Starting your mornings your way.
Whether you’re an up at the crack of dawn person, or an up at the crack of 10:30 person, or anywhere in between, we all deserve to make our mornings our own. Starting your day on the right foot sets you up for success for the rest of your day. In our busy and chaotic lives, a centering moment first thing in the morning, whatever “morning” means to you, can be a lifesaver.
I don’t know about you, but my day to day life doesn’t really allow for an epic, complicated morning ritual. I’ve got shit to do! If I actually wake up to my first alarm, I have a decent amount of time before I have to start work, but lets be real, how often is it the second alarm that actually gets me out of bed? (Spoilers: it’s a lot.)
The key to making a morning ritual that actually works for you is to -simply- tailor it to your life. To start with something small and try it out to see if it makes a difference. And if it doesn’t work for you, to abandon it without guilt and try something different. I think one of the biggest secrets to mental wellness is to pay attention to what actually helps you feel like your best self, rather than what the internet says will help you be your best self.
Are we going to have some suggestions on things to add to your mornings in this post? Yeah, for sure. But don’t take any of these suggestions as gospel. What works for me may not work for you. You may come up with the most beautiful centering ritual that I’ve never even dreamed of. You do you babe!
What do You Want Your Mornings to Feel Like?
So many people skip this step when trying to craft self care practices. We jump straight to lists of suggestions, looking for the journaling exercise or coffee ritual or morning workout that we think will give us what we want, without ever actually sitting down and deciding what it is that we want.
Change is easier when centered in emotion and feeling. A morning ritual that you enjoy, one that gives you exactly what you need when you first start your day, is one that you’ll be able to stick with.
So think about your current average morning. How do you feel when you first get up to start your day? Are you still half asleep? Are you excited to get started on your work? Are you stressed out about everything you need to do? Are you looking forward to your breakfast?
Whatever you feel about your average morning, positive or negative, think about what you want to change about it. If you rise excited, do you need focus? If you wake up stressed, do you need some calm? If your first emotion is boredom, do you need to wake up your brain?
Think about what you want and pick one. What emotion or feeling do you want to add to your morning?
Find an Action that Matches the Emotion
Whatever emotion you identified, now is where we turn that want into an action. Whatever you decide you want, think up ways that you might be able to accomplish it.
If you wake up groggy and want to feel more alert, your action might be making a nice cup of coffee, or doing some stretches, or taking a walk around the block. If you wake up anxious and want to feel more centered, your action might be journaling, or meditation, or yoga. If you wake up energized but distracted, your action might be to make a to do list, or to do a quick workout.
Whatever you choose, the point of this task is to have it be something you enjoy doing. A morning ritual that feels like a chore is guaranteed to fail.
If you’re having a hard time coming up with something to add to your mornings that will bring the feeling you’re looking, consider subtracting something. If that cup of coffee makes you feel anxious, cut it out of your morning. If your stress ramps up anytime you open social media, choose not to open your apps until a certain hour of the day. If that morning workout is something you dread and leaves you feeling exhausted, skip it and try to reschedule it for a different part of your day.
Make the Update to your Morning Ritual
Say it with me friends: baby steps.
Believe me, I understand the impulse to overhaul your entire life overnight. I’m chronically guilty of it. But my level of chronic guilt on this topic also qualifies me to say, wholeheartedly, that trying to change your whole routine all at once absolutely does not work.
Pick one thing, one small thing, and try adding it to your morning.
Give yourself as much grace as you can when trying something new. If you miss a day, don’t sweat it. This isn’t a contest. You can’t get a good grade in mornings. Trust me I’ve tried.
My personal morning ritual is making an espresso in my coffee machine and drinking it on the daybed in my front room. It’s in front of the window that faces Lake Michigan, and makes for a beautiful place to start my day. If I’m feeling up to it or like I have something to process, I have a notebook there that I use for a morning pages journaling practice. But if I don’t journal, because I don’t feel like writing or overslept and don’t have time, I don’t get down on myself about it. My morning ritual is here to serve me, not the other way around.
But this morning ritual does three things for me. First, having coffee first thing helps me feel less sleepy (my mental health meds have a tendency to make me feel groggy in the morning). Having that coffee be an espresso from my high-quality machine makes me feel special, like I’m starting off my morning with a little treat. And the journaling habit, when I use it, has a way of clearing the “junk” out of my brain. After journaling, I’m often happier and more focused.
So pick an activity you like and give it a try. You might be amazed at the results.
Stick with It
Whatever activity you choose, stick with it for at least a week. Sure, if something isn’t working for you at all, you’ll usually be able to tell pretty quick, but for a soft good thing, sometimes it takes a while for you to notice the effect it’s having on your life. Don’t throw in the towel if you don’t immediately get the results you’re looking for.
Or Don't Stick with It
But if you’ve done a thing for a few days and it’s really not working for you, stop. Don’t hold onto a ritual that isn’t a good fit for you out of a misplaced sense of duty. You don’t have to get your ritual perfectly right on the first try. You are absolutely allowed to try a bunch of weird, wild, disjointed things until you find the one that works. Give yourself permission to experiment, and discover what really truly works for you. Once you unlock your own secret sauce, there’ll be no stopping you.
Want more Arts and Adventures? Pick up a free Boundaries Worksheet: a hands-on guide to setting and enforcing good boundaries to improve your mental health.
Love and Shenanigans,
Andi
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