Your morning sets the tone for the whole day! So I don’t want to be that person who wakes up late and then have to rush before I go to work. Okay, I am lucky and I can work from home in the morning, but I would like to be ready for the day at 9. So I make sure I have enough time to follow my morning routine. Because I am working from home in the morning, I can wake up without an alarm clock. Right now, I wake up around 7:30-8 and that gives me more than an hour in the morning, which is enough for me.
I know these days there are tons of people who wake up at 5 am because it is trendy to say that you wake up early. But believe me, getting enough sleep is way more important than waking up at 5 am. If you don’t have to wake up that early for work, it is not necessary. If you want to do it anyway, that is fine too. Do what works best for you and do what makes you happy.
Things I like to do in the morning
Breakfast
One of the first things I do in the morning is to make breakfast. I don’t work properly when I don’t have food in my stomach. I eat two slices of bread every morning. On the weekends I eat croissants sometimes to make it more special. I also don’t do anything else while I am eating my breakfast. I do one thing at a time. Emails and social media can wait. I am very mindful in the morning.
Stretch/Yoga
I like to stretch a bit and for a few days, I’ve been trying to do yoga. Pretty hard. It looks so easy but it is not. I sit mostly during the day, so my body is pretty stiff right now. But hopefully, Yoga will help me to loosen up a little bit.
Get Ready
Then I do the basics things like taking a shower and following my beauty/make-up routine. It is not a very long routine though. I know some people are taking 1 hour to apply their make-up. For the shower, I take 5-10 minutes and make-up also around 5-10 minutes. I don’t use a lot of products. I use a day cream, SPF, mascara eyebrow stuff but that is it. Very simple, but right now this is all I need.
Listen to music
As I said above, the way you start your day sets the tone for the rest of the day. So in the morning, I do a couple of things to put me in the right mindset and one of those things is to listen to music. Music can change your mood instantly. Even during my workday, I listen to music, because some songs are helping me to concentrate. I like to listen to ‘Evermore’ and ‘Exile’ albums by Taylor Swift, but I also like to listen to Dermot Kennedy while I am working. Am I feeling I need a little bit more energy, I mostly put something on from the 80s -to the early 2000s. Those songs are the best songs to motivate yourself and it puts you in the best mood. Sometimes I turn on Queen and just have a dance party on my own in the morning.
Affirmations
The other day, I found a video with Jennifer Lopez and she talked about how thoughts become things. Most of us are thinking negative, even when we are not aware of it. I am aware of it, though I have to admit it is not easy to change it. On some days it is harder to focus on the positive side of life. But using affirmations can help. Every time, you think you are a loser and you hear that thought, you say to yourself that you are doing good. And you can do this in the morning too. I like to start my day with affirmations.
Affirmations I use in the morning:
– This is going to be a good day
– I am amazing and beautiful
– I am enough
– Life is wonderful
– I am healthy and wealthy
Expressing gratitude
Another way to focus more on the positive side of life is to express gratitude. You might be somewhere where you don’t want to be. But there will always be enough reasons to be grateful. Maybe you are grateful for the beautiful sunny day, the food, the people who you love. There are tons of reasons to be happy and you are in control of it. When you start expressing gratitude for everything, you will attract more happy things to be grateful for. And life is so much more fun when you focus on the positive side of life.
I have a gratitude journal where I write everything down I am grateful for that day. Sometimes there are three things I am grateful for and other times I write down 10 things. It does not matter. It helps me to focus on the positive things, even when I am having a so-called ‘bad day’.