When You Wake Up, It’s Your Morning

Michelle Okafor
3 min readNov 28, 2017

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Photo by Lua Valentia on Unsplash

As I sit down to write this post, it is just after 9pm where I live. For some of you, you may have just woken up or you may be getting ready to go home after a long day at the office. It may, or may not have been a productive day for you. If you are just waking up, you have a choice to make the best of your day, or just begrudgingly crawl your way through it. It all depends on your circumstances and frame of mind. Are you in a job that you enjoy or are you working on your own business which is fulfilling? You may be at a job that you hate.

If the prospect of the day is not that rosy, have you sat down and pro-actively listed the choices you have made that led up to this day? Have you pinpointed the poor decision making, or are you blaming it on your circumstances? You are not living in the right neighbourhood. You don’t have access to all the resources and infrastructure to pave the way to the corner office or executive boardroom.

You have one thing though, this moment. The moment when you realise that there is so much more that you can do. The moment you realise that your future is entirely dependent on the very next step you take. Even if it is no step at all. But hopefully, this moment has jerked you upright and woke you from your sleep. You realise it is only yours truly who is keeping you from achieving the ideal life that you have mapped out for yourself. It is one thing to write the manuscript, but the beauty lies in the implementation. Is your manuscript collecting dust above the kitchen sink?

Time is running out. You are telling yourself you’ll do it when you settle down and get married, when you get divorced, when the kids are older, when the kids are not living at home anymore. When you end up where you don’t want to be, you will remember that there was a day like today when you could see ahead clearly, you knew what you wanted from life. You were ready to start. But just not today. Maybe tomorrow. Life gets in the way. A few years pass by. You look in the mirror. Your face has a few more lines. Your hair is either white or gone. One can work with the physical changes, you can still vaguely recognise yourself. But the changes in your mind take some time to get used to. You try to rationalise to yourself and all you feel is regret. I should have.

It will never feel 100% right, you have to trust the process. There are breakthroughs every day. New businesses are started. They may not even have customers yet. You have a few lined up. But you can’t open shop yet. They are only delivering the office furniture next week. Everything is clear in your mind now, but soon it will become fussy. Just a distant memory. Next time you will have to work so much harder just to get to this point. Because the excuses also compound. We all have only one life. Make the decision today to start living your best life. You can decide today that it is your morning. Or you can go back to sleep.

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Michelle Okafor

Writer of short, inspirational pieces. Make the most of your time here, for we pass this way only once. See the good in yourself and others.