Gratitude and Trust: Six Affirmations That Will Change Your Life

Mindfulness

WHEN ARE YOU AT YOUR BEST?

 

Part of living a happy, healthy and productive life is figuring out when we are at our best for certain tasks and trying as hard as we can to work our life around that.

It’s not always easy. Most of us have jobs that require us to show up in some form or another, others who rely on us, homes to maintain, bodies to keep healthy and minds and souls that need to be nourished. Oh right and sleep. Got to get enough of that.

The easiest way to figure it all out is to watch yourself and know when you do certain things the best. When is your body the most willing to exercise?  When is your brain the sharpest?  When do you just need to sit down and think about nothing?  Which usually leads to a brainstorm.

Day after day it’s proven to me, some of my most cogent thoughts come to me early in the morning while I am sitting in bed drinking coffee.   I in fact get up forty- five minutes early in order to have that time to drink and think.  My darling husband Glenn brings me a cappuccino around six-thirty.  I drink it and stare out the window while he reads the paper.  And in those early morning post sleep moments before all my daily “duties” enter brain right, ideas and solutions are able to slide in

Paul and I are working on a speech for the 140 Health and Wellness Conference at the 92^nd St Y in New York City, next Tuesday and Wednesday the 18^th and 19^th. If you are in New York and want to hear us we speak on Tuesday afternoon.

Our work schedules together have to be crammed into full lives and the geographical reality we live on different coasts, the life reality we are both married with families, and the work reality we have other things aside from our joint projects.

We spend a lot of time staring at calendars and figuring out when we can carve out time to write in the same city.

We have learned as writers we kick ass between the hours of ten in the morning and three in the afternoon. After three we start to fade. I start losing Paul to Twitter and phone calls. And once he goes I am soon to follow.  The lesson we have learned is we can get more done in an intense, three hour session in the morning than carving out eight hours allowing for four of them to be lost to total distraction.

Life being what it is, yesterday we were each occupied until late afternoon.  By the time we met up to work we were fried. We could do some grunt work, but ended up calling it a day after an hour.  But, we needed one more thing for our speech, a bridge to the end.

We put a pin in it. And sure enough this morning during my caffeine meditation, something came to me.

I have learned the hard way, that when thoughts present themselves I must write them down. Immediately.   I have had so many good ideas when I thought to myself  “remember that for later”. And then by the time later rolls around, the thought is gone. So I quickly wrote it down – emailed it to Paul.  He quickly added a few things. Now it’s done.

During the writing of that bridge this blog came to me. I blessedly had an hour; well, this is my normal work out time, as I have to work out before my real day starts or that doesn’t get done. But I get one day off a week, so I decided to write this morning and blow off the gym.  As I know if I wait to write until tonight my brain will be on sputter.

We are all productive at different times in different ways.  There are people who are most creative late at night. My mother is one of those.  It has always amazed me.  One in the morning and she starts motoring. Writing. Correspondence. Research.  Sometimes she writes to me as I am getting up and she hasn’t been to bed!  I know I need seven hours of sleep to function well.  That means DVRing late night TV to watch later. Or I have to pick up The Daily Show on Hulu.

I know I work best during banker’s hours, so that means my butt is in the chair by 10:30 five days a week.

I know I need to carve out certain time for me so I can be the best wife, mother and friend possible and that comes in the form of my working out five mornings a week and my evening bath with the door shut so I can wind down.  There is nothing wrong with closing the door. Telling those  you love, you love them, but you need some quiet time.

Our lives are so busy.  We need time to work.  Time to play. Time to exercise.  Time to love.  And time to do nothing at all.

If you feel you are not being your most productive self, look at your patterns and rhythms and try to fit those tasks into the time zones when you do them best.  Part of living in gratitude and trust is getting done what we must, doing those things we love with the people we love and having some quiet time to be grateful for it all.