Mindful Mornings
How do you start your day? The way we start our day sets us up for how our day will go. You know the expression, “did you get up on the wrong side of the bed,” this really is about how our day continues to go based on how we get up in the morning. Are you the type of person who jumps out of bed ready for the day, or do you like to arise slowly, or do you literally drag yourself out of bed literally hating the morning? Take a few moments to really think about how you start your day. Is there a way you could make it better and set yourself up for success for the day?
I used to literally hit the snooze button at least 5 times before getting out of bed. Some days I still do, usually on a night that I don’t sleep well. However, most days have learned to set myself up for success by learning to start my day off right.
I know there are books all about how great the mornings are, such as “The 5 am Club,” and “The Miracle Morning.” These books really show how you can make the most of your mornings and in turn set yourself up for a successful day, then our successful day leads to successful weeks and months and so on.
One of the things I personally struggle with for getting up so early is that I used to tend to be a night owl and spent a lot of my creative time in the evening after my daughter went to bed. Now she is older and having that creative evening time is not really in the cards so I have had to adjust a bit. Learning to embrace the mornings has been a bit of a struggle for me, but I do see the value in it and how it sets your day off right.
In the book “Miracle Morning,” Hal Elrod talks about his research and what the most successful people in the world do each morning. He found that they did one of these 6 routines: read, write, do affirmations, visualize, exercise, and meditate. He turned what he learned into an acronym called SAVERS, (Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, and Scribing). When I first read his book I really struggled with getting out of bed early. I still do. But what I have found is a routine that helps me do almost all of what he talks about and most of it I still do in bed each morning (like visualizing, reading, scribing and meditating for a few minutes). What I have found is it helps to set the day off on the right foot. I like how there is not a stated about of time in his book that you have to do each day. He even says that you could do each of them for only one minute and it still counts.
I have been doing my own version of this for about a year now and have found that it does help me just feel better overall. When we consciously set ourselves up for success we can do more than we ever thought possible. This includes learning to get up a bit earlier and start our morning off right.
My challenge for you this week is to challenge yourself to set your alarm a bit earlier each day. If you struggle to get out of bed (like I do) just read or write in bed for a few minutes. Then when you normally get out of bed go about your day and see if you notice any shifts in how you feel.
