Nicoll Commentaries, p.1306

Now notice when you become negative. It is quite a different state of yourself that can observe after some time in the Work. What does it mean? Hermes was an actual teacher that taught this Work. He taught sealing yourself from the effects of life on yourself. In one of the teachings of Hermes, it is said that before you get up in the morning, you should seal every center from being negative, your thoughts, your emotions and your movements, for a man can only attain his individuality by sealing himself off from the effect of the events of life upon him.

p. 803

Most people, about five minutes after they get up in the morning, begin to identify with negative emotions–i.e. they identify with their habitual personal reactions to life. They do not observe what happens to them simply because they have no self-observation in the Work-sense. They let themselves go. The do not remember themselves. They do not hold themselves together internally. In other words, they fall asleep on rising. They pass the day in attracting to themselves situations and things that would not come to them if they remembered themselves. Half an hour’s work in the morning can make a great difference all day long. You can all see for yourselves what it means to be under the Law of Accident and the Law of Destiny or Fate. But people have to find this out for themselves. People often open letters the moment they get up. I wonder why. Is it necessary to be plunged immediately into the accidents of life without having formed in yourself a certain resistance to life, without having a certain sacred moment with yourself of Self-Remembering, so that life and all its accidents do not instantly rush in and occupy the whole psychology?”

p. 138

If you notice, you will see that little forms of worrying start very early in the morning. It is a very good thing, which is worth doing, to work on oneself in the early morning, before, as it were, descending into life and duty. A little conscious work at that time, noticing the small beginnings of worrying or negative thoughts or self-pity, etc., etc. and saying no to them–lifting oneself out of them–not taking them as you–all this work on non-identifying with certain machines, certain ‘I’s, in the early morning, can alter the whole day. And to this, of course, belongs the idea of cancelling debts, letting go all inner accounts–if possible. Then something fresh and new begins the day, and the staleness of life is prevented which is really the staleness of oneself always reacting in the same way to everything, always having the same views, always taking others in the same way, and so on.