Have you ever noticed when your morning starts in a frenzy–snoozing your alarm, skipping breakfast, and pushing yourself out the door—the rest of your day is chaos? Hi viewers and Welcome back to another bestie video!
The tone of your morning can usually determine the rest of your day. In fact, a good morning routine can really get your productivity levels high. So, what is the right way to have a productive morning? Keep watching today’s video where we will be telling you 15 things that you should do in the morning for a fruitful day ahead. From taking a cold shower, exercising, getting some sunshine, holding off checking on emails to meditating and more, watch till the end to learn about all of them.
1. Make Your Bed
admin | Yes, making your bed is technically a chore, but it can also be a deceptively simple and tiny way to make yourself feel good. The reasons are manifold: It goes a long way in making your space and mind less cluttered, it encourages good sleep hygiene, and it might also do some psychological work begin the scenes too.
In a very famous, now often repeated quote by a retired Navy admiral who once said, “If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.”
2. Fix A Getting Ready Order
admin | Most of us have that bucket of things we do every morning to prepare for the day, you know, getting dressed, brushing teeth but you might not have it down to an exact order yet. Maybe sometimes you jump straight from the shower to doing your hair while other days you lounge around in your towel scrolling through the morning news.
You can save yourself from constantly having to ask yourself, “Okay, what next?” by solidifying a step-by-step process. Those micro-decisions add up. The more you can have on autopilot the better.
3. Take A Cold Shower
admin | This one may seem a little extreme, but many people swear by taking cold showers each morning. It’s similar to athletes who take ice baths, although slightly less frigid.
Why a cold shower? Because it can increase blood flow, burn away unhealthy fat, and release dopamine into the body. Like exercise, it kickstarts your body.
4. Be Grateful
admin | 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 feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin, which lift your mood, relax your body, and lower your heart rate.
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. 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.
5. Move Your Body
admin | 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.
6. Journal And Plan
admin | Often, motivation and inspiration to do something comes from identifying smaller and easier actions. Planning helps to split complex tasks or long term goals into smaller actionable items and journaling helps to do the same with your thoughts & feelings – record and analyze them.
Both of these activities are great at creating change in life, but require empty space-time when you have no commitments and don’t need to do something. Morning is the best time for both. You have all the time in the world to think through the idea that just came into your head or act on the inspiration.
7. Eat Your Frog
admin | Mark Twain once said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” In other words, tackle your day’s toughest job early when your mental energy is at its highest. Choose only one “frog” of the day and complete it before your normal workday begins.
8. Get Up An Hour Early
admin | There is a 25th hour in the day. You’ve just been sleeping through it. Getting up an hour earlier is going to take time to adjust to, but once you make it a habit, you will never look back. Research has shown, not only are early risers more optimistic and conscientious, they also anticipate problems and minimize them more efficiently. Which of course is crucial to success in the business world.
9. Drink Water
admin | With or without a lemon, drinking water in the morning – specifically 16 ounces – is extremely beneficial for your body and mind. It rehydrates you from a full night of sleeping without having fluids, fires up your metabolism and fuels your brain for a productive day. It can even help balance your appetite by making sure you’re not actually dehydrated.
10. Meditate
admin | Meditation is a true form of art. Put your mind at ease and let your inner peace feed off of it. Illness is stress-related ninety percent of the time so sit back and learn to relax. Meditation helps soothe your mind as well as keep it calm. Quieting the brain is a time-honored way to be more creative, more contemplative and more in touch with oneself.
11. Eat A Hearty Breakfast
admin | Never, and we repeat, never skip your breakfast. Breakfast is the most crucial meal of the day. It fuels your brain and provides you with a stronger ability to focus on your work. A healthy breakfast that keeps you full and energetic is the best way to start your mornings. Do not eat unhealthy foods as breakfast. It will interfere with your immune system, slowing you down.
12. Don’t Stay In Bed For Too Long
admin | The idea is to wake your body up as fast as possible before it gives in to the cravings of laying down and staying there till you procrastinate and keep on procrastinating over and over again. Try getting up after 2-5 minutes of waking up. Although there are some beliefs that waking up and getting out of bed almost instantly causes you to have a heart attack but that’s not entirely true. Your brain needs time to process its surroundings when you are awake. It takes roughly a minute or two to adjust. Not more than that.
13. Hold Off On Checking Emails
admin | How many of you lie in bed just as you wake up and go through your inbox? Well, it’s time to stop doing that. Studies have shown that doing that doesn’t put you in the best state – mentally and emotionally.
Checking emails stresses you out. Because when you do that – your mind is already racing through the day, you are already thinking of what you need to do. Things are already in motion and you have to race to catch up. You don’t want to start the day feeling frazzled, frustrated or anxious. Checking emails first thing also leaves you in a very reactive state. You’ve started reacting with what the world throws at you and then just keep reacting to whatever lands on your plate. Do this too often and it leaves you too exhausted to work on what you wanted to.
14. Get Some Sunshine
admin | Getting about 15-30 mins of sunshine early in the morning is a great way to start your day. First off, it helps you shed those pounds. This is because light sends an extremely strong signal to your body and brain to wake up. It also helps regulate your body’s circadian clock.
Messing with your body clock, then, and missing out on early rays may alter the way your body processes the foods you eat, leading to weight gain. Getting sunshine also ensures you a steady supply of Vitamin D, enhances your mood and lowers your blood pressure.
15. Reduce Your Morning Choices
admin | Don’t waste your precious morning creative energy choosing between, say, a wide array of clothes or different types of coffee. Reducing variation in your morning routine may seem dull or uncreative, but it’s a matter of conserving your mind stimulation for activities in the day ahead that actually deserve like brainstorming, writing, or problem-solving. Barack Obama, for instance, wears only grey or blue suits because, as he said, “I have too many other decisions to make.”
Similarly Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, also puts on the same grey t-shirt each morning. “I’m not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life,” he said in an interview. Simplify your life so that you can spend your time thinking not about the color of your shirt but about your next great creative idea.
