Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

counts. Even five minutes of mindfulness practice in
the morning can be valuable. And even five minutes
of sacrificed sleep is likely to put you in touch with
just how attached we are to sleep, and therefore how
much discipline and resolve are required to carve out
even that little time for ourselves to be awake without
doing anything. After all, the thinking mind always has
the very credible-sounding excuse that since you will
not be accomplishing anything and there's no real
pressure to do it this morning, and perhaps real
reasons not to, why not catch the extra sleep which
you know you need now, and start tomorrow?
To overcome such totally predictable opposition from
other corners of the mind, you need to decide the
night before that you are going to wake up, no matter
what your thinking comes up with. This is the flavor of
true intentionality and inner discipline. You do it
simply because you committed to yourself to do it,
and you do it at the appointed time, whether part of
the mind feels like it or not. After a while, the
discipline becomes a part of you. It's simply the new
way you choose to live. It is not a "should," it doesn't
involve forcing yourself. Your values and your actions
have simply shifted.
If you are not ready for that yet (or even if you are),
you can always use the very moment of waking up,