4 Mindful Ways to Start Your Day

How we start the morning often sets the stage for how the rest of the day unfolds.

How we start the morning often sets the stage for how the rest of the day unfolds. Of course life throws us curve balls in the middle of the day, maybe you get a stressful email or someone rear ends you with their car or you lost that deal that you were looking forward to. Anything can happen in the present moment, but how we start our day can often affect how we greet those challenges.

Here are four tips to start your day that will help you with the inevitable ups and downs that you get handed.

Mindful Check-In

It’s good to begin the day simply noting where you are starting the day from. How is your body, what emotions are present, is your mind calm or already racing off to work? If you’re lying in your bed, you just note that, getting a sense of the body feels comfortable or tense. Are you feeling calm, anxious, annoyed, or maybe neutral? What is on your mind?

Prime Your Mind for Good

After a brief mindful check-in, one way of inclining your mind toward resiliency and even opening up to the good of the day is to consider an intentional gratitude practice. What in your life right now do you have to be grateful for? It could be something simple, like waking up on the right side of the bed, to having a roof over your head, to having a good cup of coffee in the morning. Just practice inkling your mind to the good in life.

Bring Presence to the Morning Activities

When you’re in the shower, be in the shower, not solving problems at work already. When you’re making breakfast for you or your family, consider the intention of that being to take care of yourself and others through the day. Put some love into your food. If there are pets or other family members in the house, before you leave make sure to say an intentional goodbye, looking into their eyes

Red Light Practice

As you drive to work use red lights as an opportunity to just check in, pressing the reset button if traffic has got you flustered or just using it as an opportunity to get centered and focus on what matters. You can make the choice to listen to your favorite music, intentionally plan the day out in your mind, or just have a quiet drive for a change. If you take public transportation you can do the same thing every time the bus, train, or subway stops. If you work from home, try this before turning on your computer. Exposing yourself to choices and acting on them just feels good and primes your mind for the rest of the day that you have choices in how you want to respond to situations.

Try these four things each morning as an experiment to see how your life changes.

http://www.mindful.org/4-mindful-ways-to-start-your-day/

It Only Takes Five Minutes to Become a Morning Person

How you start your day sets the context and your mindset for the rest of the day. 

Yet, most people start the day with procrastination by hitting the snooze button, telling their subconscious that they don’t even have the self-discipline to get out of bed in the morning, let alone do what’s necessary to be happy, healthy and successful.

Stand-up comedian Demetrius Martin's humorous take on the subject sums it up well: Hitting the snooze button in the morning doesn’t even make sense. It’s like saying, "I hate getting up in the morning so I do it over, and over and over again." 

When the alarm clocks starts beeping in the morning, consider it to be akin to life’s first gift to us. It’s the gift of time to dedicate to creating the life you want and working toward your goals and dreams while the rest of the world is asleep. 

If it weren't for the following strategy, I'd still be snoozing through my alarm clock every morning and clinging to my old limiting belief, claiming that I was not a morning person.  

How do you give yourself the motivation to rise up early and create an extraordinary day, when your wakeup motivation level is only a 1 or 2 on a scale of 1 to 10? 

Follow this five-step strategy, which is so incredibly simple and easy to do, you'll have no excuse to forgo being an early bird and win the day. 

Step #1: Set intentions before bed. 

Your first thought in the morning might be the same as the last one you had before you went to bed. Many people have nights, whether it's Christmas Eve or the prelude to a vacation, when they can hardly fall asleep because they're so excited about waking up the next morning. Then as soon as the alarm clock sounds, they open their eyes with enthusiasm to skip out of bed and embrace the day. 

On the other hand, if your last thought before bed is something like “Oh man, I can’t believe I have to get up in six hours; I'm going to be exhausted,” then your first thought when the alarm sounds is likely, “Oh my gosh, has it already been six hours? I just want to keep sleeping!” 

So the key is to consciously decide the next-day's intentions every night to actively and mindfully create a positive expectation for the next morn.

Step #2: Move the alarm clock across the room. 

If you haven’t done so already, move the alarm clock as far away from the bed as possible. This forces you to rise from bed and engage in movement. I find that movement can energize me. But if you keep your alarm within arm’s reach, you’re likely to hit the snooze button every time. 

Step #3: Brush your teeth. 

Give your body time to wake up. After turning off your alarm clock, go directly to the bathroom sink to brush your teeth and maybe splash some warm (or cold) water on your face. Simple activities like these can increase your wakeup motivation level from a 1 or a 2 to a 3 or 4.  

Step #4: Drink a full glass of water. 

This is crucial. After six or eight hours without water, you may be mildly dehydrated, which can cause fatigue. Often when people feel tired what they really need is more water, not more sleep.  

When you drink a glass of water and hydrate yourself, your wakeup motivation level goes from a 3 or a 4 to a 5 or 6. 

Step #5: Get dressed in your workout clothes.  

Dress in your exercise clothes, so you’re ready to leave your bedroom. Some people prefer to start their day by jumping into the shower. But I believe people should earn a morning shower by first breaking a sweat.

In my experience, morning exercise helps me maximize my potential by putting me in a peak mental, physical and emotional state to win the day.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238219