Morning Routines

10 Morning Habits To Start Your Day Off Right

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

Have you ever noticed when your morning starts in a frenzy—snoozing your alarm, skipping breakfast, and rushing yourself out the door—the rest of your day seems to reflect that mood of chaos as well? The tone of your morning will determine the tone of your day, so it’s time to start planning accordingly.

When you form healthy habitual behaviors for the morning, you set your day up for success. Whether you are aware of them or not, you operate under habits (both good and bad) all the time—they are an integral part of your daily existence. Part of developing a healthy habit, is to become intentional with it. Most habits are formed because they are easy or along the path of least resistance. If you want to cultivate positive habits, then you may need to put some intentional effort into forming them until they become second nature.

This is particularly true with morning habits. What you cultivate in the morning influences how you feel, act, and think during the rest of your day. Here are 10 simple habits that you can add into your morning routine now, to ensure you are feeling, acting, and thinking at your highest potential for the rest of your day—and days—ahead.

1. Stay Unplugged from Tech

If the first thing you do when you wake up is check your smartphone for messages or work email, you are doing yourself a disservice. You are immediately cultivating a reactive mindset, instead of a proactive one, which will cause you to start your day in a defensive state, rather than a place of inner peace and control.

Instead, try remaining detached from technology for the first hour of your day so you can begin your day with present-moment awareness and a positive focus.

2. Hydrate

Drinking a glass of water in the morning after going hours without a sip is a good way to hydrate your body. The Ayurvedic technique of adding lemon to a warm glass of water helps remove toxins from your digestive tract that may have built up overnight, provides a good source of vitamin C, freshens your breath, supports weight loss, and stimulates metabolism and digestion. Bottoms up first thing in the a.m. for a healthy—and refreshing—start to your day.

3. Practice Optimism and Gratitude

Before you even get out of bed, give yourself a few minutes to smile and practice gratitude. When you smile, it signals your brain to release the feel-good neurotransmitters (dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin), which lift your mood, relax your body, and lower your heart rate. Who wouldn’t want to start their day on this positive note?

As you smile, start to reflect upon what you’re grateful for. Studies have shown practicing gratitude reduces stress hormones and improves mood, among other benefits. So, adding a simple daily gratitude practice is a great way to kick-start your morning.

Begin by taking one minute in bed before you rise to reflect on one person and one opportunity you are grateful for in your life.

4. Make Your Bed

Tim Ferriss, author and podcast host (The Tim Ferriss Show) has interviewed more than a hundred highly successful people with diverse backgrounds and skillsets, and in a variety of industries. He always asks, “What’s your morning routine?” Along the way, he has collected five habits that he has incorporated into his morning routine, and one of them is making his bed.

It may seem like a waste of time, unimportant, or unnecessary (you’re just going to use it again at night), but making your bed is a simple action you can take in the morning that makes you start your day feeling accomplished—and what better tone to set than a sense of pride and accomplishment? Taking charge and completing simple tasks will give you the foundation to take on more and more throughout the day.

5. Meditate

Incorporating some type of mindfulness practice like meditation into your daily morning routine can help ground you and train your mind and emotions, which then influences how you react to challenges throughout your day.

During your meditation is also a great time to set your intention for the day. When you get clear on how you want your day to go or what you want to feel or accomplish, you can make clear decisions that create the life you truly want to live.

Note sure where to get started? Here is a simple meditation you can do in the morning:

  • Get into a comfortable seated position and set a timer for five minutes.
  • Close your eyes and focus on your breath.
  • Inhale through your nose for four counts, retain for four counts, and exhale through your nose for eight counts.
  • Every time you notice your mind wandering, gently guide it back to focus on your breath.
  • When the timer goes off, release your counting, but stay seated with your eyes closed for a moment.
  • Set an intention for your day and visualize yourself meeting this intention.
  • Open your eyes, draw your arms up to the sky for a stretch, and then move on with your day, carrying the calm energy and intention with you.

6. Exercise

Whether it’s a simple yoga routine, a brisk walk with your pet, a quick set of sit-ups and push-ups, or hitting the gym to work off last night’s meal, starting off your day with movement energizes the body and the mind. Determine what kind of exercise is right for you and schedule it. It doesn’t have to be complicated, long, or intense, but having some sort of physical activity in the morning will get your blood flowing and help quiet any mental chatter. You can even switch up what kind of exercise you do every day to keep your routine interesting.

7. Put Yourself Together

Putting time and effort into your appearance helps build self-confidence. When you feel “put together,” it is one less thing to worry about throughout your day.

So, shower, wash your face, brush your teeth, floss, comb your hair, apply lotion/oil, dress to impress, and apply any other hygiene/grooming habits that make you feel good about yourself. This may involve picking out your clothes the night before (especially if you are short on time in the morning) or ironing your clothes—whatever makes you feel like you are taking care of your health, looking presentable, and feeling confident.

8. Eat a Healthy Breakfast

You’ve most likely heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. When you make time to eat a healthy breakfast (lean proteins, healthy fats, and whole grains), you’ll have more energy throughout the day and a stronger ability to focus and concentrate.

9. Have a “To-Do” List Ready to Conquer

Take a few minutes to write down a “to-do” list for the day ahead. Then prioritize it so your day’s list has only 3 to 5 items on it—ranked in order of priority to make sure you tackle the most pressing things first.

Writing down your “to-do’s” instead of keeping them floating around in your mind helps clear mental chatter. You also give yourself a sense of purpose each day when you know what you need to get done. And there is something satisfying about crossing off tasks on your list—it really cultivates a sense of accomplishment.

