The Rediscovered Beauty of the Alarm Clock

Thanks to helpful human suggestions gleaned through social media, I ordered and now own the Moonbeam alarm clock.

It's cute, it's small, and it lives on my night stand. After setting up the alarm clock I left my phone downstairs for the night. I went to sleep and in the morning this thing loudly woke me up. It has one beep and it is not cute. However! I quickly turned it off and felt awake. I pet my cat for a bit. I slowly got out of bed. With nothing to distract me I decided to meditate first. I went into the office, sat on my meditation cushion, got out my mala, and did a 10 minute japa meditation sit.

And went about my day.

It was calm and intentional. It felt really liberating. I was choosing what served me instead of negotiating away from what drains my energy.

Our house has two bedrooms, one upstairs and one downstairs. In the winter, we sleep upstairs because it's warm and cozy. I placed the alarm clock in that bedroom. For those of you in the northeast you know that we are in a heat wave of 90 degrees in May. Thanks Climate Change. We moved down to our downstairs bedroom as that room has three exterior walls, more windows, and cross breeze. The alarm clock didn't move with us.

I set my phone as an alarm and went to sleep. In the morning the phone gave me a more soothing sound but when I rolled over to hit snooze I saw 10 billion notifications. I was already stressed. The screen was brighter. After hitting snooze a kajillion times I decided I would wake up. I started mindlessly scrolling through email and Facebook and the rest instead of getting out of bed. When I got out of bed, I'd wasted a good bit of time and had to hustle.

I had been discussing this whole process with a friend and felt like it was an issue of willpower on my part. She very generously phrased it as too much choice, which drains energy. That shifted my perspective. When I travel to places with limited wifi I feel FREE because I don't have to chose whether or not to engage with email and the rest. I can't until I seek it out and make it happen. Instead, all of that energy can be allocated intentionally.

That is exactly what I'm feeling in my mornings with the alarm clock vs my mornings with the phone. World's apart. Alarm clock wins.

I've just ordered one for the downstairs bedroom.