My Blissiplines Practice

Recently, I’ve been feeling like my brain and mind are “firing on all cylinders.”  I am creative. My writing flows easily. I am productive throughout the day.

A far cry from what I was like 12 years ago. I was sleepwalking through my life, with a brain full of fog. I felt like my mind was working at half speed at best. I was struggling with depression, shame, and fear. I spent much of my time worrying about the future or morbidly ruminating about my past mistakes, regrets, and should-have-beens. I would run out of energy right after lunch and would waste my afternoons on unimportant tasks and timewasters.

The main reason my mind and brain are functioning so much better today than they were 12 years ago is this:  I have installed a morning ritual.  I call this ritual my blissiplines practice because it brings me bliss AND it requires discipline.

The inspiration for getting into the habit of a morning ritual came from two books: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.

 I read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron in 2013. The first chapter of the book is about  the “pivotal tools” for freeing up our creativity.  One of these is Morning Pages “an apparently pointless process” of writing three pages in longhand, strictly stream-of-consciousness, first thing every morning as a way of evading the internal Censor, “our own internalized perfectionist, a nasty internal and eternal critic who resides on our (left) brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks.” 

A couple of years ago, I read The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.   He believes that a consistent daily morning ritual is necessary because “How you wake up each day and your morning routine (or lack thereof) dramatically affects your levels of success in every single area of your life. Focused, productive, successful mornings generate focused, productive, successful days—which inevitably create a successful life—in the same way that unfocused, unproductive, and mediocre mornings generate unfocused, unproductive, and mediocre days, and ultimately a mediocre quality of life. By simply changing the way you wake up in the morning, you can transform any area of your life, faster than you ever thought possible.” 

Hal recommends that we spend 60 minutes every morning doing six activities, 10 minutes for each activity, that he believes from personal experience will set us up for transformation.  He uses the mnemonic S.A.V.E.R.S. for the six activities that he recommends:

1.     Silence

2.     Affirmations

3.     Visualization

4.     Exercise

5.     Reading

6.     Scribing

The Miracle Morning had a profound impact on me. After reading Hal’s book, I was convinced  that a morning ritual was the key for me to be able to live the depression-free, emotionally equanimous life that I envisioned for myself and that thus far, had eluded me. 

I had already been trying to develop some healthy health and wellness habits to help me battle my depression and lessen the frequency of depressive episodes. I deeply enjoyed these activities.  But I was having limited success installing them as habits because I wasn’t doing them consistently.  I didn’t have set times when I would do them. I would forget to do them … or I would remember but wouldn’t “feel like” doing them.

I had the recipe for “depression-proofing” myself – Morning Pages, yoga, Pilates, walking, meditation -- but I kept “testing” the recipe, leaving out an ingredient here or there.  I would get up early enough to meditate every day for a week or a month then I would miss a day or two every week for the next couple of months. I would journal most days but not always in the morning.  I would do yoga a couple of times a week for a couple of months then I would stop altogether.  I would walk at dawn every morning for a month then I would skip a day or week or two because I didn't “feel like” walking. Rarely did I follow my morning ritual recipe to a “T”.

That’s when I learned a valuable lesson about habit formation: it is really hard to form a new habit if you don’t do it consistently every day, preferably at the same time of day.

In 2020, I finally stopped “testing” my blissiplines recipe. I committed to getting up early enough that I had time to journal, meditate, pray, and exercise. I committed to doing my morning ritual. Every. Single. Day. Now, my morning ritual habit is as deeply embedded as brushing my teeth is.

I don't follow Hal Elrod's S.A.V.E.R.S. formula exactly. And I don't follow the 10 minutes per activity suggestion. 10 minutes on any one of these activities is just not enough for me. My Blissiplines Practice is so important to me that I get up at 4:00 am so I have time to do all of the activities before I start my work day at 9:00 am. Here's what my Miracle Morning Ritual looks like:

• 5 minute mental fitness gym session
• Morning Pages
• 20 minutes of meditation
• 1 hour walk: I do a mental gratitude list, recite my affirmations, pray, and plan during my walk
• 20-30 minutes each of yoga and Pilates

In The Morning Miracle, Hal wrote this, "By simply changing the way you wake up in the morning, you can transform any area of your life, faster than you ever thought possible." I am living proof of this.

How about you? How do you start your day?