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Those few seconds when I first wake up are wonderfully untouched. My life is easy, the day stretches out ahead and miraculously, I feel pretty good. And then the issues of the day intrude on that special time. It is easy to lose that good feeling quickly when I start to remember what has happened, what has to still happen and how it all affects me. It’s a lot to think about and my brain tends to fly faster when it is well rested. If I don’t contain those thoughts, they can overwhelm me and ruin a perfectly good day before it has even had a chance to begin.

Laying back for moment and really holding on to the good feelings can help me prolong the initial light-as-a-cloud thoughts. But reality has a way of creeping in when you least expect it. I want to be the kind of person who can hold on for as long as possible to the good things and keep thinking that I just have to practice harder. It isn’t easy. But I like doing the hard things. I like challenges.

When I was younger and came home from school, there was the expectation that homework should be done but no one yelling at me to do so. I still did it. I always wanted to do the hardest homework first. I may have been trying to get it over with but I’m not sure I put too much thought into it and just went ahead with the hard part because that is what I liked to do. The easy stuff could get done quickly after. I don’t know why I preferred it that way.

Now, I still try and get the hardest part of any project done first. It must be innate. I must want to get it over with. When I think about this ingrained habit, I know that moving ahead with a project can be perceived as the “better” choice. Working and appearing industrious has always been more acceptable in our world. The opposite often gets slapped with less spectacular adjectives. So, doing the hard thing gives me the edge. The question is really if the decision to make the more acceptable decision is made to benefit me or demonstrate my preference. Since I have always done it this way, maybe it’s just me. And it might not mean a thing either way.

Thinking back to my wake-up process, I think I have a way to stretch those few moments a little longer. Since negative bias accounts for why dangerous or stressful things pop up easily in my brain, I am going to do the hard thing. I am going to focus on the good that I feel at the start of my day. I am safe, loved, well fed and have been given a great gift – another day of life. Since it’s harder, I might be good at it.

What feelings arrive with the alarm in the morning? How can changing those few moments change the entire day? Can we make the start of everyone else’s day better by not being negative right away?