The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.
The key to forming good habits is to make them part of your 'rituals.' I have a morning ritual, afternoon ritual, and Sunday ritual. It's one way to bundle good habits into regular times that you set aside to prepare yourself for the life you want. Rituals help you form habits.
My natural state is to be happy. I'm naturally buoyant. I wake up feeling, 'What a great morning!' I've had some tragedy in my life, absolutely, but I don't know one human being who hasn't. You either learn from it and become empowered by it, or you become a victim to it. It's life, after all.
The morning after my high-school graduation found me up early job hunting. The dream of college I put on the back burner.
Burning desire to be or do something gives us staying power - a reason to get up every morning or to pick ourselves up and start in again after a disappointment.
I remember my first 'Sports Illustrated' shoot was with the photographer Walter Iooss, and Julie Campbell was the editor, and we were at the president of Mexico's private house in Cancun - this was before anything else that's now in Cancun even existed. And they told me to get a tan, so I spent all morning in the sun, and I was burnt.
If you want to devote yourself to the arts, you'd better do it strictly from passion, because there is zero guarantee that you'll get anywhere. The hardest thing is dealing with business people who have nothing to do with your art. They could care less that you're up at 4:30 in the morning writing a joke. Don't expect any sympathy from anybody.
I get up at 7:30 and work four hours a day. Nine to twelve in the morning, five to six in the evening. Businessmen would achieve better results if they studied human metabolism. No one works well eight hours a day. No one ought to work more than four hours.
And if small businesspeople say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else worked seven days a week in their place. Nobody showed up in their place to open the door at five in the morning. Nobody did their thinking, and worrying, and sweating for them.
He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life.
It takes a long time to drag myself out of bed, and at night I'm buzzing. As a young man it was helpful, but now I'd like to be tired when I go to bed and alive in the morning.
When I get up in the morning, I look forward to the games and I'm just buzzing. At the end of the day, if you are nervous or scared before games, you are not going to perform. I just go out there and think, 'If I get a chance, I'm going to score' and that's it.
This is what I grew up on in Alsace. It's choucroute. I'd wake up every morning with the smell of cabbage and potatoes and pork.
I'll get home from work on Friday night and take out some beans and soak them. The next morning, I'll put them in a pot for soup, then just keep chopping, chopping, chopping - carrots and celery and cabbage - and in two or three hours, you have this wonderful, mellow soup that fills up the whole house with its aroma.
But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.
What I try very hard to do is have an hour or so in the morning when I leave the house and don't have my phone with me. I'll go sit in a cafe and read and handwrite in my notebook and not be facing a screen. My head will be clear. I will be able to hear myself think. Because honestly for the rest of the day it's just screens, screens, screens.
I love Starbucks. Maybe that's a bit sad. But I definitely need my caffeine. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning.
Coffee... The caffeine in your morning coffee stops an enzyme called amylase from working correctly, which is located in your mouth and gut, and breaks down starchy carbs.
I'm active even on bad days; it's tough to pin me down. People ask me if I'm a morning or night person. I'm an all-the-time person. I like drinking coffee, but I do it with lots of milk because my energy levels are high even without caffeine. You could call me Obelix, except I don't have a belly.
Disappointing cakes have often been sitting out too long. They should last just long enough to have the last pieces the next morning with coffee - who doesn't love cake with coffee?
