Seven Morning Habits Which Are Highly Effective for This Person

Congratulations brave warrior. Your survived the Monday after Thanksgiving and if it was anything like mine that is to be commended.

The entire holiday weekend had several highlights but it was also looooooaaaaded with triggers as holidays often are for a lot of us. By Sunday night I was headed for trouble and by Monday, mid-morning I was....what they say..."a heated mess? A mess where heat is applied to it so that what once was a little messy is now very messy?" (name that line).  Look the reality is that shit happens to all of us, usually at inconvenient times. I think of overcoming PTSD as a project which takes up a lot of time and energy. But  even when you are involved with a project involving lots of past shit, shit can and does go down real time too.  It's the nature of living that we can't schedule our shit to suit us best. This is because most of the shitty life events are outside of our control.

And that can make us feel (and also be) completely out of control too. An out of control person in a crisis situation?  Well, look nobody wants to be that that person or be around that person or even know that person. You want a freaking pilot who is IN CONTROL when the plane starts having mechanical difficulties y'know? Not some freaking idiot who is shrieking about how modern planes are supposed to be able to fly themselves. It's just not an optimal thing.  I try hard not to be that person.

Yet there was no other way to describe me by Monday aternoon. I was Out Of Control and it was Not Optimal. And then as I scrubbed the walls and baseboards with soapy water, (the only productive thing I could focus on for any length of time whilst trying not to hyperventilate), it occcurred to me that because of the holiday weekend, I had completely slacked off on the careful daily habits I have cultivated over the course of my PTSD-ending Project.  And while I couldn't control the triggers and I couldn't control the shitty realities that had cropped up, I really can control whether or not I do my "Daily Disciplines" as I like to call them. And guess what else? They totally help me to become a competent pilot in the shitstorms of life.

I can also tell you that when my mornings are in control,  I feel pretty confident in my ability to keep my shit more or less together for the forseeable future..like, I feel pretty solid about the day ahead, come what may. Before I had these disciplines in place I felt really scared all the time. I couldn't count on getting through the day if it got too hard. That's not a cool way to live..and happily it's not how I live anymore. So long as I keep up with my disciplines. That's pretty powerful stuff. That's worth buckling down for a little bit isn't it?  For me it is. For me it SO IS.  So here I am to share with you what gets me and keeps me on the right track. Maybe all of these work for you too, maybe only one of them looks like something you'd like to try, or adapt to try. Disclaimer: daily disciplines are for everyone, if you have a mental health crisis in addition to this sort of thing you need to be working with care providers (which I do).

Here's what I'm going to ask you not to do. Not because it annoys me but because I want you to reframe the way you think about your life and its problems. If you are inclined to write to me and tell me how you guess you are just stuck with a sucktastic life because you can't do these things for xyz million different reasons then remember:  I'm not asking you to do these specific things.  I'm asking you to figure what disciplines you could employ to help you take control of your responses to what life hurls your way. So instead of putting energy into explaining why these things wouldn't work for you,  go ahead and put it into figuring out what will work for you! Deal? Deal! I'm bossy cos I love you. Without further ado:

Kirsty's Daily Disciplines.

1. Wake up early.
What?? No! I hate myself for typing those words. I am not an early bird. I don't understand people who love the early morning, I go to bed too late...blahblahblahblah. I need an alarm to get me up every single day. And it's dark and it's cold and I'm sleep deprived because I do like to stay up too late. And if I had to get out of bed early without some sort of accountability it's almost certain that I wouldn't. Because I am nothing against the power of a warm comforter and a soft pillow.  Which is why I have organized my life to have people expecting me and waiting for me and even paying me to get up early.  The sad truth is that successful people are almost always early risers. Dammit. Anyway, sunrises are really pretty and when my beautiful friend Stacey died in her 30's amongst
the words of advice she left were, "get up to see more sunrises". I like to think of her when I do.

2. Drink a big bottle of water first thing.  Life hack. When you are brushing your teeth every night, fill up a bottle of water, put it on your night stand. Upon awakening...drank. People. Dehydration. Is. So. Bad. It's bad for your body, it's bad for your brain, it's bad for your mood, it's bad for your looks, your weight control, it's bad for your breath it's bad. If in doubt, drink more water. FYI: Coffee is not water, milk is not water, soda is not water, juice is not water. Water is water. Herbal tea without caffeine is a closer substitute than the above things.  Water is not just good it's really critical for healthy functioning and so many things are going to start working better for you if you just buckle down and drink the right amount of water. Just Do It. Drinking room temp or warm water first thing in the morning is really good for your digestive system.  If I don't drink about 20 oz first thing, there's a good chance I'm going to keep on the path of dehydration all day which will lead to bad eating choices,  headaches, digestive issues and a super terrible mood. And that's just short term. If I do drink it first thing I just function better and I keep hydrated as the day goes on. Good things beget more good things. If you hate water  trick yourself into liking or at least in drinking it: imagine you are in the desert and the water is the oasis you have been dreaming of all this time and glug glug glug... or use a straw or buy a bottle you love (this battered Swell bottle is my constant companion, keeps things hot or cold for ages and it is really really sturdy. (I know because once I used it as a javelin off of my top balcony and it landed on my stone path and it's still being awesome). Anyway WATER. Drink more. Drink early and often. Life will get better for you. I promise.

