The nightmare before 5 am

Or why you shouldn't bank your success on someone else's rules

Photo by Prophsee Journals

It’s like going to Catholic mass at the crack of dawn.

Enneagram Ones like me live for habits and routines, even when they should allow themselves the space to be an emotional wreck. (Which I definitely was, after battling cancer with my husband, losing my father-in-law unexpectedly, and rage-quitting the job I spent years coveting and resenting as the years passed on.)

Yet instead of grieving like a normal person, I Marie Kondo’ed my entire house. Embarked on a new career that I knew next to nothing about, yet was determined to master simply to prove that I could. And for whatever reason, got the idea in my head that I could finally become a morning person if I followed Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning routine:

• Silence (Meditation)

• Affirmations (Because if you say you’re successful over and over, you’ll feel like it)

• Visualizations (Daydreaming)

• Exercise (Yoga or calisthenics)

• Reading (Self-explanatory)

• Scribing (Journaling—bonus points if you buy fancy pens and doodle in the margins)

I did it without complaint for the first week. The second week, I started later and later, thanks to the allure of hitting the snooze button three times in a row. The third week, I was so livid that I found myself in therapy complaining about it—and blinking in surprise when my therapist asked:

If you’re not enjoying it, why are you doing it?

It’s been six years since that moment, and I can’t help but laugh at how eager I was to adopt someone else’s best practices as my own. Because I can’t sit still for longer than two minutes, let alone quiet the internal chatter in my mind. Framing quotes and putting alarms on my phone with inspiring messages makes zero impact on my productivity. I take hours to see a vision, which is why I defer to my friend Jess to do it for me. The last journal I received as a gift immediately went to the giveaway pile (and I’ve since modified my stance on using them as part of my creative process.)

In other words, the entire point of personal development is to personalize it. To your circadian rhythms. To what works with your life. There are no straightforward answers to self-actualization or success—and if someone is peddling this advice to you, run in the other direction. The only guarantees in life involve showing up to do the work consistently, reading (or listening) widely, being open to experimentation, and questioning everything. Even though I despise affirmations, here’s one I would tattoo on my skin:

I will not bank my success on someone else’s rules.

What are your experiences with the self-help industry? Do you buy tickets to every Tony Robbins event? Or do you roll your eyes at the 24-hour RonCo infomercial the Internet has become with journals and card decks and courses designed to “transform your life”? Let me know in the comments.

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WRITE 👩‍💻

Is there ever a time a writer isn’t outlining their book? You’d think with all the craft books out there claiming their way is the best way, someone would call them out. Instead, we hoard them all, hoping it will be the method that gets us unstuck. Unfortunately, a blog post titled, “Experiment Widely, Fail a Lot, and Eventually Prevail” doesn’t get the same amount of clicks. Yet that’s exactly what I recommend to first-time novelists—you won’t know what works until you try them all. Here are my favorites:

• Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell

• Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody

• Blueprint for a Book by Jennie Nash

• Anything by Shawn Coyne

• Anything by Michael Hauge (but especially this interview with Will Smith)

LIFE 🌪️

Ever done a hard workout? That’s what having COVID feels like—muscles aches paired with a lingering cough and the worst brain fog of my life. My husband and daughter both spiked fevers, and I didn’t—meaning I was on the hook for the cooking, disinfecting, and reshuffling the calendar.

BALANCE 🧘‍♀️

Not going to lie: I lost my temper many times during that week and a half. Even with a raging fever, I would have killed for three days in a room to myself (I can barely get three minutes without my kid yelling, “Mama! Mama!”)

Yet I’m always reminded of how anger can move us towards deliberation. I’m finally accepting that my husband has even less wiggle room with his schedule than before (The perils of taking a leadership position at an early-stage startup) and that if I’m going to finish this book, I need professional help from a genre expert. (Another fun fact: Most high-performers rely on a handful of coaches to progress!) I’ll say more once the paperwork clears.

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👯READING 📚

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. He’s known for transforming the Beastie Boys from a punk band to a hip hop group (followed by a long list of production credits for other well-known musicians), and I’ve been waiting for months to read his take on the creative process—it does not disappoint. HOWEVER. If you don’t have a spirituality practice, you will be scratching your head. Even though I highlighted half of the text on my Kindle, most of the quotes make zero sense out of context, like:

There is no wrong way. There is only your way.

STREAMING ⏯️

The newest EP from indie-rock band The Aces. Sometimes it feels like my husband is uncovering a new musician every other day. In a surprising twist, this is one band that I can claim as my discovery. Perfect for fans of Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee and Taylor Swift’s 1989.

COOKING 👩‍🍳

Smitten Kitchen’s (dairy-free!) confetti cake. I didn’t have ingredients for the cream cheese frosting on hand, so we swapped for a vegan ermine recipe (kind of like if you cooked custard, let it cool, and whipped room-temperature butter into the mixture). The streaky texture was not intentional, which is why it pays to have bakery owner friends who can tell you why (Answer: My butter was too cold). Aesthetics aside, it was the perfect cheer-me-up dessert to break up the quarantine blues.

Cheers,

Sophia :)

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P.S. In case you missed it, here’s last month’s essay on the surprising link between standard operating procedures and deliberate practice.