Give me 5 minutes — I’ll change your mornings!
What happens after your alarm goes off? Do you have to hit snooze a few times? Are there kids (or a husband or wife) screaming for attention even before you can get the words “Good morning” out of your mouth? Does it feel like you have to put out twenty fires the minute you step out of bed?
No doubt you’ve heard about morning routines. You practically have to be living under a rock if you haven’t! You might even be rolling your eyes at me right now, thinking to yourself:
Yeah, right, like I could possibly add one more thing to my morning, let alone three or five things.
What if you could wake up with a sense of purpose? Of calm? Knowing that how you start your day is going to make all the difference to how your day will go?
Begin as you mean to go on
If you always just hit the ground running feeling as if you’re hurtling from one crisis to another, I invite you to try another way. It doesn’t have to take an hour. If you’re always telling yourself:
There has to be a better way. I can’t do this anymore!
Yes, Virginia, a calm morning means a calmer day
There is a better way. Give yourself just a little bit of me-time when you first get up and see what it feels like to start your day off feeling peaceful and grounded. Notice how your day unfolds. Of course there will still be challenges, but notice if they don’t feel as challenging as they once did.
Just give me five minutes!
Everyone has five minutes. Check out the introduction to morning routines here, and then I challenge you to give me just five minutes every morning for one week. Choose just one of these practices:
- Dynamic movement click here
- Meditation click here
- Journaling click here
- Pranayama (breath work) click here
- Foam Rolling click here
Five practices. Choose one. Five minutes (except for the foam rolling). Notice how you feel. If you skip a morning — notice how that feels, too. Bonus points for choosing to do more than one practice, but baby steps are the way to go.
You might also like to consider:
- Inspirational reading
- Prayer
- Oracle Cards (it’s not really woo-woo, it’s fun!)
You can, of course, also choose to do strength training or cardio. I personally find that I need something more low key first thing in the morning — but what I don’t need is to check my email, social media, or the news. Those things won’t help you start your day out in a way that makes you feel good. No one’s going to notice if you don’t answer an email within 5 minutes of waking up!
What’s your favorite way to start off your morning that helps you feel good?
Which video are you going to try first?
In my next post I’ll share some resources for inspirational reading and Oracle cards.
Go With Yin Yoga 