So we all know about the dreaded "early to bed, early to rise" mission schedule. I know as teenagers/young adults going to sleep at 10:30 seems like such a drag and waking up at 6:30 sounds like torture. Believe me, when I was at school I often went to sleep after 2:00 a.m. and woke up after 10:00. A mission is hard enough without considering sleep loss into the equation. The MTC itself is a rigorous and exhausting experience. Do yourself a favor and get yourself into a schedule now.
So what is the missionary schedule? Well the basics (or at least what I'll focus on right now) are the wake-up, bedtime, and study sessions.
Wake up. Right now if you can would be a good time to get into the habit of waking up early. I know, I know, it's hard at first, but it helps it really does. Set your alarm, just do it. Set two or three if you need to. Here are some ways to make it easier. First, do something. If you just drag yourself out of bed and sit there, it's not going to work out. Right now my dad and I go to the gym at 6:30. This is nice because that's the next thing on the schedule, is a work out. Me and my dad work out for an hour, so a little different, but we can't live the schedule perfectly can we? It's nice to get the blood flowing and wake up. I don't go really intense, just walking stretching and a little bit of aerobics. I also use that time to listen to conference talks and Portuguese lessons. The other thing that helps is knowing your Circadian Rhythm. Sometimes when we wake up we're so exhausted that we can't get out of bed. To help with this, I use this little trick. When you hit the 12 hour mark of when you want to wake up, stop eating. In other words, don't eat after 6:30 at night. When your body has food to digest it slows down. If you give your body enough time to process the food you'll wake up energized and ready. Last of all, when I wake up tired I think about the Savior. I know, the whole What Would Jesus Do thing is very cliche. So I think more What Would Jesus Think of Me? I feel that if He saw me being selfish enough to sleep when I should get up He'd be disappointed. That thought makes me cringe and I immediately jump out of bed.
Bedtime. Don't mess about, go to sleep. It's that simple. Turn off the lights and sleep. I also have some helpful tips for this too. Firstly, yawn and stretch. In the half hour before you go to sleep, close your eyes, yawn and stretch your arms. Do this four times, spread throughout this half hour. This gets your body expecting sleep. You won't have as many problems with falling and staying asleep. Start now to get your body to associate different things with sleep. Don't do anything in your bed except sleep. If you shower at night, make sure it's somewhat close to when you go to bed. Make it an enjoyable routine.
Study sessions. I don't know about you, but reading the scriptures for more than a half hour is really hard for me. It's going to be difficult to read by myself for an entire hour, and then another hour with my companion. I'm still working on this, but trying to find something fantastic in your scriptures, or a very VERY specific goal always helps. The specific goal that I have (and have had for a couple years now) is to have something marked, annotated, or something written in the margins of every single page in the Book of Mormon. Every verse was chosen specifically for our day, so I should be able to find something on each page. If I start to get lost in the words I slow down and find something to mark. As for companion study, my mom is an excellent help. She is a seminary teacher and loves to talk about the gospel. We can easily have a conversation for and hour about the Atonement. If you can find someone to study with, do it!
Other habits you might want to kick, or get into. Sarcasm. Get rid of it as soon as you can. Sarcasm drives away the Spirit. I am horrid at this. I love to be snarky, to crack a joke at something, to make people laugh. Yes, it's all well and good in normal life, don't worry, but on your mission it's different. It's easy to drive the Spirit (and therefore investigators) away with a badly placed snarky comment. I've asked my family to help me be a bit less....that way. Anyway, moving on. Other habits. Technology. Try and leave it a lone as much as you can, same goes for music. The less input you have from these sources the better you will feel the Spirit. I'm not saying become Amish or anything, I am after all typing this up right now (while watching Dr. Who) but if you regulate yourself it will help you feel the Spirit, as
well as discipline yourself. Think about it, are you going to care what happened on Facebook today six months from now when you're wandering the streets of Rome with your companion? Probably not, and if you do, you'll probably hear about it in a letter.
Let's see, unless I'm forgetting something that's all I have to say for now. Sorry about the double post today but I felt this needed to be said.
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