5 tips for your Morning Routine
Over the last few years I have slowly developed a morning routine built on habit and trust. You hear how important a morning routine is all over the place. It took some time for me to lean into this and give it a fair shot but I have to say, it truly makes a difference to start your day off right. This is about choosing how you start your day and setting yourself up for success. This is a true expression of self love and self care.
My biggest tip for developing your routine is to start small, very small. Consistency is key here, once it becomes a habit it is easy to continue but in the beginning you may find some resistance. Routine is also very helpful to keep anxiety and stress down. The mind and body remembers routine. When they are given something familiar they ease back a bit and this gives space for growth, acceptance, self love, and joy. Like anything though, it takes practice! You must give it time before you can judge if it’s for you or not (at least a month). Use this time as an experiment to see what works best for you.
This is for you, this is a guaranteed time that is just yours before you even approach anything on your to do list, every single day.
Drink Water
This may seem simple but it is so important. Before you take that first sweet sip of coffee, make sure to fill your body with what it needs most: a giant glass of water. For the whole night you have been fasting and we know how important water is as 70% of our body is made up of water. We need it for everything we do. Give it what it needs and thank it for all it does. Thank you body, here is some water. Keep up the good work!
2. Move Your Body
I like to do my yoga practice right away in the morning and I definitely notice a difference in my ability to stay present and comfortable throughout my day by doing so. It doesn’t have to be a full workout or practice, however. Set five minutes aside for any kind of movement that feels good to you. This helps wake us up, get the blood moving, and in turn this contributes to a better mind set too. A healthy body will facilitate a healthy mind. At one point my morning movement was simply that I must complete 10 of something (pushups, air squats, etc). This was inspired by Tim Ferris’ morning routine guidelines and it worked well for me at that time. If that keeps you motivated to accomplish every morning, go for it. Move that beautiful body!
3. Gratitude Journal
This can be as simple as writing down three things that you are grateful for that day. Gratitude is a powerful force when practiced daily. My yoga philosophy teacher would say that if you lived a life of gratitude, you didn’t need to seek enlightenment. That is how profound the practice can be. Inserting little moments of gratitude throughout your day can be mood altering. This practice helps bring us back to what we know to be true. It can help sort through the negative stories that we tell ourselves and remind ourselves of what we DO have that is good. When you keep a gratitude journal for some time it becomes an even more valuable resource for you to access anytime you need simply by looking back at your entries and reading all the abundance that you have in your life. The more you appreciate what you have, the more good can come your way. Trust in this process and accept that some days may feel harder than others but see if you can develop the discipline to write something down no matter how you are feeling. This is also an opportunity to work on manifesting what you want in your life. By expressing to the universe what is going right, we are basically stating what we want more of. Make this practice consistent and you will notice the benefits.
4. Stillness or silence
Like your movement ritual, start out small with this one. Tell yourself that you need only sit for 2 minutes each morning, Or you could go outside for 2 minutes and take in some early morning sun. This could be a guided meditation, a music meditation, or it could simply be a moment for you to sit and drink your coffee or tea with no other distractions or musts or needs. This is 2 minutes that you guarantee yourself for whatever you need. This is your re-set for a new day, your moment to take in your blessings or your pain. A moment to be alone with no distractions or to challenge yourself to go deep and approach the path of meditation which once entered is difficult to go back from (in a good way). Most of us are always on the go, always hustling and working and striving. It is so important to have time to do nothing. Time to simply be. Be with yourself wherever that is each day. Allow a moment to set, re-set, dissolve, and return to reality. Quiet the body and you can quiet the mind.
5. Set an Intention
One of the key components of changing and bettering your life is speed of implementation. This is how fast we actually implement new routines, practices, and actions, in order to propel us towards the life we dream of. By setting an intention each day, it allows us to focus on one thing that we wish to become better at or improve in our daily life. This could be simple like “today I will focus on expressing gratitude” or “my intention today is to take more deep breaths”. If you find it hard to come up with an intention each day you can also take time to write out a list of things you would like to improve in your life. This can be anything from eating more leafy greens to being more decisive to increasing movement daily. Once you have a good sized list you can simply pick an item off the list each day and that is your intention for the day. One thing to focus on. Practice is how we improve, practice is how we progress. Challenge yourself to accept that everything we want to improve upon in ourselves can be achieved through practice and intention. I also find it helpful to write my intention on a sticky note and stick it somewhere where I will see it multiple times throughout the day. This is especially helpful in the beginning when we have not yet built the practice of remembering to remember our intention throughout the day. You can also just write it in your journal, but writing it down goes a lot further than simply thinking it.
Bonus tip!
Wait to look at your phone until you are done with your morning routine. This will help you protect your peace and set yourself up with presence before the stresses and needs of the external world come in. You will find, that if you do this, you can handle the little things better. Give yourself time to strengthen your own energy before letting others in.
Remember to be patient with yourself and allow time for shifts. Acknowledge how far you come along the way and remember that you are already perfect exactly how you are. This is to improve your life and facilitate personal growth, peace, and happiness. When we work towards these goals within ourselves we are simultaneously bringing up the collective consciousness of our society, contributing to bettering the world for all. Take care and spread love.