If you haven’t taken a look at your morning routine lately and are finding that you have been rushing to work for the last who-knows-how-long, then you may want to consider putting your mornings under the microscope. It’s important to take the start of your day seriously, because it’s exactly that; the start of your day. How you feel and your mood and outlook on the day usually take shape when you wake up. Rushing to work, missing breakfast, and restless sleep, are all habits that won’t make for a great start. They can also be very difficult habits to break, resulting in negative health effects in the long run.
Here are five healthy ways to wake your body up in the morning that will give you a refreshing start to your day.
1. Let Sunlight Into Your Room
A lot of people like their rooms to be pitch black when they go to bed, it helps them fall asleep, but isn’t as helpful when waking up. If we are not woken up by an alarm, having a pitch black room typically makes us get up later as we do not get a sense of what time of day it is. Opening your shades before you fall asleep will allow natural sunlight into your bedroom in the morning; this is a helpful way to naturally wake yourself up. This is also a great way to reduce fatigue and stress when starting your day.
2. Create A Morning Play-list
One of the fastest ways to change your mood is to listen to music. Start creating a playlist that makes you feel happy, motivated, and energetic. Try using the playlist as your alarm – an instant energy booster if you will. Sometimes we need to be reminded why we get up every morning, and there is nothing like a motivating song to do that.
3. Eat Breakfast
After a long night’s sleep our bodies are hungry and begin eating away at our muscle if we do not fuel it with nutrients as soon as we get up. Your brain gets vital nutrients from breakfast that helps you carry out mental processes throughout the day. Even if you do not feel hungry in the morning have something small like a cup of oatmeal, banana, or a piece of toast, something is better than nothing. This will also teach your body to crave breakfast in the morning, a healthy habit to be in.
4. Stop Hitting Snooze
When your alarm goes off, turn it off once, and get up. This will make you feel alert, and more motivated than if you were to continue pressing snooze. Once you get into this habit for a few weeks, it will stick and you won’t feel as tired when you get up. Snooze prolongs your morning, makes you drowsy, unhappy, and gives you less time to get ready.
5. Write Down What You Are Grateful For
Set aside five minutes each morning to write down what you are grateful for. Life is stressful, and hectic and if we do not remember the little things that we have that make our lives special it can get easy to wake up feeling neglected. But start writing a list daily. It can include things like ‘that man who held the door open for me when I had three bags in my hand,’ ‘the baby that smiled at me when I was getting my coffee in the morning,’ or ‘my family’s health,’ Writing these things down will start you thinking about these things daily. Thinking happy thoughts very quickly results in being a happy person and that becomes infectious.
