Good morning! Well I’m learning already about obstacles to getting to bed on time. I came across an obstacle last night. As I analyze last night, in a nutshell I ended up getting to bed one hour later than I planned. My goal is to be in bed with lights out by 10:30 p.m. I should know ahead of time that that’s going to be a challenge with a family having three teenagers still living at home.
This is what I ran in to. I thought I had prepared well so I could get to bed on time. It was on my mind. I was conscious of it.
First of all Halloween is coming and our kids are actively working on their costumes. My son Preston and I had gone on what we call a daddy date. About once a month I take each of my children on a date. We call it a daddy date. We go out and do whatever it is they want to do. Typically we go eat at some fast food place and go to a movie. But these days it’s hard to find a decent movie that we haven’t already seen. So we couldn’t find a movie to go to, so I asked Preston what we should do. We decided to go to a couple of the local thrift stores and look for costumes. Preston was excited about that. He’s my thirteen year old son.
When we got home Preston started pulling out his vampire costume and all the paraphernalia he had purchased and began trying it on. When my other son, Kenny, saw this he started pulling out his costume trying it on. I had purchased some items for my Halloween costume and so I started trying my things on. We were having fun trying on our costumes.
Now, in my family we have a longstanding tradition of having family prayer and scripture reading before we go to bed. We’ve done this since our children were babies. So I know that this is going to take place and it will last a good fifteen minutes or so.
So my goal was to get that process going by 9:30. I might do another blog entry some day on the concept of family prayer and scripture reading and why we do it and the experience we’ve had as a family. Like I’ve said, I’m a believer in God and I’m a believer in prayer.
So anyway, I began to call the children together to have family prayer. When I told them it was time for family prayer it was like pulling teeth because they were in the middle of doing all this and I was trying to get them to realize it was time to go to bed. There was still homework to be done and we needed to have prayer.
So that took time. It took longer than usual to get them ready. My wife had been gone that evening. She was refereeing a girl’s volley ball game. So when we were finally about to have family prayer she came home and so that delayed things a bit more because I asked her how the game went and how her day was. We finally got going with prayer. We were a little behind schedule but it still looked like things would be okay for me to get to bed on time.
So after prayer, as I was about to go to bed when my wife says, “Have you read the letter we got from Bryce today?” This is our twenty-year-old son who left recently to live in Taiwan for a few years. He had sent us a letter and a CD of pictures that I hadn’t seen yet. So my wife was like, “Oh you have to read his letter and look at the pictures he sent on the CD.”
That’s probably where I made my mistake. I should have said “I’d love to read it and see the photos but I’ll have to do it tomorrow morning.” But instead I thought I could do it real quick right then. The letter was short, just one page and that wasn’t a big deal. But the CD had 150 pictures on it. My son Kenny hadn’t seen the pictures either and so he wanted to see them. So we sat down at the computer. The computer wasn’t even on so we had to wait for the computer to come up, put the CD in, find the right folder and start looking at the photos.
I remember that as I was sitting at the computer looking at the photos I saw the little clock on the computer and saw that it was 10:45 p.m. and I realized then that I had blown it on practically my first day of trying to get to bed on time.
I thought, “How could I mess up so soon?” And like I explained on my other blog entry about getting to bed on time (Staying Up Late – Is it Worth It?) once you get past a certain point you think, “Oh well, I’ve blown it already so I may as well keep going.” So that’s what we did and went ahead and looked at all 150 photos on the CD. So by the time I got ready for bed and brushed my teeth, wrote in my journal and had prayer with my wife – by the time all that happened it was 11:30 p.m.
Okay, that was a very long description to tell you how and why I didn’t make my goal of getting to bed on time.
Now here is my evaluation of how to prevent that:
I should have stopped the process earlier. I was doing okay with getting the family together for prayer, but it was when I decided to read the letter and look at the photos – that’s where I blew it. That’s where my mistake was made.
So what were the results? The results were that I woke up this morning very tired. I was surprised how tired I felt. My alarm went off at five and I hit the snooze button and I didn’t get up until six. So I was behind schedule which threw my whole morning off and so again I’m paying the price of staying up late.
Now granted it wasn’t two in the morning, it was 11:30 p.m. But still, that one hour bumps everything and affects the whole next day.
So the point is you’ve got to be prepared. You’ve got to look ahead and plan because it’s going to catch you. Surprises are going to come up. Somebody’s going to knock on your door. Somebody’s going to call you. Something’s going to happen and it’s going to interrupt your routine or interrupt your commitment and your goal of getting to bed on time.
You’ve got to remember the prices you pay. Is the extra hour or two at night worth the cost? Keep in mind the costs.
Then you’ve got to plan – plan for surprises, plan for changes, plan for the unexpected and be prepared with your answers. Remember your commitment and just say “no.” Say, “I can do that tomorrow. I can do it in the morning. I can get up earlier in the morning.” Have your ammunition ready because it will come. The changes and surprises will come and you need to be prepared for it. I wasn’t prepared last night. So tonight I will be better prepared with this goal of getting to bed on time.
Master Yourself, Master Your Life
Thank you.
Copyright © 2008 Garold N. Larson