3. Do yoga.  Yoga is a brilliant way to wake your mind and body up because it involves stretching, breath awareness and focus on the present. I can't possibly go into how many ways yoga is beneficial, you have the internet, look it up!  Literally everyone can do a little bit of  SOME KIND OF yoga every day. There are so many different poses and adaptations within those poses. I like the little ritual of playing  "Here Comes The Sun" to kick off my practice every day. I can't help but smile and feel comforted when I hear it. Even if you can only do one song's worth of yoga, you did it. It's so much better than nothing at all.  I chose this of my many yoga pics to share because I'm throwing down in jeans, with my jacket and my sunglasses off to the side on the way out of the door. Yoga doesn't require lulelemon pants and a fancy studio or a "yoga body". Just strike some poses where and whenever you can. They add up. A few sun salutations are an excellent way to get some truly beneficial stretches in and start your day off perfectly.

4. Meditate. Over the summer I practiced the very basics of basic zen meditation but with the school year being so much more busy and the weather not being as conducive and inviting to long practices outside in lotus position I turned to apps for help and variety. Head Space and Simple Habits both have very generous free trials to get you on your way (Simple Habits is currently 50% off for the yearly subscription), and they show how easy and accessible meditation really is. It takes no skill whatsoever. Exciting news! YES YOU CAN MEDITATE. Trust me, if I can do it, literally anyone can.  It's not about emptying your mind of thought and being some kind of levitating genius. Allow me to reiterate: Even I can do this. And I have the attention span of a gnat on crack ok? Meditation is not what you think it is, it really is a very simple process and what's more all the people you think are so amazing and calm and chill and accomplished probably do some form of meditation or another...try it out..it's powerful stuff, yo. I'm by no means a pro or an example to live by but when I found myself in profound distress on Monday I discovered my brain automatically switching over to some of the skills I have recently learned through meditation so...yes. It works.

5.Write in a journal. I write 3 pages in an A4 Moleskine journal with a lovely flowy pen every morning. Doesn't that sound so artistic and delicious?  Ah, I love Beautiful rituals! Someone taught me this "morning pages" concept about a year ago. And it's such a cherished, satisfying ceremony for me. But  then, I like to write, and I write quickly. If you don't you could maybe try to start with 5 things you are grateful for. Or write 2 intentions or top priorities for your day.  Since I've got 3 pages to fill, I manage to cover thoughts that are floating around, gratitude and intentions most days. But really, just the act of taking a pen and ink and putting your thoughts to page is the goal..at least for me

6. Make my bed.  I choose to ignore that study about how it's better not to make your bed,  but if you don't, there is nothing to stop you from smoothing your sheets, fluffing your pillow and pulling your covers back neatly so that you have an inviting place to return to at the end of the day. Creating order in the sacred space of  our room (I do consider our bedroom a sacred little sanctuary and I try to keep it beautiful and tidy because of that) is a very self nurturing and controlled way to start your day before you walk out into the chaos of the world. It's such a small but deliberate act of discipline which will signals to me that I am in charge of my day and that I'm capable of creating order out of chaos. It's a little thing that can make a really big
difference.





7. Have a nutritious easy to prepare/eat breakfast.  I give so much credit to my husband for preparing overnight oats for me since this spring or early summer. He's perfected the recipe for me over time and it includes so many amazingly

healthy things while still being perfectly palatable and delicious. If I skip my oats and coffeeeeeeee, things fall apart predictably around 3pm every day.  As I mentioned above, I am incredibly easily distracted, so having something pre-prepared, appetising, healthy and comforting to eat which will keep my blood sugar stable for many hours is a total game changer for me and probably for the rest of my family who don't have to deal with my irritability at 4pm when I realise I haven't eaten all day and suddenly am foraging for all the carbs, writing rants on facebook IN ALL CAPS and being super bitchy to all the people.

Well that's it for now. I actually have like 10 things but I'm out of time and the 7 seemed like a cool way to leverage off someone else's success so you get 7 ;) Tell me what your habits for being the competent pilot of your life are! I wanna knoooooowwww! Maybe I wanna copy them! Anything here you like that you think you might incorporate? Tell me that too. Tellllll meeeeeee!!!

You guys remember when I used to do Works for Me Wednesday?? Well it's Wednesday..these work for me! Ha! Nostalgia!

xox
k

Letting It All Be.

