One day I just decided. It was about time and I could clearly see there was no more reason left to delay the inevitable. I decided to take control of my life.
But let's think about these decisions for a second. Anybody can decide anything at any moment. For a decision to be sufficiently meaningful, it has to be followed up with action.
In general decisions are specific enough that they reveal the necessary action to be taken. For example if I decide to become a better basketball player I start drilling dribbles and shooting free throws. If I decide to become a better painter I will start practicing painting more and more.
What about taking control of my life? This is such a broad, general decision that doesn't really reveal a clear path of action to follow. Thankfully for me I had been introduced to the idea of Buddhist practices so I knew exactly what I needed to do. I want to teach you what helped me the most with this writing.
Waking Up At 5AM
Waking up early gets such a bad rep these days and whenever I suggest this to people it's like they have an allergic reaction to it. I understand, because I also had an allergic reaction to the idea of waking up early as well.
How is waking up at 5AM related to controlling your life? Let's think about what controls the time we wake up, because controlling how we spend our time is definitely a big part of controlling our life in general.
We usually wake up when we feel sufficiently rested. If we're feeling too tired or groggy when we open our eyes we usually snooze for a while. We wake up when nature calls, when we feel sufficiently rested, or when we have something to do at a specific time.
In other words, we have no real control over when we start our day. Our body or our schedule does.
We spend so much time thinking “I wish I had started / done XYZ earlier…” but what did we do in the “earlier” times? We either slept through them or did something else that was required of us.
The biggest source of regret on deathbeds is life not fully lived. The need for constant prioritization of comfort and rest is controlling your life, not you. If you have control over your life, you have control over when you start your day. Just like how if you're in the army the platoon leader is in charge of when you wake up, YOU must be in charge of when you wake up.
An Hour of Practice
What do we usually do when we wake up early every once in a while? We go back to sleep or kill time until we have to do something. We let our usual patterns continue driving our lives. We sometimes get ourselves to start something new in opportunities like new years' resolutions and such, but they don't last long. Koreans say “a decision lasts three days” and I'd say that's a good guesstimate of how long a new intent usually lasts.
Meditation is a kind of practice. Meditation is actually super easy, literally anybody can do 5 seconds of meditation. If you can do 5 seconds, you can most definitely do 10 seconds. If you can do 10 seconds, you can probably do a minute. And so on and so forth.
But while theoretically it's possible to meditate for a long time, you find that it's quite challenging to do so in real life. Why? Because the longer you sit, the more the usual pattern wants to break your meditation because it's not used to it.
No matter how hard your mind resists, when you really think about it you can definitely devote one hour of your day to just yourself. For the rest of the 23 hours you can spend it however you want, being pulled away by screens, notifications, family members, hunger, sleep, and so on.
Why SPECIFICALLY This Way?
I'm willing to bet that if you've read this far, you're thinking: “couldn't I do the same thing at 7AM or practice in the evening?”. You theoretically can, but why stop there? Let's make it even more comfortable and accessible. Let's practice 15 minutes instead, and instead of waking up early let's go to bed later. Why 15 minutes? Why not just 1 minute?
It's very important we talk about a specific topic at this point. What is freedom?
We usually consider freedom to be the ability to do things we want to do whenever we want, and the ability to never do things we don't want to do. We seek financial freedom so that we never have to work again. We seek free time so we can endlessly entertain ourselves.
Anybody can feel great in heaven because the environment is conducive to happiness. But can you be happy in hell? Anybody can feel great when they're well rested. But can you feel great when you're tired?
Anybody can exercise control over their lives when they feel like it. But that's not true control, because it's conditional control. If I have control over the computer only when my older sister allows me to, is that true control over the computer? If I can only shower when my warden allows me to, is that true freedom to shower?
We want to be uncompromising in our practice because uncompromised control over our lives is what we are trying to cultivate with the practice in the first place.
The title of this writing is “A secular Buddhist morning routine for high-stress professionals”. You're likely a high-stress professional because while you have a lot of great things going on in your life related to results and career, you keep hearing an inner calling for connection to yourself you've been ignoring for a very long time.
Who does your great career benefit? It should benefit YOU. I think if I'm walking down a path to happiness, the path itself is a happy path as well. What about you? The path of life you're walking, is it beneficial to you? Who are you working for? Who are you? It's time to connect back to the person you've been neglecting for the longest time. And that person is available for you to meet at 5AM tomorrow morning.