10. Get Enough Restful Sleep

This last one isn’t a habit for your morning exactly … however, before you can hope to implement new, healthy morning habits, you should have the foundation of a well-rested body and mind. The way you feel while you’re awake is dependent in part on your sleep habits. If you’ve been feeling groggy, irritable, or exhausted, you may not be getting enough quality sleep.

During sleep, your body is working to support healthy brain function and maintain your physical health. In fact, sleep plays such a vital role in your physical well-being, mental clarity, and quality of life that ongoing sleep deficiency (the amount varies by individual, but typically this means less than 6 to 8 hours of restful sleep each night) can have adverse effects on your health—and how well you think, react, work, learn, and get along with others.

If you are finding you are not getting enough quality sleep, check out this before-bed routine to wind down or our online product 7 Days to Restful Sleep to improve your sleep habits. There are also apps and gadgets out there that can track your sleep habits, like Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock.

When you start your day after a night of restful sleep, you will wake feeling rejuvenated and ready to take on the day, starting with your new morning habits.

FromThe Chopra Center

Getting Started

Our project, Well Begun is Half Done, starts tomorrow, and my plan is to spend the first week exploring different ideas on what constitutes a good morning routine. The idea being that a good morning routine is a big part of getting a good start to the day. My personal morning routine consists of the following:

  • I wake up before the alarm and say to myself… “Oh God, pretty soon I’m going to have to get up.” Followed by a big sigh, a huge amount of inner resistance, and a sudden desire to sleep for the rest of the day.
  • When the alarm actually does go off, I’m usually once again sound asleep, and very cranky about the idea of having to come out of my cocoon of wonderfulness.
  • Finally, after hitting the snooze a couple of times, I am compelled to crawl out of bed. And at this point, I complain to myself about my messy kitchen, my messy bathroom, and the fact that I need to vacuum, clear out my clutter, do the laundry… it’s usually a long list of stuff I “should have” done yesterday and the day before.
  • I then sit and stare mindlessly at the television and drink coffee until I absolutely HAVE to start getting ready for work.
  • And then I run around doing absolutely the barest minimum necessary to head out the door and off to work.
  • Right before I head out the door, I quick make my bed… because it always makes me feel just a tiny bit better about my morning.

So, as you can see, my morning routine needs a lot of help!

As I find and upload potential routines for a great start to the day, I’m going to make notes about what I like, what I think might actually work, and what I could begin to implement right away. My goal is that by week two, I will have a morning routine prototype to test and tweak.

If anyone has any ideas, or thoughts to contribute to the cause, I’d be very interested!

My Million Dollar Affirmation

This is what I am doing, and it feels really good to me, so I thought I’d share it:

I downloaded the wallpaper from Steve Pavlina’s website so that I would have it right there to look at and so I wouldn’t forget what it was.

When I sit down at my desk in the morning, I look at the affirmation, and think about how cool it would be to have a million dollars. And if it was as easy as just saying this one thing every day, that would be great.

Then I am breathe in and saying (not out loud) “In an easy and relaxed manner“… and I consciously relax as I think about the concept of easy and relaxed…

I breathe out and repeat mentally “Om Gum Ganapataye Namaha” (one of the Ganesh mantras)… I chose this mantra because it is for new beginnings and for success; and also because it felt good in my mind when I read it…. and I say to myself “with Ganesh as my ally and partner, this can be easy and relaxed”…

Then I inhale “in a healthy and positive way“.. and as I do, I think how good it would be to feel 100% healthy and happy…

As I breathe out “Om Gum Ganapataye Namaha“.. I think about Ganesh clearing out all the clutter, crud, and crap, and how good that will feel when it’s done…

Then I breathe in and say “in it’s own perfect time“.. and I think about how I can just let it all happen naturally without putting a lot of pressure into the when and the how because life is a journey not a destination, and I can stop and smell the roses along the way, and I don’t have to be in a rush for everything to be right now.

Which is almost like a huge sigh of relief as I breathe out “Om Gum Ganapataye Namaha” and think about Ganesh as the supporter of the world and how he is like going out in front of me clearing the way, and taking care of me, how that feels pretty safe and good..

And I breathe in “I intend one million dollars to come into my life” … and I think about money winging its way to me.. about money in the mail, money in my hands, money in my checking account, money piling up around softly burning candles, money coming through the front door, money slipping in through open windows, money drifting out of the clear blue sky… and I remember that I like money, and that money is my friend

As I breathe out “Om Gum Ganapataye Namaha” it’s easy to think of Ganesh and his bowl of sweet fruit and modaka balls, and how life can be so sweet… and that feels really good because I don’t often entertain the notion of life as sweet.

Then, I breathe in .. “and into the lives of everyone who holds this intention“.. and I think about opening my heart to everyone and generosity and giving and sharing, and I try to feel my heart actually softening and opening and becoming tender..

And as I breathe out “Om Gum Ganapataye Namaha“… I give the whole thing to Ganesh.. like a present.. and say here it is.. I release it to you.. do whatever pleases you

I do this about three times.. whenever I sit down at the computer. Sometimes, I just breathe and say the mantra and the affirmation because visualizing all that stuff seems just too complicated, other times the visualizations are effortless and come naturally. I try to just go with the flow. Then I get busy and forget about it.

This lovely image, by the way, is the Goddess of Wealth.

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Our current project began on July 4. We are exploring the concept and practice of Radical Self Care . Feel free to join in at any time!

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