Reading in the mornings is my new favourite thing.
Before this, my routine used to consist of a small meditation that I sometimes missed, bathroom stuff and a glass of water. Then gym and the day really begins.
Reading my set 10 page minimum is a really nice pace change. I wake up, I’m fired up, I get ready and just before I leave the house I sit down and read. It’s like a mental calm down session, much like a mediataion.
It says — I am important to me, reading is important. Achieving my goals is important, the world can wait for me to do this.
As someone who used to always be hyper-focused on not being an inconvenience to those around him and never really prioritising myself, this is a breath of fresh air. It’s liberating and something I want to keep practicing.
Also reading daily is kick-ass. It’s an amazing way to slow down and take your time learning or exploring something. I don’t really understand why I read very little for so many years.
Also because reading 10 pages is a rather time consuming thing (most of the books I read have no pictures and have tiny font sizes), I often get a little anxiety when half the day has passed and I haven’t read yet. I start to worry about failing a day on my project 50 checklist. So getting this out of the way is great.
Most days, by the time I’m out of the gym, my only remaining checklist items are “no junk food”, “learn new skill” and “journal”.
So the day feels much more balanced. I’m liking this challenge thing. It has shown me how much more capable I am than I knew. How what I thought were my limits really were just tiny steps and that after climbing one, I can now see the next one and then the next and so on.