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Thursday, August 7, 2014

I begin each day of my life with a ritual.



Thoughtsnlife.com :I begin each day of my life with a ritual.


"I begin each day of my life
with a ritual:

I wake up at 5:30 A.M.,
put on my work out clothes,
my leg warmers,
my sweatshirts,
and my hat.

I walk outside my Manhattan home,
hail a taxi,
and tell the driver
to take me to
the Pumping Iron Gym
at 91st Street and First Avenue,
where I work out for two hours.

The ritual is not the stretching and weight training
I put my body through each morning at the gym:
the ritual is the cab.

The moment I tell the driver where to go,
I have completed the ritual.

It's a simple act,
but doing it the same way
each morning
habitualizes it -
makes it repeatable,
easy to do.

It reduces the chance
that I would skip it
or do it differently.

It is one more item
in my arsenal of routines,
and one less thing
to worry about.

Some people might say
that simply stumbling out of bed
and getting into a cab
hardly rates the honorific 'ritual.'

It glorifies a mundane act
that anyone can perform.

I disagree.
First steps are hard;
it's no one's idea of fun
to wake up in the dark,
stare at the ceiling,
and ask myself,

'Gee, do I feel like
working out today?'
But the quasi-religious power
I attach to this ritual keeps me from rolling over
and going back to sleep."

SOURCE:

"The Creative Habit"
- Twyla Tharp
Simon & Schuster

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