{"id":146,"date":"2011-01-25T07:38:41","date_gmt":"2011-01-25T12:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/successrefresh.com\/?p=146"},"modified":"2011-01-25T07:38:41","modified_gmt":"2011-01-25T12:38:41","slug":"anything-worth-having-takes-time-and-why-change-is-so-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/anything-worth-having-takes-time-and-why-change-is-so-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Anything Worth Having Takes Time (and Why Change Is So Hard)"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Proverbs+10:4&amp;version=NIV\" target=\"_blank\">Proverbs 10:4<\/a> &#8211; &#8220;Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Proverbs+6:9&amp;version=NIV\" target=\"_blank\">Proverbs 6:9<\/a> &#8211; &#8220;How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep?&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong><em>I often say that if you want someone to tell you about yourself, read Proverbs. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So, after reading a few verses on laziness and Peter Shankman&#8217;s blog post on the <a href=\"http:\/\/shankman.com\/why-you-need-to-get-up-earlier-and-how-to-do-it\/\" target=\"_blank\">Top 10 Reasons to Get Up Early Everyday<\/a>, I vowed to do just that.<\/p>\n<p>I used to go to bed anywhere between 2am and 3am, then wake up around 9am. I felt as if I had rested, but I also felt a bit guilty that I lost out on most of the day.<\/p>\n<p>I used the excuse that I&#8217;ve been going to bed at that time since high school, so I can&#8217;t change. Not at all. So, my life, my business and my body started to reflect this.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>I still felt fatigued<\/strong>. I was getting 6-7 hours of sleep per night, but I didn&#8217;t feel refreshed.<\/li>\n<li><strong>It was getting more and more difficult to lose weight<\/strong>. It doesn&#8217;t help that my metabolism is slowing down now that I&#8217;m in my late 30s, but I found that I was doing more work for little results.<\/li>\n<li><strong>My business was not improving<\/strong>. In fact, I was slowly watching it go downhill.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I really wanted to wake up earlier, but I just didn&#8217;t know how to make the switch. I had worked on this schedule for decades and needed Divine intervention to help me change my habit.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>So, I prayed. Earnestly. I petitioned the throne.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And the next morning, God dragged me out of bed at 5:56am. Yay! I was able to get more done earlier.<\/p>\n<p>And I felt tired enough to crawl into bed around 9:30pm. I fell asleep by around 10:30pm.<\/p>\n<p>But the most curious thing happened. I had a nightmare. I haven&#8217;t had a nightmare in about a decade. Actually, the only time I have nightmare is when Satan tries to invade my thoughts, but that&#8217;s for another blog post.<\/p>\n<p>So, I had a bad dream. Actually a couple of them. Then, the next night after going to bed early, I had nightmares again. The series of bad dreams repeated itself for about a week.<\/p>\n<p>The whole experience left me shaken up, so I shared my thoughts with my mom. This is what she said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;Your body is not used to going to bed before midnight and it&#8217;s reacting to the change. Keep going to bed and waking up early. Very soon, your dreams will become pleasant again.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hmmm&#8230;my body was reacting negatively to the change and it was letting me know through my dreams (moms are so smart).<\/p>\n<p>Whenever you&#8217;re making a change in your life, everything reacts negatively at first.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you start working out, your body will fight it.<\/li>\n<li>If you start taking medication, you&#8217;ll get worst before you get better.<\/li>\n<li>If you quit your job and follow your dreams, your friends and family will discourage you.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Change is scary, but keep going because anything worth having take time. And eventually, your body, your friends and your health will get better.<\/p>\n<p>As for my dreams, I&#8217;m now dreaming pleasant stuff again. It took 2-weeks, but now, I&#8217;m tired around 9:30pm and up by 5:30am each morning. No more nightmares. My body is now at peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Proverbs 10:4 &#8211; &#8220;Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.&#8221; Proverbs 6:9 &#8211; &#8220;How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep?&#8221; I often say that if you want someone to tell you about yourself, read Proverbs. So, after reading a few verses on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-teller","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}