It might seem like nothing, and you might think to yourself that you don’t need a good morning routine. You might think you already have one, get up, get a shower, grab a coffee and run to work late. While that is a morning routine, it is not the kind we are talking about. With a good morning routine, you can literally change your life. Most of the rich and famous, the most successful people in the world, have good morning routines. There are many books written on their morning routines as well as books on making your own. This is just a simple guideline to help you get started on the path of change. Here are some of the basics.
Meditate
Every successful person, or at least everyone that we can find that tells us their morning routine, has meditation as part of the routine. Preparing for the day. It might seem you don’t have time for something as silly as meditation, but, you have to make time, trust us, it will help you in the long run. Just start with some mindful meditation for 5 minutes a day and work up. It will change your day from one of panic and lateness to one that you are in control of.
Plan
This can be as simple as making a list of what you need to accomplish today. Everything from work to personal. Plan on paper and prepare in your mind. Imagine your success in doing these things. Visualization is an important part of success. It might seem too simple, but imagining your success as these things is also you preparing yourself for that success. Fake it until you make it, so imagine it and it will become real.
Thankfulness
Another good thing to add to your morning routine, and one that only takes a minute. Is to be thankful for what you have. This changes your focus from what is wrong, to what is right. Being negative is a path that will only make your life worse, so being thankful for what you have, in all aspects, will start you in a positive way for the day. Focus on the positive and you will carry it with you.
Set work hours
If you work for yourself, you can arrange your hours to make your day better, but just like a normal job, you need to set your hours in stone. Work with that. If you can’t arrange your hours and are at the mercy of a job then you have to move your life around a bit to get a good morning routine in. You might have to start getting to sleep earlier and getting up earlier, you need to do what you need it to make it happen.
Family time
Instead of always late and rushing out, you need to have some family time, and if you don’t have a family, then it’s “me” time. The morning should not be solely focused on just getting to work and full of dread. You need to make the morning the same as when you get home later. You need to own the morning. Get up early enough to have time for your family and yourself, time that is not preparing for work or school. What will you do with family? We can’t tell you that, but if you don’t know what to do when you spend family time with your family, then you have bigger problems than a morning routine.
Sleep
Get enough sleep that your morning is not waded through in a cloud of zombie-like confusion. If you are one of those people that say don’t talk to me until I have had my coffee, then what that really means is you are not getting enough sleep. If you get enough sleep, you will find you can wake up easily and you will be quite amazed at how easy it is to get out of bed. The time when you go to sleep relates to when you want to get up. If you still have a hard time getting up, keep moving when you go to bed earlier. Eventually, you will find your sweet spot.
Food
Everyone says that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and going against popular opinion, we disagree. Well, we disagree with morning breakfast anyway, the first food you eat in the day is technically still breakfast and is important. What you eat is more important than when you eat it. Although we are talking morning routines here, what we mean is, eat a good and healthy breakfast if that is part of your morning routine, but do not rush it and eat junk. Make your morning calm and special.
Exercise
Doing some exercise is an important part of a morning routine. It doesn’t have to be a lot, a little stretching and a few pushups can get your heart moving and set your body on the way. It will rev up your metabolism a little bit and pump the blood faster making it easier to think. Again, most successful people have this in their routine. We don’t mean start doing Olympic lifts every morning, save that for the gym, we mean just a fast warmup.
Morning routines can change your life, but they don’t work unless you do them. Imagine you are rich and powerful, and what you would do every morning. What would give you joy and happiness before you started the rest of the day, and that is what you should be doing now. If you aren’t rich and powerful yet, you can at least have a rich and powerful morning routine until you are.
