The First Five Minutes Protocol - part two

Winning Your Day Before It's Begun. - 6-minute read.

In part one we spoke about a remarkable small window of time that can be utilized well.

So how do we do this?

Consider writing.

Do you like it, love it, or partly okay it?

Are you obsessed with it or live in denial of it?

A lot of you like reading good writing and that also works as a way for good meditative practice in our early morning waking hours.

That’s why the right selection of what you read matters, and more importantly that it is not involving reading anything off the screen of your mobile phone; the distractive presence of one thing leading into another and rapidly on scroll replay to keep you engaged without any incentive for your own productive day.

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👇^{Read the article: “Are You a Void Reader?’ *}

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👇_{See the article: ‘Read a book and Stop Scrolling,’ **}

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If we think about what Marcus Aurelius used to do each morning to make the most of his first five minutes, it was writing.

Why?

This quiet space of time was when he could truly be alone and tune into himself.

And he could do this readily without such things as electronic contraptions like we have now of course, but it didn’t mean he didn’t have much to distract him each day in general.

He chose to make these early minutes work for himself before the day seized his attention with the governance of seventy million people and military campaigns.

He is taken as way of example for how to better your own first five minutes because in comparison with your own life responsibilities, it’s not going to well compare to his, is it, but the discipline that somebody so powerful and in demand could employ shows that if you were to apply the same strategy, how it will naturally be much easier.

And that should feel like an early win.

Modern day therapists will use the method of writing a letter to yourself to help you sort through emotions and clear mental blockages.

But what if you took the practice of writing to yourself as a raw and unfiltered process that could be something deeply personal without the fear of losing your mind in the process?

Place that practice in the early morning hypnopompic window, and what do we have?

An intentional daily action to completely change the outlay of your day ahead.

We don’t want to use this time for strategic thinking or monitoring inner policies of what should or shouldn’t be happening though.

It’s not about carving out a daily path of rigidity for us and others.

Have a day scheduled and a routine in place sure, but don’t allow this to interfere with the sacred first five minutes.

Applying attention to the small window you have is not so it can be wrecked, or you will feel wrecked despite how much planning and scheduling you want to fulfill.

Again, the emphasis is placed on the first five minutes of your waking hours as being not unlike being in a meditative state.

If I mentioned in passing to you that there were some people practicing meditation in the park, what picture does that invoke?

Think about the state of mind those people would need to be in to be able to meditate. Don’t focus on how they appear so much- by what they might be wearing or the state of their hair, this is not the point of what is being said.

We want to think about what it means to have a meditative mind or to act mindfully which is acting with an ongoing awareness of what certain actions will entail for mind and body and others around the self.

So, we take the act of writing for self.

Each morning Aurelius wrote down meditations like an outward expression of the inner dialogue.

He never intended for his collection of philosophical rantings to be shared publicly but of course, as it happens with influential persons like artists or sculptures who indulged in their craft for themselves, after these individuals have passed, their legacy remains and others benefit.

To begin this practice for ourselves, let’s examine a snippet of Aurelius’ journal translated to the English:

“Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.’’

Now, this self-talk at first seems less then productive, after all who wants to be around people like that?

But it was an acknowledgement of who was to cross his path, something that was beyond his control, he disliked it, hated it perhaps, but it wasn’t something he could change.

So, he wrote it out rather then fester on the fact,

The very act of doing this actually is considerably therapeutic because it equally involves the efforts of both mind and body to formulate a motion to address the negative aspect of any day ahead with courage, fully equipped with a visualization of what actions ahead of such encounters would be taken.

By anticipating the worst, Aurelius actively prepared his philosophical response.

After doing this, the man rose and met the day.

That’s powerful.

It serves as a productive model.

The manuscript he formed was not the model though, nor was any list of gratitude but it proved to be a genuine philosophical reckoning, and it can be for you too that assists with who you are and who you intend to be.

Those things before the inbox or the school run or the first meeting at work, or appointment for something or someone else.

This before anything demands a single thing from you.

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The practice of setting a daily intention before rising.

I want to be clear that this practice in itself is not about making a list of goals.

Perhaps you are one of those people at this point who has had the thought, ‘ok this must be what it’s getting at, wake up and first thing grab a pen a paper and scrawl down daily reminders or goals.

No, that’s not it.

You can take time for that during the day before but never during your first five-minute window.

What we are aiming for is character intention.

This distinction is everything.

To clarify:

A goal is external and outcome-dependent, right?

A character intention is internal and entirely within your control.

Hence, we join the loop here, going back to the question on how anything intentional can actually be planted inside the five-minute window if none of us are fully conscious yet during it.

Here’s the key.

Knowing the distinction between what is in your control and what’s not, needs to take place first.

This means that during the day when you are consciously in control and you are practicing your character intentions in response to what is likely to realistically occur that day, you are also actively balancing the intention of being an observer against carrying out what you must, which when you are, will take up your focus at that time, so when it is time instead to be silent you are intentionally silent, in order to learn what it is you do and do not like and how your mind and body are responding.

You are taking mental note; you agree to pay more attention to the why’s and why nots with the goal to self-improve and adapt.

You therefore manage what you can control and let go of what you can’t.

Now, all of that might sound overwhelmingly intrinsic if generally you are not deeply philosophical, but you respect the overall ethics of certain philosophical pointers.

But that needn’t disappoint you because like anything worthwhile in life, the things that take concerted effort are the things worth having and are what will remain with you longer then anything else.

You can reasonably accept that unforeseen outcomes can sometimes disrupt otherwise peaceful circumstances.

It happens to all of us.

It is beyond our control, but our reactions are not.

Who you choose to be in response to anything in your life remains always yours. No matter what others are or are not doing around you.

Remember this:

“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.”

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Cont. reading part three.

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