How positive first thoughts in the morning can seriously bliss you out!
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
When I was in Britain a few years ago, I was chatting with a friend in a party. I noticed he did not sound very positive about life in general and that day in particular. It was a lunch party so only half of the day was “gone”.
I tried to unpack his day to see what external influences he had exposed his mind to that morning. It turned out that he used to set his radio clock to wake him up in the morning. It was the six o’clock main world news on BBC world service which woke him up, and then he would lie in bed immediately upon being woken up and spend the first 30 minutes of his day immediately listening to world news in bed.
I told him “why are you surprised that you wake up in such lousy state and negative mood, if the first 30 minutes of your morning is spent focussed on all the negative stuff that happened in the world in the past night”.
No wonder he was so tired, negative and grumpy. I told him to experiment with another way to get woken up. To set the alarm (until the day he could wake up naturally without alarm), wake up , sit up immediately and recite to himself: “I am blissed out to realise that I am still alive, and have the opportunity for another 24 hours to be of service to all sentient beings”.
Within a very short time he was a really relaxed person and he later started adding more positive elements to his morning.
It turns out that how we start the day has a huge impact on our rest of the day, on our mental state and our wellbeing. And how we start the day depends on what are our first thoughts. We are not passive victims of our first thoughts. In fact, we can choose what to think by deciding in advance what to think. This takes habit building and practice, but it helps to decide in advance what to think. We can write down the thoughts we want to think first. It’s not going to happen overnight, but we can certainly get familiar with the thoughts we want to think and repeat them to ourselves.
I wonder how many of us make a list of the thoughts we want to have in the morning, like the list of groceries we want to buy. If it’s worthwhile writing down a shopping lists, it’s by far much more priceless to write down the list of thoughts we want to think in the morning.
He goes some examples:
In the morning:
Here are some examples of “first thoughts” I could have first thing in the morning:
“I am blissed out to realise that I am still alive, and have the opportunity for another 24 hours to be of service to all sentient beings”
“I am really happy to open my eyes and realise that they are still working, and that all the forms and colours are available to me for another day”
“How wonderful it is to wake up in the presence of my wonderful family, in a wonder country”
They don’t cost anything! Make up as many good thoughts you want to think in the morning, and allow them to bliss you out!
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