The Habit of Becoming

Emily Apuzzo Hopkins | April 10, 2020

When the stay-at-home suggestion came to be the default, it adjusted my norms and everything I grew to expect in my day-to-day. 

In the first week of working from home, I enjoyed the newfound freedom of sleeping in… to the luxurious hour of 6:00am. I found myself in that first week to be more lethargic than usual… a strange side effect I did not expect, so I backed up my alarm clock time to 5:00am. I felt better, but it was still not my normal wake-up time of 4:30am, so I thought, “Huh… maybe I do need to wake-up at 4:30am to actually feel my best.” 

And guess what? 

I was right. 

Going to bed around 9:45pm and waking up at 4:30am is when I feel like I am firing on all cylinders. That has consistently proven itself to be true and who the heck am I to argue.

The wake-up at 4:30am does not mean, however, that I start to work at that time. Definitely not. Not work in the typical sense that is. 

What I do “work” on is myself. I have started a morning yoga routine that has not only solidified itself in my schedule but has also brought me significant health benefits in just a short couple of weeks. I then move on to listening to an audiobook, scrolling through Pinterest, or writing. All of which is the “work” I had been having to find time to do in the past.

But now the quarantine has helped me to create that time. I was learning to cultivate it before, but I truly believe at the end of all of this, these habits will firmly plant themselves in my life as non-negotiables… these are the musts I have to integrate into my very foundation to be the best person I can possibly be. These healthy habits are not just something I do, they are actually making me the person I want to be.

I never would have imagined that it would take something like a pandemic for everything to really click. I was starting to understand this in the earlier part of this year, but now I have moved way past understanding to belief. I believe that all of these habits are making me a markedly better person… and yes, that includes my daily Pinterest habit ;)

So, what habits are you creating? What habits will you be keeping? And more importantly, who are you becoming as a result?