This morning I lay on the couch and I cuddled my precious little girl. Marveling at each of her delicate tiny features and listening to her carefully sounding out the words on her ipad to me and I realised. "She can read! She can really read. And she can write. She can express herself through the written word and she can read the communications of others. And that is a true miracle for any human being and it made me a little breathless. Just as it had when my mom pointed out that I could read when I sounded out "Hot Food" in the food court at Sandton City.

And then I watched as the glass window above the front door filled with a halo of white blonde hair and my youngest son, who is suddenly a man with a deep voice, hurried to pull it open and greet his oldest brother and I listened to them talk, they way men who are friends do. And I thrilled with joy when each of them came over to wish their little sister Happy Thanksgiving and listen to her with amused affection and leaned over to let me ruffle their hair which felt exactly the same as it had when they were 3,6, 10 years old.  And I just soaked in their camaraderie as they laughed and exchanged stories and jokes about Thanksgiving morning football games they had participated in years gone by and I thought to myself. This is my family.  And honestly looking at all these handsome grown men, I still feel like I'm playing a part of mom to teen-aged boys and a girl who has her boyfriend come over to help with the pies. I can't quite fathom that it's real. It feels like I dropped into a Folgers coffee Thanksgiving morning commercial to be honest.

I don't know if everyone feels like this or if it's because my life is so very white middle class TV-ad American and I'm still very South African. And I only saw scenes like these on TV rather than in real life?  Or perhaps it's just because I'm still in denial that my son is older than I was when I got married and so none of this can possibly be because I'm still 19?  I'm still 28 with 4 little children in matching outfits. Aren't I? And then my husband hands me a cup of coffee and he says, "you made all these people. Can you believe it?" And I'm like..."hey so did you and...nope."

But instead of feeling weirded out or panicked or wistful or wishful, today I allow myself to soak it in completely. To observe it and feel absolute wonderment and gratitude and joy that this happy, peaceful scene of perfect abundance is mine. Is mine! Is of my making and of my good fortune and of my love and the love of those around me. And of the love and the goodness and the hard work and the faith and the commitment and the forgiveness and kindness of everyone in my family, and everyone who had a supportive role in my family over the years through all of our good times and our many struggles and our day to day conundrums of having too many places to take too many children. Someone always stepped in.  The Universe has shown us a tremendous amount of grace and has  never failed to channel love our way and I don't know why but I do know that this love is responsible for everything so precious and perfect in my tiny sunny living room.  My tiny very humble living room with it's random assortment of donated and found furniture and the rug which is actually a big piece of fabric from a bolt I found for $5 at Goodwill and put on a rug mat I found at Big Lots and rejoiced because the widths matched EXACTLY,  this morning and I feel purely and entirely thankful.

At the beginning of this month I was committed to posting something every day. I was derailed by PTSD. I kept writing but it was for me.  And I had many other posts lined up in my drafts for today. But none of them wanted to be published. And long ago I decided that if my heart didn't beat a little bit more quickly when I considered publishing something I wrote, it was to stay in my personal folders until it did. But here's something I want you to read it's by Glennon Doyle and it was written last Thanksgiving Eve:

Here's what we do tomorrow
We stop trying to be the director of the family show
and we just become an amused audience member

we jump on stage when it's our line
we let everybody in the family play their role

we stop fixing, cajoling, judging, and lobbying

we stop hoping so hard and start accepting

we let it all be.

And here's something I want you to know. I have a beautiful, blessed life. And I am thankful for it. And a good deal of the time I also struggle with feelings of great sadness and I struggle with them so that I can enjoy the abundance that is real. And I'm getting so much better at winning those struggles but less than 48 hours ago I lay sobbing like a very little girl in my bed, under my covers. Feeling very sad and very, very, very alone and scared and lonely.   And I wished nothing more than that all the holidays would just disappear because they trigger my PTSD rather badly sometimes. But I also know that I have a family and I don't want their holiday legacy to be tainted by PTSD and so I figured out what would make this day the very easiest for me. And that meant deciding to cater in most of the Thanksgiving meal and handle only the parts that a very scared, overwhelmed little girl felt was doable.  And once I made that decision I felt more and more like a functional adult.  So if you are feeling very sad or very alone as you see pictures on social media of big happy families enjoying time together know that we all have our struggles. Everything is not as it seems.  Be very, very kind to yourself. Do whatever you need to do to stay alive and to be present and to enjoy the abundance that is in front of you. Because it is present for all of us in some form or another. Even if it is just a comfortable place to sit, a hot cup of coffee, running water and a bed where we can rest undisturbed. Shelter from storms and from vermin. Somewhere we can go to get food.  Whatever it is, recognize it and rest in that abundance and ask nothing else from yourself. And if you simply can't see any abundance because the sadness is just that overwhelming and the fear and panic feelings are just too real, withhold any judgment. Talk to yourself as if you would a small frightened precious child. Because that is who you are. And assure yourself that this too shall pass. And yes the feelings may come back over and over again but there will be breaks in the clouds and there will be sunshine and you only have to handle what is right in front of you on this day. And then find a distraction if you can. A friendly face, something to laugh at, something to do. Move your body. Get outside even if it is just to take the trash out.  See if you can help a neighbour in any small way. All these things help. They helped me a lot in the last 48 hours. We can do this. I hope you can feel my love and my warmth and my reassurance because it's meant just for you dear reader.

