Habits shmabits...

Everyone says that it takes 21 days to make a habit. People also still think Tupac is alive. I find both of those statements ridiculous. I would like to meet whoever did that study because I don't know where they got their information.  I would like to talk about the habit of getting up early.  I always want to get up early. I even set my alarm with the intention to get up early. That's about as far as it goes because as soon as my alarm goes off I immediately wonder why a sound is interrupting something as important as sleeping.  I woke up every day at 6:30 on my mission. Every day for a year and half adds up to a lot more than 21 days.  I hated it the last day of my mission as much as the first.  I don't comprehend what is so refreshing about peeling your warm body that is cemented to the sheets up in the dark.  G gets up at 5:30 to read scriptures and exercise.  I support him from the covers because I can't even get my mind to wake up at that hour enough to process what he is doing.

2 mornings ago I woke up at 6:30. By myself. I couldn't go back to sleep. It was bizarre. I went through all my options until finally I realized that I could possibly get up.  I decided to do it not because I'm motivated and a ball of morning sunshine, but by default because I was bored lying in bed.  I hurried and exercised before my brain had time to turn on and then had sincere morning prayer, read scriptures and just had time to be still before the Liv alarm went off at 8.  It was the craziest thing because it was one of the best days I've had.  I felt like my mind was clear, that I had an extra tank of patience, and was more in tune with the spirit than I had been for months.  Maybe it has to do with what Joseph Fielding Smith said:

"People die in bed, and so does ambition."

Don't worry, it's not a permanent thing or even close to a habit. I still have a bad case of bed gravity and have a very hard time waking up, but it did make me think that there is something to the morning. I still think the people who made up the 21 day thing are full of baloney, but for one morning, I was loving it. Maybe just because something isn't fun and you don't like it doesn't mean its not a habit, it just means you consistently want something bad enough to make the sacrifice on a daily basis.

Thought of the day: 

"One of the keys to an enduring faith is to judge correctly the curing time required.
That curing does not come automatically through the passage of time, but it does take time. Getting older does not do it alone. It is serving God and others persistently with full heart and soul that turns testimony of truth into unbreakable spiritual strength." –Henry B. Eyring CR April 2012