My sleep schedule is changing again and that’s always interesting.  My habit for years was to be up at 4:00am for morning meditation and then go back to bed from about 6:00-9:00am, then go into the office.  The past month I’ve been unable to go back to sleep, and then I crash about 6:00-7:00pm until midnight or 2:00am. That plays havoc with my reading practice,  typically between 10pm and 2am.  Then I stay up until about 6:00pm the next day.  I’ll do what my body wants, however I’m sure having to change my perception of what to do at dawn.  It seems I’m always waiting for daybreak.

For so many years, as dawn approached, to me that meant hurry up and go back to sleep while it’s still dark. Now there’s no point in going back to bed if I can’t sleep, so I use the extra time to do things like cleaning and organizing and rearranging, and watering the yard once it’s light enough to see outside. Once I make it an hour past dawn, then my internal clock says ok you can start your work day now, so I go into the office about 7:00am instead of 9:00am.

Changing my schedule is the easy part.  Getting myself to change my perception is the hard part.  Once I change my perception, then the habit is easy to change since I no longer want to be going back to sleep as 5:00am comes around.

As usual, I don’t always have to change what I do, sometimes I just have to change my perception of what I do.  To change it, I have to give myself self-talk suggestions several times a day like:  I like getting so much done before I go into the office.  I like having the quiet time to myself to clean and organize.  I like that I get to watch daybreak through my woods.  I like having time before dawn to take a ride to the beach to see the sunrise if I want to.  My body likes getting up early.  It’s the perfect time for a bike ride after morning meditation and yoga.  I like changing my routine so I don’t get stuck in a rut.

When I am working on changing my perception about something, I need the self talk to break my old thought patterns.  I need to replace the old thoughts with the new thoughts until the neural pathways in my brain are carved and the new thought becomes the automatic first thought. That’s what I had to do when I changed my eating habits.  I wrote about it at Still doing what I want, but what I want has changed and I had to listen to my Healthy Eating Habits cd twice a day until the thoughts sinked in and became automatic.  That was 65 pounds and five years ago.

Yay for knowing that my thoughts control my experience and that I control my thoughts.
What would you like to change your perception of?

Andrea

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