What is a bad habit? I am not really asking, but I really am not sure either. Lately, as I try to transition to the life of not working at a traditional workplace, also called retirement by many, I’ve been evaluating my habits. Sleep, eat, fun, leisure, activity, things and times with Debbie, writing, daily routines and such. I was kind of anxious about all this before I retired, maybe not typical anxiety, but it was on my mind a lot.
I’m 40 days into this new lifestyle and loving it but I’m needing to rewire more than a few bad habits. We’ve been studying lifestyle changes beyond diet and exercise, to include spirituality, physics, nature, creation, presence, meditation, and others. The one that is on my mind a lot this week is sleep.
I’ve been wishing for better sleep for years, always being a late nighter, and knowing that this is a bad habit. I don’t know that technically, but I know it intuitively, plus lots of people say you should not stay up too late. I’m starting to believe they are right.
And they say that is half the battle, knowing when something needs to change and facing the needed change. Maybe. But the struggle ahead of me is to get to bed and have a restful sleep for 8 hours, starting at 11pm. Again as is so often the case, my main coach is my wife Debbie. You might not believe the routines she goes through to get ready for bed. Her discipline for habits continues to amaze me. I should write about it some day.
So here is my very basic plan, tell me what you think. For the rest of 2022, I will be in bed ready to sleep at 11pm and up at 7am. Then in January of next year I will move it to 10pm and up at 6am.
What is your routine? What works for you? What do you avoid? What secrets have you discovered? What struggles do you have? Do you even think about things like this?
Old Ben Franklin sure did, Early to Bed, Early to Rise Ben. He was death on bad habits. Yea, I ain’t no Ben Franklin, but still I’m gonna give it a go.