Welcome back to our “best of…” series. In this week’s vlog, I talk about how people who stick with their Bright Lines long-term tend to get very particular about the hours between sunset and bedtime. I’ve experienced this myself. The longer I’m in food recovery, the more care I give to those pre-bedtime hours. Why? Because a Bright Day starts the night before.
Why We Start With the Evening Habit Stack
In our Boot Camp 2.0, we do week-long modules on the morning habit stack and the evening habit stack. They are both incredibly important for living a Bright Life. We don’t start with morning, though, but with evening. That’s intentional, and it’s because our day begins at sunset, not morning.
We’re not unique in believing this. In both the Jewish and the Baha’i faiths, the day begins at sunset, for example. If you think about how life is, you might begin to agree. Good and bad days don’t begin fresh when you wake up. Anyone who’s woken up with a hangover knows this is true. The same for anyone who’s woken up from a good, long sleep, because they got to bed on time. Our Bright day is the result of what we did last night.
The most obvious example of this is whether or not you wrote down your food the night before, planning out what you’re going to eat today. If you wake up and already know the food is prepped and ready, you are so ahead of the game. If you wake up and don’t know what you’re eating, and have to make decisions throughout the day—good luck. You may make it a Bright day, but it’s harder.
The day we have today has everything to do with the night we had before.
“Shut Down Complete” Helps You Transition
Here are a few notions to help you end your day properly. The first is the idea of “shut down complete.” This is a saying by author and computer science professor Cal Newport. He talks about shutting down the workday by making it very clear that work is over and you’re transitioning to your home life.
People who work out of the house—say, at a retail store in the mall—have a “shut down complete” when they finish their shift and leave their workplace. If you’re like me and work from home, it’s much harder. I often log in to my computer right before bed. I don’t have a clear “shut down complete.” This is a growth opportunity for me to work on in my balanced, Bright Life.
A “Digital Sunset” Can Also Help
Another concept is digital sunset. This refers to shutting off your technology at least an hour before you plan to sleep. You want to avoid blue light in your eyes, but also the mental stimulation of clicking and scanning and scrolling, so you can switch from being a human doing to being a human being.
The Magic of the Evening Habit Stack
Writing down your food the night before, getting to bed in time to have a good night’s sleep, and having an evening habit stack that perhaps includes inspirational reading—I love Rumi for this—all can help. I write in my journal every evening and read in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Brushing my teeth, prayer—these are part of my evening habit stack, too. And when I do all that, always in a certain order, I am the recipient of the gift of a Bright new day.
I want to throw this out to you so you can consider how you manage those evening hours, to set yourself up for an amazing, Bright day.
The Day Begins at Sunset was originally published on August 2, 2023.
