What’s your morning feed saying?
Lucky me!
If I am sounding like a broken record, at least you know I am consistent, persistent and convinced that I have a message that bears repeating. Over and over again.
It’s still dark outside on a cold January morning. I have been up since 5:30am and it is almost 8am. I have finished my morning meditation, written three pages in my journal, savoured my first cup of coffee and taken some eggs and butter out of the refrigerator. Getting the ingredients to room temperature before mixing gives promise for a better baking session.
Lucky me, because I am looking forward to my day and I am holding myself accountable for that. In about 90 minutes, I will FaceTime with two little girls and admire their bright eyes, soft skin, pudgy hands and rosy cheeks. The energy in my world will shift from a gathering gloom to wide-eyed wonder and enthusiasm as we talk about the magic of mixing flour, eggs, sugar into batter, and discuss the art of cookie baking. And we will make a plan to meet at Norquay, the local ski hill, after the brilliant sunshine has taken some of the chill out of the air.
As I measure and pour, I will be thinking about the people in the places where I plan to drop cookies. I will ask the girls about their own ideas, but my list will include a delivery to our local hospital, a friend whose daughter just gave birth to twins and our neighbour whose dog died a few weeks ago. And by writing this publicly, by discussing it with the grandchildren, by making a social commitment, I am adding my personal accountability checkpoints.
I feel especially lucky today, because I know that millions of other people are waking up to emails and newsfeeds and calls to action that are urgent, incendiary and motivated by fear and profound anxiety. These early days of January 2021 have more than one pandemic happening – and the second epidemic is about human nature that thrives on gossip, speculation and dangerous hyberbole, fuelling brains with Piss’n’Vinegar. Pardon the expression.
Not for me.
I fill my morning In-box with gentle inspiration, reflection, contemplation and anticipation for moments of joy – even during these days of chaotic thinking and predictions of dire circumstance spiralling deeper. It’s my personal sanitation and self-help strategy.
Gratitude, in case you didn’t know it, requires discipline, intention and mental stamina. By making a deliberate effort to concentrate and really make room for good stuff, I am choosing to align with life’s sweetness, optimism and positive possibilities. It’s a choice that improves my individual sense of well-being and that has ripple effects.
Strengthening my gratitude and kindness muscles means that I wake up eager to read and listen for and think about love, goodness and the amazing gifts that Mother Nature delivers. I can personally validate, with complete conviction that the science is right – when you feel grateful, you do not feel envious and resentful.
It’s the Maya Angelou quote: “Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Invite one to stay.“
By taking personal accountability for my mindset, I plan for a day that includes interaction with loved ones, doing some writing and paying attention to my kindness, cookies, and gratitude skills. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect and the more I look, the more reasons I find for hope over despair.
By choosing to bake cookies and make a list of who might need some cheering up, and then planning to get out into the brilliant snowshine, my troubles and worries are filed in a box delegated to the back of my mind, marked ‘Later’.
By giving the first hours of my day to Gratitude, Kindness, Sweetness and Reasons to be Optimistic, I am setting myself up for a better day.
And here it is again. Hope, showing up in a line of a poem, reminding me of those tiny bundles of feathers, shivering in the cold, waiting to join the dawn chorus, once the sunshine appears.
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.” Emily Dickinson
Hope rising in the dark. Lucky me. How do you choose your morning news feed?
