Start the Day with a Successful Morning

I love my days late and the mornings bubbling...For a long time, I used to start my morning pretty late, as my office hours were usually starting around 11.00 o´clock. I kept telling myself that the more qualifications and academic credentials one has, the later in the morning should wake up. Being up late - which also included very long (at least one full hour) breakfasts, a habit I still maintain nowadays - was my intellectual title of glory, which separated me from the working class (it sounds nasty, but some thoughts can be this way, no reason to apologize about). Until things went very complicated and had to maintain an extra business out of the normal working hours, and a mini-family and started to feel disconnected for a very short while with my creative/writing self so had to save myself before it was too late and start doing at least ´six impossible things before breakfast´.

Laura Vanderkam´s What the Most Successful People do Before Breakfast - which I had access to in audio format, read by the author herself on a very soothing voice - confirmed most of the things I was doing by default for a couple of years already. Waking up early in the morning - 5.30 is my favorite time of the day - helps setting up priorities, fully enjoying time for oneself and focusing on important activities, such as writing or exercising or building up your side business. 

There are 168 hours in a week but not all hours are equal. The willpower is high, the amount of distractions - mostly social media - is limited, You can manage a relatively limited yet sufficient amount of time for a high focus on the daily priorites, being grateful, meditating or praying. In my case, I used to spend this time going through the long bureaucratic proceedings, writing blog posts, learning a new language, meditating and a basic workout. Having enough time to prepare my cardamom coffee and drinking it slowly, without being interrupted every gulp is one of the most promising start into the working day. This is how I got the best reconnected to myself after the night sleep. 

Laura Vanderkam based her inspiring recommendations following extensive interviews and discussions with successful CEOs and Fortune 500 managers. The results reflect a high diversity of activities and suggestions. At the end of the day, everyone should be able to select the list of activities and create the picture of a perfect morning corresponding to his/her expectations. Some habits may work in one case for a while, but one can decide to replace them with more convenient ones. The most important part of the story is to educate oneself to keep the mornings open for exploring new opportunities or just for personal and family reconnection. 

Although I am still far away of being that successful, I am doing my best to come closer to reaching my potential. Plus, in the days when all goes perfectly well and I can efficiently use two hours at least for some focused activities, it may be that I am ready with work before 17.00 which saves again time for family and friends and maybe another good book to review on the blog.

What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast is a recommended - easy - read for anyone trying to get a better time management and succeed in creating a better balance between work and family/personal time. 

Rating: 5 stars

Writing about Trauma in Traumatic Times

 

´The world as we knew is wide broken´. Trauma is more than a personal experience, but it extends to the political and social levels. Actually, there are so many types and times of the trauma, and healing is not always coming in hand. Healing from trauma may not be possible, but writing about it, using it as a literary variation is possible. It may not heal, writing about trauma, but it can break the chain of silence covering trauma(s) and traumatic experiences in general.

Writing into the Wound: Understanding Trauma, Truth and Language, available as a one-hour audio on Scribd narrated by the author herself, Roxane Gay, is a pertinent writing approach to our times. It is so easy to hide trauma in plain sight. Easy, because actually no one will really care about your story if you don´t mind to tell it yourself. You can live with someone a full life without sharing anything about your trauma, without forgetting it any single moment of your life. Thus, the burden is harder and poisonous for your soul and for those breathing the same air with you as well. 

Even you cannot heal the trauma, talking about it, making the right point about it, can help to move forward. Indeed, the trauma may stay with you, but you acknowledge it and you can get along with it, as part of your life story, a story that you can tell through written words.

I only wish one day will be able to take part to one of Gay´s workshops on trauma at Yale´s. 

Rating: 4 stars