Welcome to SPARK Day 11!
Well, after Tuesday’s focus on morning routines (and, dang, I must have been ready to get my morning ritual going again because guess who woke up bright eyed at 4 am on Tuesday? That would be me. And then I promptly finished two books that I had started reading ages ago. My first two books read in my 40th year), you must have known that this was coming. It is time to create our personal wind down routines.
As intentional as I am most of my day, that intentionality falls apart at bedtime. It is like I am uber-focused until I walk into the bedroom and then I plop down in bed, play something off the DVR while answering email or playing Lucky Wheel for Friends and then I remember that I still need to wash my face, take my allergy medicine and vitamins, take out my contacts, and brush my teeth and I think, “I don’t wanna do all that” and so I brush my teeth and take out my contacts and call it a day.
Fortunately, I don’t do that all the time but I do it enough to know that my bedtime routine isn’t working for me. And maybe yours isn’t working for you either.
So, today, I want us to come up with a list that feels like the pre-bed self-care that we most need and then I want you to apply it to actual times (because it starts to really illuminate when you need to start the process to feel ready for lights out). For me, it was easiest to do this backwards, but here is what I landed on and will begin to practice…
10:30 Lights out/Bedtime
10 pm Television Off, Record a sentence of reflection or appreciation about the day in Happy’s journal, then read!
9 pm Enjoy television, play Lucky Wheel, visit Pinterest, chat with BF about non-logisitical items. Do not answer emails.
8:30 pm Tackle all the care items: do a favorite stretch or two, take out contacts, wash face, moisturize, take meds, brush/floss.
8 pm wrap up final house chores including any final emails for the night.
Ideally, I really want to move to the point where I am going to bed at 10 instead of 10:30 but I stayed up late much of November and December so I feel like I probably need to really get into the habit with 10:30 for a bit and then move bedtime a little earlier.
What about you? What needs to go into your bedtime routine? What time do you want the lights out?
