The fifth book of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations opens with a Roman emperor who doesn’t want to get out of bed.
He had an empire to run, and even so, some mornings he had to talk himself out from under the covers. So he wrote himself a note, the kind you’d only ever write for your own eyes. When he was rising unwillingly, he told himself to hold one thought in mind:
I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Five, translated by George Long (1862)
I love that a man with that much power still had to argue with his duvet. It means the rest of us are in good company.
The exciting mornings look after themselves
Ever noticed how easy it is to get up when you’re waking up to something you’re excited about? You don’t need an alarm on those days. You’re up and ready before it goes off.
The trouble is the other days. The days where the duvet feels so cosy that the world outside it can wait, and the things you know you need to do are the things you least feel like doing.
Nobody gets excited about the foundations
Think about a house being built. The part everyone looks forward to is the end: the keys, the kitchen, the first night in. Hardly anyone gets excited about the foundations being dug. It’s slow, it’s muddy, and once it’s done you can’t even see it. Yet everything else rests on it.
Life works the same way. The simple things you get up and do, day after day, are the building blocks you need in place before anything starts to take shape. A walk every morning. A few push-ups. Ten minutes of journaling, a few pages of a book, a bit of meditation. None of it looks like much on its own. Put it together as a morning routine, a ritual you actually keep, and it sets you up for the future you’re working towards.
That’s where the real work is.
Know where you’re heading
So what makes the not yet fun stuff worth doing? For me it comes down to being clear on where you’re trying to get to, or at least the direction you’re travelling in. When you know what the foundations are for, the walk in the rain has a reason. It’s one more brick in something you actually want.
That was Marcus’s trick. He didn’t wait until he felt like it. He reminded himself what the day was for, and got up to do it.
The promise nobody else heard
On the days I let my routine slip, I feel it later in the day. And when I’ve promised myself I’ll get up and go to the gym, then don’t, it leaves a mark. Nobody else knows. Nobody’s disappointed in me. Somewhere underneath, though, I know I didn’t do the thing I said I’d do.
Every promise you keep to yourself is evidence that you’re becoming the person you want to be, and every one you break quietly makes the case against you. Keeping commitments to yourself is how you build that person, one unwilling morning at a time.
I said on stage a few years ago that the quickest way to get rid of all your excuses is to take action. I still believe it. The excuses are at their loudest while you’re lying there thinking about it, and they tend to go quiet once your feet are on the floor.
If you want to go further with the small daily habits that do the heavy lifting, I wrote about them in Nothing Changes Until You Do.
And for what it’s worth, on the days I’ve reluctantly dragged myself to the gym, I’ve always been grateful that I went.
