2 Do's and Don'ts to Start Your Morning Right
Save time, boost happiness and create a winning mindset from the moment you wake up.
The morning is crucial for setting you up for the rest of the day. If you start the day off on the right track everything else will fall into place. So here’s two easy and simple things for you to do, and avoid, if you want to start your day out right. Following this advice will lead to better productivity and higher levels of happiness (according to science).
Do:
Make your bed in the morning.
I know, I know. I don’t want to remind you of your mother telling you this every day but… she has a point. The point is not that it makes your room look tidy, although being in an organised and clutter free environment assists in mental health, the point is to create a snowball effect of achievements, giving you the knowledge that you can accomplish the tasks that you have set yourself for the day. Fluff the duvet. Arrange the pillows. It takes me less than 30 seconds. Making your bed is the easiest goal that one can set for themselves - it takes minimal effort and is a task that is impossible to fail. It’s an easy win. It sets yourself up for success. And that’s the point of making your bed every day.
Perform gratitude.
The earlier tip is to provide yourself with a winning mindset, this one will help get you into a positive mindset. Listing a few things that you are grateful for is an excellent way to boost your happiness. Daily gratitude can help keep you humble. Running water, the sun, the last meal you ate, these are some things that work in the background, that make our lives easy and convenient and yet are so often overlooked. We should take the time to be grateful for what we have, lest we start taking things for granted. Most of us are extremely lucky. We’re not dying from an incurable illness, we’re not starving, we’re not in the midst of a war, and if you are currently experiencing any one of these things then I truly feel sorry for you, but even if these things are happening, you can always find something to be grateful about.
Start your day off with some positivity.
Don’t:
Hit the snooze button.
Oh boy, you’re not going to like this one, are you? This is all about how to start your day out right, hitting the snooze button is the antithesis of making your bed in the morning. Don’t you dare roll over and slap that alarm clock. You couldn’t even complete the first task of the day. Not only are you starting your day off with a failure, according to sleep science this disrupts your sleep cycle and can make you feel worse, it’s much better to bite the bullet and get up.
Don’t set second alarms the night before. This is you telling yourself that you’re planning to fail in the morning - never plan to fail. If you’re wanting small successes to transition into bigger ones then you need to set yourself up for success, not failure. If you really can’t handle getting up immediately, turn the lights on (this will help you wake up), take a drink of water, lay there with your thoughts, do anything but go back to sleep or…
Get on your phone.
Your phone is an overstimulating machine designed to hook you in for as long as possible. I used to have real trouble with this in the mornings. I would lay there, anywhere between 30 minutes and sometimes up to two hours, scrolling, swiping, and tapping through all forms of social media. From Instagram, to Twitter, to Tik Tok… back to Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok. It was a horrible habit. Destructive to my entire day. As I’ve said in previous posts, this wasted time accumulates to literal days worth over the course of a year. How much time do you spend on your phone in bed in a single morning? Now, times that by 365.
Not only is this a waste of time, but it’s bad for your health. This is not a habit you want to pick up, and it’s certainly one to break if you are afflicted by it. The way I was able to drastically reduce the time I spent on my phone in the morning was by removing the temptation completely. I don’t have my phone on my nightstand. I put it over the other side of the room on charge before I go to sleep. Now it’s impossible for me to roll over and start scrolling, I have to physically get out of bed to switch my alarm off and by the time I do that, I’m already out of my comfort zone and starting to wake up. I might still be a bit zonked. But turn around and start making my bed instead of having the negativity of the news and social media pulling me down.
Which of these tips do you think you could implement into your life?