Sleeping patterns are not my friend. Just as with everything else, having a regular sleep pattern requires a little bit of discipline, and that can be pretty taxing, considering everything each individual has to work on every day.
Think about it for a second: At the start of the day, the responsibilities start with the heroic minute. This is the choice of whether you’ll jump straight out of bed after waking up, or if you’ll take the time to work yourself up to it. This is important; your decision can be what makes or break the rest of your day, or if you’re of a certain temperament, the rest of your week even.
The heroic minute is by no means a new concept. The practice of mortification by depriving yourself of that beautiful snooze button is an ascetic tradition, but St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, was the one who gave it the name. His meditation, published in The Way, reads so:
Conquer yourself each day from the very first moment, getting up on the dot, at a set time, without granting a single minute to laziness. If, with the help of God, you conquer yourself in that moment, you’ll have accomplished a great deal for the rest of the day. It’s so discouraging to find yourself beaten in the first skirmish!
The whole concept of the heroic minute is to get up on the dot, without giving in to the temptation of sleeping in. The whole idea is to give yourself a win at the very start of the day, to set the tone of the rest of your day. Now, I imagine St. Josemaria meditated on the heroic minute as an invitation to prayer specifically because as a priest, and as the head of a religious institution, he had quite a few evangelical responsibilities that were involved in the Liturgy of the Hours, therefore starting your day upon waking is both a sacrifice and a responsibility.
But for us common folk, the heroic minute is a conditioning tool to help us get in tune with the deluge of responsibilities and choices that we need to make throughout the day. By choosing to wake up, we accept the very first challenge presented to us by the universe at the start of our day—and perform admirably in the face of great difficulty.
And by doing so, you are setting your attitude for the rest of the day. You are choosing to say to the world that, “Today, I will be in charge of my life, and I will perform my duties to the best of my abilities.” In the teachings of St. Josemaria, this is important because The Work – another name for Opus Dei – is all about serving others through work, but you can choose to remove the religious overtones in the practice and there’s still something to be gained from it.
Winning over ourselves during the heroic minute is not a magic bullet. It won’t magically solve all of our decision-making problems, nor will it make these choices easier. But psychologically, it makes a difference, because as mentioned previously, it sets the tone you will be taking for the day. And having the right attitude is a win in itself.
This brings us back to my sleeping patterns. I don’t always win the heroic minute. In fact, it’s fair to say that in my case, there’s always usually a stalemate between my mind and my body as far as the heroic minute is concerned. This stems from my tendency to procrastinate, the volatile schedule of my work, and sometimes from other unforeseen circumstances that I have no control over.
But this doesn’t mean I will let my sleeping patterns stay the same way. This doesn’t mean that I will always be winning or losing the heroic minute by a razor-thin margin. I have faith in myself, and I know that eventually, I will be able to master the heroic minute.
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