Waking Up from Sleep

When I wake up in the mornings I sometimes lie in bed knowing that I should get up but not quite managing it. Zen masters say that when you wake up, then get up, don't even think about it. Occasionally I will be able to do this but more often than not the alarm goes off and I lie there in the semi-dark and snooze awhile. Tamdin never gets up early if she doesn't have to so I guess a part of me is influenced by her. She always says that sleep is the best medicine and I now think in many respects she is right. So many times in the past when I was younger I would get up early simply because I had it fixed in my mind that it was the right thing to do. What would happen on those occasions was that I would often be tired and irritable throughout the course of the day. Looking back now it seems clear that the reason for this was that my body had not had enough sleep the night before. It meant that on busy days physical exertion became painful and I would end up exhausted. These days I am better able to pace myself, to have that extra 1/2 hour or 1 hour in bed in order to feel properly rested, and more importantly to not feel racked with guilt for supposedly staying in bed too long. The benefit is that I now know from experience that I feel all the better for it and as a consequence I am less likely to bend under the pressure of those stressful situations which inevitably come along from time to time. I am by no means perfect of course, feelings of anger and agitation seem to be drawn from an bottomless well so easy to find, but hopefully I am moving in the right direction.