How We Begin Our Day Makes a BIG Difference!

By Ostenso

A work started well likely has a better chance of finishing well than a work started badly. The same is true, one might say, for how we start our every new day. The way we begin our day likely plays a big role in how we go on to spend the rest of it.

How do you start your new day, generally?

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The way I start my day has undergone many changes over the years. I can’t recall exactly how I used to start every new day when I was a school-going child—that was so very many years ago—but it is likely that my day began with my mother telling me to wake up and hurry to get ready for school. I would get up, head to the bathroom and do what I needed to there, put on my school uniform, probably rush through breakfast and then head to school. On Sundays and other holidays, I suppose I was allowed to loll around in bed till quite late and get out of bed at leisure.

When I was older, I left home to join a college in another city, where I stayed in a hostel. I guess the way I began the day there remained somewhat the same as before. Later in life, I suppose this general pattern continued. But by this time, I had become a compulsive smoker, and I suppose among the very first things I would do on waking up would be to light up a cigarette and relax on the WC, sometimes taking the day’s newspaper with me. I had also developed a certain other bad habit, which I won’t describe here and which, if I remember rightly, had become a regular practice that I would engage in shortly after waking up and before getting out of bed.

What a dreadful way to begin the day! Mercifully, though, things were to change. But that didn’t happen without going through a lot of turmoil and major shifts in my way of understanding life and its purpose.

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These days, I get up early—considerably before I used to—and the first thing I generally do is to take God’s Name and share a few words with Him. I might wish God a good morning. Or, I might request Him to bless, guide and protect me and for Him to lead me to submit to His guidance. Only after that do I like to get out of bed. After visiting the bathroom, I heat some water to drink, and before I sip it, I thank God for it and make a few prayer requests. Then, I sit up in bed or in a chair and converse with God (this being what I regard prayer as)—this can take around half an hour or more. Only when this is over do I set out to do the other things I need or want to at that hour of the day, such as making my bed, having my coffee, preparing the day’s to-do list, taking a bath, doing my exercises and having breakfast.

I am glad that the way I begin my day now is different from how it used to be for most of my life so far.

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The way we start our new day tells us a lot about the way we are leading our life. It likely plays a key role in what we make of each day, and, in turn, in what we make of our life itself. Given how important the way we begin our new day is, it is helpful to consciously reflect on it and to make the changes in it that we might find necessary.