Opinion: Ngahi Bidois shares why it is important to make your bed each day

Ngahi Bidois learnt the importance of making his bed early on but the benefits of that teaching affect him today. Photo / File

Comment: Ngahi Bidois

In my younger years my parents and grandmother taught me many lessons. However, sometimes it was not until years later that I realised the true meaning and value of what they were actually teaching me.

One of those lessons was making my bed.

Nowadays, making a bed usually means throwing a light duvet over a sheet but when I was a child I had sheets and heavy warm woollen blankets and a bedspread that went over the top of all that.

Making my bed was a mission, especially if I'd had a restless sleep and had kicked the blankets off during the night only to pull them back over me in the wee hours of the morning.

Years later I have realised the lessons learnt by making my bed and I would like to outline some of those for you.

Making my bed meant I had achieved my first thing at the very start of the day.

Ngahi Bidois on the importance of making your bed. Photo / File

It encouraged me to achieve other things during that day and even now I am not satisfied unless I have done something of worth and value each day.

However, if I did not achieve anything else then at least I had a nice bed, that I had made, to get back into at the end of that day.

Making my bed also taught me my word for this year which is 'gratitude'.

I was grateful to even have a bed to sleep in. I was grateful that my bed was warm and I was grateful that my bed was a place of safety.

Making my bed taught me to respect my bed and the safe environment it created for me.

Respect for my bed led to respecting and looking after many other things in my life. At that time it was things such my toys, sports gear, bike, fishing gear and later on stuff such as vehicles, businesses and homes.

Looking after my small single bed meant that I was entrusted with caring for other things of higher value and more responsibility.

I have no doubt that the lessons of respect, gratitude, being thankful and responsibility learnt through making my bed have contributed to the many leadership positions of responsibility in my life.

I have been entrusted with caring for businesses, budgets, people and organisations worth hundreds of millions of dollars and I have been blessed to travel the world many times. It all started with making my bed.

Making my bed also taught me the importance of paying attention to detail and completing processes effectively and efficiently.

For example, if I did not pay attention to the sheets being straight and tucked in then the colder air was free to enter my warm space or I had to try and straighten the sheet while I was lying in my bed which was not fun at all.

There is a saying: 'well you made your bed, now you have to lie in it'. If my bed was not properly made then lying in it was not so pleasant.

That proverb has also transferred to other areas in my life such as who I have associated with and the consequences of the decisions I have made.

If I made my bed well then I had a better sleep. If I have good people around me and I make good, sound decisions then I have a better life.

So how is your bed making going? Are you making your bed? Are you starting your day by achieving something which encourages you to do other things?

What are you grateful for in your life and what smaller detailed things require your attention today?

Perhaps you have made your bed and do not like where you have ended up.

The good news is you can make your bed again, so it is better to sleep in. After all, it is your bed and your life that you get to make each morning, or not.

Kia pai to moe, sleep well.