Your Morning Is Your Morning

Waking up and starting your day sets the tone for your day. How do you wake up? What do you do when you first wake up? Look deeper at what it is that you do in the morning, and see if it affects the rest of your day.

If you wake up in a bad mood, or with a tired body, or with senseless thoughts, you tend to carry these things with you throughout the day. Why should you have bad days from a something as silly as being tired or being in a bad mood? Exactly! You shouldn’t!

I try my best to minimize bad days by starting my days off right.

Now, whatever it is that you choose to do in the morning, try to do one thing: unplug. Disconnect yourself from the internet, from the worldwide web of videos, photos, and statuses. If you let these things be the first things you read, watch, or experience in the first moments of YOUR morning, then you are letting millions of people both strangers and friends take YOUR morning from you.

The morning is sacred. It is where we start fresh. It is where we start over. It is where we allow every opportunity to rest peacefully in front of us. We can’t let other people take our mornings from us.

All I ask of you is to try and keep your morning sacred, and try to do something for YOU in the morning.

When I wake up, I resist turning over and looking for text messages, Snapchats, or even going through junk e-mails. Instead, I roll over and grab my water bottle and try to drink about a few cups worth. Water is great to drink first thing in the morning, whether it’s hot or cold. It gets through your body and it ultimately wakes you up naturally, versus a cup of coffee. You’ll notice that if you start to drink more water in the morning, it will make you feel good to start your day. If you feel good, you’re probably thinking straight, which means you’re making good decisions.

The next thing I try to do at least a few times a week is movement. After I get myself physically out of bed, before I walk down the hallway to make breakfast, I do some yogic movements. For those of you that do yoga, I do some sun salutations. For those that don’t know yoga, it’s just a moving sequence that really gets the blood flowing, it’s a way that many yoga classes start to warm the body up. Thus, it’s perfect to do in the morning. I enjoy doing sun salutations in the morning because it helps me feel less stiff as I begin my day. But maybe some light stretching works for you, or maybe you like to dance! Try it, I’m sure it will put you in a great mood.

The final thing that you need to keep in mind: breakfast. Now that you’ve had some water and hopefully moved your body around a little bit, it’s time to nourish your body. So with water, with exercise, hopefully your mind is in a great spot to make a good breakfast decision! I prefer eggs with toast, maybe some fruit with chia seeds and peanut butter. Sometimes I make smoothies and other times I make omelets. It’s important to get some protein in the morning to keep you going for your day!

So keeping these three ideas in mind, see if your mornings change. But also see if they put you in a better mood, if they help you relinquish any negative thoughts, if they distract you from your over-tired body. See if your days become better.