Anyone who has traveled a great distance across many time zones knows the experience of jet lag. Having returned to Louisville just after midnight Friday night, my body still isn’t back to a normal schedule. Since China is 12 hours ahead of Louisville, readjusting those 12 hours takes a while. I ended up sleeping much of the day Saturday, only to then be awake until 4:30 Sunday morning. I forced myself to go to bed Sunday night at 3:00 a.m. and at 2:00 a.m. Monday night, having crashed for a nap after dinner nightly.
It was helpful for me to have to get up before 6:00 a.m. yesterday and today to be at work by 7:00. Forcing myself back into the routine will help regulate my body. I didn’t expect it to take this long, however. I mistakenly thought I’d catch up on some sleep over the weekend and be my normal self by Monday. Oops.
The act of getting up today when I didn’t feel like it, and the repeat performance the past couple of nights of forcing myself to bed by certain times are reminders to me of the value of imposing some disciplines in my life and routines even when every bone in my body and most voices in my head say to do otherwise. That still doesn’t mean I follow all the disciplines I should, however. I’m not quite the disciplined character I watched last week in the Beijing theater performance of “The Legend of Kungfu.”
I wrote in a previous post on this blog that sometimes we need to act our way into the right feeling. Feelings aside for this topic, overcoming the jet lag is a reminder that we also need to act our way into the right disciplines, schedules and routines. It may not be what we want or what feels right at the moment, but it is what is right for the long haul.
What disciplines do you need to perhaps force yourself into in order to eventually be where you want to be? We can’t get where we should go just by following what feels right in the moment.
Leap year lesson #118 is Sometimes you have to force yourself.
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