90 Days of ILP

Have faith, oh practitioner, temporary setbacks are just that: temporary. For the past two weeks, I've been on a roller coaster of self-denial and beer binges, coffee overdoses and lack of sleep. The two main engines driving this decline? An ability to get up at the same time every morning, and a loss of a singular purpose. We'll address the easy one first:

Want to get up with the alarm clock? You could train your body to do so as Steve recommends. What works for me is even simpler: I put the alarm clock on the other side of the room, and when it rings, I leap up to turn it off, and then leave the room. This, I've found, is the only way to get rid of the "sleepies", those opiate little demons which cling to the waking body in an attempt to pull it back into dreamland. They seem strong for a minute to or two, but if you stand at the front door and take in the morning breeze / bus fumes, they will soon die away. And then you can meditate, exercise, eat eggs, and run to work like a true champ.

But why bother getting up? Simple: to address some core purpose. I had one a month ago (must... write... novel!), but for one reason or another, it deconstructed itself, and into the vacuum I poured my aimless decadence. Without a pole star, your ship gets tossed by every wave that comes along. But I've got a new, tentative mission, which I am now ear-marking a portion of time each day to address. What held me back was the notion that whatever mission I chose, it had to be perfect, which in the relative realm is complete nonsense.

But I was killing myself in the pursuit of this "perfect project", rather than making a more reasonable assessment of what was "good enough" and just doing that. To paraphrase something Ken told a recent seminar participant, I was being narcissistic in hamstringing myself with the impossible task of saving the world. "It's not important what you do," Ken something to the effect of, "It's important just that you do something, and make adjustments from there."

Just do something, and do it every day, and get up at the same time to do that something you do every day. Word.