Much love.

K

The Person Who Inspires Me Most

You guys, I'm kinda nailing this November blogging thing. I'm just saying.

OK. SO:

You know those people who don't get impressed by anything? Well that's not me. Life can be hard and people are amazing. There are so many people who leave me breathless with their resilience, brilliance, bravery, dedication, creativity, strength, willpower, patience, capacity to love.  Over time, particularly in the last couple of years my inner circle has become extremely small and tight and there is not a single person inside of it who doesn't completely blow me away in some regard on a daily basis.  I feel like that's a good rule of thumb for who you want in your inner circle. You want your inner circle to make you smile from the inside out, to light up your soul in some way. You want your chosen people to be the type of people who make you drift away for a moment when you are interacting with them because you are marveling over how incredibly lucky you are to have them in your life.

Sometimes I will mention to a friend how I have replayed something they have said or done in my mind when the going gets tough and I need inspiration.  Usually they have completely forgotten the incident they had a part in which was so inspiring to me (that's good to remember, you never know who you are inspiring and how).

I am inspired by people I know and love also by people I don't know. Today, I watched the NYC marathon and got teary eyed along with everyone else as the female winner pumped her fist in triumph when she realised she had won. The first American woman in 40 years to do so.

Ripped from the pages of my facebook feed:
Her "FUCK YES ✊🏻!!!!" as she sprinted at the line...gave me a total lump in my throat. So I pretty much always root for the African but it was so apparent that she was having that one in a million perfect dream come true when every oz of everything you have sacrificed and suffered comes through for you at just the right moment experience and that kind of magic...it's just an absolute privilege to watch. 

Clearly, I can never relate to the thrill of being an elite major marathon winner, but I can most certainly relate to what it feels like when all the work pays off and you are also blessed with a good running day. Running is so unpredictable and in the course of 26.2 miles alongside thousands of other people, anything can happen to derail your dreams but today, it all fell into place for Shalane Flanagan and that was magical and so inspiring. Just the shot in the arm I needed as I have been struggling with a fearful and pessimistic mindset in my own marathon training. I want to feel some of that joy again. It's absolutely intoxicating. She was every little girl who had a dream's hero today.

But if you were to ask me which person I think of the most often when I am really at rock bottom, when the tank is empty, when I can't get out of bed, when I feel like the worst, most useless or ridiculous human being in the world and I really need to get over that and get on with it. The person who comes to mind is.....

Me.

Why? Because there is nobody I know more intimately.  There is no one whose struggles I am more closely acquainted with.  There is no struggle I can relate to better than my own. I know exactly what I have overcome, and how often I have triumphed in tiny and big ways. Sometimes it's as small as getting out of bed, and forcing myself to do some household chores before I collapse back into bed to sleep off the grips of a PTSD episode, sometimes it is taking my tired self out into the freezing cold to complete a difficult run, other times it' humbling myself on the mat as I get tossed around like a rag doll at jiu jitsu or being content to look completely inept at boxing, sometimes it's as big as giving birth or completing a 1/2 marathon or naming and facing my biggest demons, standing up to my abusers, walking away from things which are breaking me.  But every time something hard comes along, and I fear I will not be able to handle it, the most powerful and effective thing I know to do is remembering all the times I did.

Reminding myself that I have survived 100% of my worst most difficult days, and I will survive this too.  Allowing myself permission to start over, to ask for forgiveness from others, to accept forgiveness from myself.  Reminding myself that this too shall pass, like all the times it did before.  Conjuring up memories of all the times I thought I was done for, when in fact I wasn't.

Let me be very clear. I don't believe I'm any better than anyone else. But I know that my victories are hard won and I know they are legit.

Which is why, as I get older and wiser, the days when I'm feeling ok or maybe even better than ok, I try to make hay while the sun shines. I try to do as much as I can. I try to stretch myself, move out of my comfort zone, face a fear, do something new, express my love and appreciation fearlessly. I try to deposit as much as I can into  the Bank of Mama Said There Would Be Days Like This.

So that when those rainy impossible days do come, I can make those withdrawals from my archives of badassery, and I can remind myself of how awesome I am and how brave and tough and strong and fierce I can be when I need to be.

Here's my advice. Surround yourself with your heroes, always be looking for new ones, but most importantly, be your own.
xoxo