What gets you up in the morning? Is it a genuine enthusiasm for the day ahead, an eagerness to meet whatever life will throw at you that day? Or is it that if you stay in bed, you don’t get paid, and you can’t have all the trappings of the consumer society we live in?
And does anyone ever actually ask themselves that question, or anything like it, anymore? And is it worth risking all you have, your job, your career, your future, for just a few extra minutes of pillow bliss? Well, sleeper’s in would have us know that Sir Isaac Newton’s First Law is that “A body at rest wants to stay at rest.” Or maybe it’s the challenge of waking up the two hundred plus bones, the six hundred and some muscles, the seven trillion nerves, or the forty trillion cells in the human body? But let’s not hide behind the science ay?
There are a million reasons to get out of bed, and a million and one reasons not to I suppose, for all of us to get up and about... maybe you just could not ignore the call of the bathroom any longer and seeing you were up, decided to get showered and dressed. Or maybe the cat was meowing, wanting fed, so you got up, fed it, and thought “Oh, what the heck, I’m up, I may as well get dressed. Or maybe it was the kids fighting, a hungry tummy, a need for coffee... they all happen, everywhere, every day.
But these are reasons to get up and out... what about motivations? Aren’t any of you motivated to get up and out, to get up and ‘do the business?’ Whatever your motivations or reasons for getting up, anxiety can make staying under the duvet rather more tempting than the alternatives, but that’s not a temptation we should ‘roll over’ for, and unless you are in traumatic recovery, it’s always best to get those feet on the floor!
When you have woken up, or been awakened by that persistent alarm clock, and are lying there making sense of weird dreams, and a dry mouth, the prospect of all you need to get done during the day ahead can feel, well... daunting, sometimes to the point of unmanageable. Deadlines, contracts, meetings, hirings, firings, sales targets, budgets, all scramble what we want to be an orderly life, and that doesn’t consider the family, friend, and social obligations we all have, of some description or another. It’s enough to make you want to just put that blanket over you, curl up, and hide, isn’t it?
But do you know what? You are the lucky ones! You don’t have genuine stress, anxiety disorders, or depression at the seat of your ‘discomfort,’ bullying or harassment fears lying in wait at work or school. In fact, it’s probably not rocket science to understand that when good things are happening in our lives we sleep well. Like when we are in love, getting good exam marks, or work is going well. Conversely, when work preys on our minds, when relationships go bad, and when your report card is all ‘F’s’ it’s hard to get a good night’s sleep.
Why is that? Stress is not a place we ‘go!’ Stress is the body’s very natural physiological reaction to distasteful stimuli and occurs when the body releases an over-supply of the stress hormone called cortisol which is the same hormone that wakes you up. Most of us regain our physiological balance quickly and carry on, but for many the cortisol awakening response, CAR, or dysania, does not pass, and the result is acute stress, clinical anxiety, or depression. We all have the potential to be affected by anxiety and depression, so don’t go laughing it off as a lame excuse not to get out of bed or go to work. They are real issues for today’s societies.
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