Why 1,000 Good Mornings?

There is a teacher in the town that I grew up in that begins each one of his early AM classes by welcoming his students with the phrase, "1,000 good mornings to you all." I never had this teacher (I went to a small private school), I have no idea what he even teaches (or whether he is even a good teacher) and I'm not sure if he is even still at the school.

I've never actually heard him utter this phrase, friends of mine have told me about him.

For some reason these words have stuck in my head (as evident by the title of this blog). It's not as though what he is saying is terribly profound. He's basically saying "good morning" 1,000 times over. But for some reason i really like it. There is something optimistic about it.  It makes me think of mornings like this one (taken from our honeymoon in Aruba).

It makes me think that today may actually be a good day.

I think it's the optimism in the phrase that resonates with me. You could probably categorize me as a "reluctant optimist."

I've just started doing yoga. Well that is a little bit of a stretch (no pun intended). I do yoga once a week with my wife. Honestly...I hate it...but I LOVE it. Every time we get ready to downward dog and anstunga salutate I think to myself, "this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever done." But you want to know something, as soon as we are done, I'm always glad we did it.

In a way, I think the phrase, "1,000 good mornings" is a lot like yoga. Lets face it, we have all had days that suck. I mean, really suck (see left). But for some reason the phrase sort of forces you think that today may be actually turn out OK. There are days that I force myself to do yoga and I always feel better for it. In the same way, I think there are some days that you have to force yourself to get out of bed and just keep going. But you usually feel better after doing so (by the way, my reverse warrior is stellar).

I'm actually somewhat prone to really bad days. I have wrestled with depression over the last six or seven years. I have some really good days, and I honestly have some really awful days. I wish I woke up every morning feeling like this (right), ready for the day. But I'm not always able to do that. I'm not always that optimistic. But I'm working on it, and I do hope to get better. I think this blog helps me think through these things. I hope maybe, it can make the one or two other people who read this feels a little better also.

Soooooo, that's why this blog is called "1,000 good morning."

It's kind of like yoga.