintain a momentum that doesn’t quit? I think the most important thing is that we see ourselves making progress in some way. Another way is that we find new and exciting aspects of our work that keeps us from getting too familiar or burned out from what we are doing. In addition, we need to vary our pace and take time to rest and enjoy the fruits of our labor. Life is short and should be celebrated every time we awaken to a new day. We need to remind ourselves that life should be celebrated.