The first hour of the day
To change your life, you need to change your priorities.
Mark Twain
A lot has been written about how our priorities determine the course of our life, our success, our happiness – yes, even our character.
Living in line with our priorities requires awareness, discipline and regular reminders to ourselves.
But how do we know what our real priorities are – truly – in thought and in action?
Some of our priorities we are very conscious of, some however reside outside of our immediate awareness. Often what we say our priorities are, is not what we end up dedicating the most time and attention to.
We know of course that our priorities reveal themselves through our actions and through our choices.
Yet we make many choices a day, we take many actions.
So how do we best find out?
An easy experiment which provides a unique perspective on our priorities is to look at one very special hour of the day – our first one. Right after we get up, also called ‘the golden hour’. And ask ourselves: how do we spend that first hour of the day?
The mother wakes up her kids and gets their breakfast ready, the investment fonds manager checks the movements of the stock market on his phone, the lovers embrace each other one more time in sensual pleasure, the zen monk starts his first meditation of the day, the teenager grabs his play station as he couldn’t finish his level the prior day, the faithful goes on his knees for his morning prayer in the dark, the manager goes for a run as he hasn’t gotten one in yet all week, …
What we prioritize in the first hour of the day tells us a lot of what we care about most, it even tells us something about who we are at this current moment in our lives.
We take a shower and brush our teeth… because we care about our bodies.
We lean over to our loved one… because we long for connection.
We check our social media… because we seek distraction.
We check the news or our inbox… because we want to know ‘what’s going on’.
If we list the activities of the first 60 minutes of our day, maybe for a full week – and look at them without judgement – we can learn a lot about ourselves:
- Do I first orient myself externally (phone, mail, news, social media) or internally (meditation, exercise, prayer)?
- Do I choose connection (with my partner, my children) or space for myself or do I feel pressure to be ‘ready for the world’ right from the start?
- Where does my mind go when I am in the shower or go for a run?
- Do I allow myself time to ‘arrive’ for the day and to start this unique day intentionally?
- Do I actually feel like I have a choice? Or does someone else / something else determine what my first hour of the day looks like?
If we feel we want to make a change in our life, our first hour of the day might be a good place to start…
I love this. I have snoozed the alarm at the expense of more internally orienting and framing it as you just did will help me make a better decision not to next time. Thanks for this.
Thank you for this Claus! you certainly have me thinking….
You always inspire insightful introspection, thank you Claus!