Creatures of habit and routine
The feedback loop.
I woke up this morning at 5AM. It was the first time I have done that in over a month.
Why?
My cortisol levels were way too high for comfort. Resulting in unskillfully using my energy throughout the day.
While my stress levels were lower and my general disposition towards the day had improved, there was something that completely fell off the wagon.
These emails.
My approximate morning schedule used to look like this.
5 AM Wake Up
5:15 AM Meditate
5:50 AM Yoga
6:10 AM Write
When I woke up at 5AM it gave me plenty of time to get my daily disciplines done. But when I would “sleep in” to 7AM it left no time to indulge in writing.
I attribute this to one thing: sleep.
My sleep was affected by, believe it or not, the generators outside my window that powered the waterfalls in the courtyard. They are loud and they produce the waterfall effect until 11PM, which is perfect for the late night hot tub session, but not great for my beauty sleep.
Eventually I had enough. I went as far as to get a sound dampening curtain to block the incessant whirring coming from those awful noise makers just outside my window.
The moral of the story
Your environment feeds your mentality, and your mentality feeds back into your environment. It is a feedback loop where the only system interrupt is self-awareness.