Lesson 2: On Your Mark!
Thirty-two years ago, as a high-school student, I walked to the starting line, took a deep breath, waited, and heard the gunfire. As I took the first steps, I thought of a running secret–something that I want you to know because it will help you find and keep better health.
The secret strategy that helps a runner find victory in any race is to make a strong start. Seems simple but imagine a couple of scenarios and you will understand how powerful this is.
Imagine that it’s near the end of a marathon. If you are 200 yards behind the leader; it can be very painful to catch up because you are tired and must now accelerate. But, to run quickly and to get 200 yards ahead of someone at the beginning of the race, when you are rested, and the other person is trying to conserve energy, it can be very easy.
At the beginning of a race–even a distance race–making a strong start puts you out in front.
Instead of making a strong start, in a day and in a race, many will say, “I have the whole day before me, I’ll just take it easy for now and then make it up by running faster at the end.”
But, then the end comes and distractions and fatigue intrude so that the race finishes with you behind with resolutions undone and with health dwindled.
As you start your day, in the efforts to find glorious health and miraculous healing, remember that a day is all you have. Live your life in “day-tight compartments.” And, know that the first 3 hours of the day are the most critical as you try to outrun the fatigue and bad influences and poison thoughts that will try to overcome you during the day.
Get ahead of these influences or they will outrun your resolutions and leave you behind in a day of missed opportunity and poor health.
Clear the Track
Those first 3 hours set the tone for the whole day. Those first three hours largely determine if your day will be health-giving or health-damaging, productive or non-productive, happy or sad, energized, or lethargic.
Schedule your wake up time to help protect those first three hours from draining influences and mindless chores. Resolve to avoid mindless chatter or even talking at all. Resolve to keep your environment, your mind, and your schedule clean so that the track is uncluttered before you and you can create a strong start.
Win the first three hours and you win the day.
Wake-Up Routine
You’ve learned about routines already as you studied the third Law of Health, Climb. It helps to consciously determine a wake-up routine and follow it so that you start the day with energy and focus and in the right direction.
Has the wake-up routine really been practiced by the thinkers and healers of the ages?
Read about the practices of the prophets and athletes and innovators and I think that you will find that the wake-up routine (though not usually called by that name) takes place in the life of most healthy and productive people.
The order of the wake-up routine and the ingredients will vary at different times in your life and depending upon different goals. Here are some common ingredients that others have used to find superior health and miraculous healing:
- Contemplate the goal of the day.
- Read something inspirational
- Write
- Eat something energizing
- Pray or meditate
- Stretch
- Walk
Seems like a long list to most. At times, it’s felt to me as if the wake-up routine (WUR) took so much time that by the time I finished the WUR, then it’s time to start the go-to-bed routine.
The WUR must leave time for your resolutions and for your recreations–waking up cannot be the main goal in life, it’s what you do to be ready.
On the other hand, the process of waking up can produce some of the most valuable products of your day. Also, many of the ingredients of a WUR can be done at the same time.
You will understand more as we go through the ingredients of the WUR. The first part of the routine is the resolution of the day.
“What good will I do today?”
Benjamin Franklin asked himself every morning, “What good will I do today?” The answer became his resolution for that day.
Hopefully, you’ve thought about this the night before as you did your go-to-bed routine because a purpose for waking up makes it much easier to wake up.
So, before going to bed, you think of what good you wish to do the next day. Ask that you be shown your highest purpose–the most valuable thing you could do. Then, upon waking, you take a look at that resolution. This process should only take a few seconds to a few minutes.
The answer does not need to be world-changing. Don’t wait to run until after you find a track worthy of you; make the part of the world in front of you better; make the world inside of you better; run the track in front of you and you have changed the part of the world that you most need to change. Then, as you make the part of the world in front of you better, you may be shown an extended vision of what you should do.
But do not wait for something that is worthy of you. Be worthy of what’s given to you today and more will be shown to you tomorrow.
Now, at the least, simply look at what you wish to accomplish by looking at that resolution written on a piece of paper. If you wish even more power, then spend time seeing the accomplishment of your purposes for the day in your mind’s eye and time praying about your purposes for the day before you even leave the bed.
Though you may have ideas about what you would like to see happen next week and next month and ten years from now, when you take your resolution of the day, it should be for what you wish to see happen for that day.
Tomorrow’s lesson will explain more about the ingredients of the WUR. For now, stop and ask (that’s right, do it now)–ask, “What good will I do today?”
Write that on a piece of paper and stick it in your pocket.
Close your eyes for a few seconds and see yourself doing that thing. Know that better health makes it easier for you to do what you resolve and poor health will hinder you.
Your healthy body is the tool that will help you do.
See yourself doing what you must to become more healthy so that you can accomplish your resolutions (do not worry about avoiding the bad, simply focus on what good things you will do and the destructive will fall away).
Now, you are “On your mark!”
BANG!
The gun has fired.
GO!
This is one of a series of lessons in the Law of Health: 10 Essential Steps to Glorious Health & Miraculous Healing
