Morning🌞 Habits Matter
I recently wrote an article for a magazine that was soliciting entries of unique habits of self-love. 💗 And, as I prepared my final submission to the editor, I felt compelled to address just how powerful the habit of self love 💗 can be. It is life-changing and perhaps life-extending.
If you roll out of bed 🛏 each morning, dreading the day and feeling depleted and over-stressed, 😟 you may just simply be in bad habits of unhealthy eating, 🥱 sleep-deprivation, poor boundaries, screening out, procrastination, and not moving your body enough.
YOUR goals won’t get you healthy; your healthy HABITS will.
Set your alarm 30 minutes earlier ☀️ than normal. When the alarm plays, get up, drink a large glass of water 💧 and start moving toward a quiet place in your home 🏠 where you aren’t likely to be interrupted. Stop waiting for the motivation to get up. It ain’t coming. Just. Get. Up.
Go get quiet. Get still. Go inward. This quiet time is your self care, without apology. Use this quiet morning time to meditate, be grateful, visualize how you want you to feel as you accomplish a goal, pray, etc. If you need to use a guided meditation, YouTube has an abundance of FREE resources.
Your morning routine may be a new habit for you but it can be the difference between a good day and a great one. Consistent healthy habits change your life.
The HUMAN BRAIN 🧠 loves what is familiar and won’t be (at first.) Your brain and body will fight you at first because it likes what is familiar and being still early in the morning is not familiar. You will be tempted to check email, go to the bathroom. Train your body to be still, as if you are taming a wild stallion. Be patient. With time, you will begin to relax into this self-indulgence of solitude & peace and look forward to it every morning. Many people find that writing a brief journal entry subsequent to their meditation time is helpful. There is something magical when your stressful thoughts flow out of the pen onto paper. They often don’t appear as daunting as when they were swirling around in your brain.
After a few days/weeks of being still each morning you will likely begin to notice you are able to put a pause between event and response in your daily exchanges. You may also notice that you will feel more calm & productive throughout the day and to do things for yourself that are healthier. You also may find the added benefit of feeling less angry and more relaxed. Some even report feeling more flexible with daily challenges.
For those of you with kids, healthy morning habits is you modeling what self-love looks like. Taking good care of your childrens’ parent is a gift to them. Happy parents have well-adjusted 😊 children.
As I wind up this article, I cannot emphasize enough how important self care is and how a consistent healthy morning routine can reduce your overall stress & anxiety. For those of you who are curious about the detail of my pre-dawn hot tub routine, I slip into my hot tub with a steaming cuppa joe each morning and gaze up at the inky sky full of stars and spend time in prayer, meditation & visualization. I close my eyes and focus 🧘 on how I want to feel that day and how I will overcome challenges that will surely come my way. Afterwards, I don my exercise apparel and go on a walk/run with my dog.
Discover and practice your unique morning habits. Quiet meditation & focusing inward will help you be more of a curious observer of how negative and self-critical your thoughts are. Imagine your thoughts are traffic; notice & then let them go. When you are a curious observer of the ‘traffic’, you will be less self-critical and less attached to the negative thoughts. When you are less attached to your thoughts 🤔 , it will free you from being tied to the outcome and you will enjoy you’re the journey of your life more.